The government’s recent actions in notifying the Intermediary Guidelines for the internet with minimal public debate have resulted in the creation of a legal system that raises as many problems as it solves. The regulations as presently notified are arguably unconstitutional, arbitrary and vague and could pose a serious problem to the business of various intermediaries in the country (not to mention hampering internet penetration in the country) and also...

Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services —making it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, let's take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed. --Pranesh Prakash...

-The Indian Express Inside a nondescript building in the eastern part of Bangalore stands a server farm, a cluster of computers. It is a building without a sign and visitors are strictly forbidden. In this building sits the data centre of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). Location of the centre: “somewhere in Whitefield suburbs”, is all UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani would tell this newspaper. The centre forms the back support of...

-The Economic Times   Vaccines are a true gift of science to humanity. In developing countries, prevention is better than cure. Vaccines have a great track record of safety and efficacy and they are amongst the most cost-effective products, which even the poor have access to due to effective systems of procurement and delivery. India's contribution in the vaccine arena is noteworthy. The primary reason behind the country's vaccine success story is...

Twitter, a hugely popular social networking site for microblogging, has said that "if required by the law" it can block tweets in a particular country. In a post titled 'Tweets Must Still Flow', Twitter, which has around 300 million users, wrote on its official blog, "Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country, while keeping it available in the rest of...