BENGALURU: When it comes to protests in India today, tweets come before taking to the streets. Despite this paradigm shift in activism, several high-profile cases have shown that Section 66A of the IT Act (2000) can be misused to intimidate people for merely sharing a Facebook post or expressing an unpopular opinion.

On Tuesday, with the Supreme Court striking down section 66A and reading down section 79, social activists were ecstatic. "The major problem with section 66A was the vague way in which it was worded. Whereas, if you look at the Indian Penal Code, the sections are much better defined," said Gautam John, a lawyer and member of the Akshara Foundation. "So yes, people can be much more fearless while exercising their freedom of expression and in online activism," he said. Lawrence Liang, an activist lawyer with the Bengaluru-based Alternative Law Forum (ALF), called the judgment a "milestone." "In recent years we have seen a rise in the use of draconian laws, which threaten to cast a gloomy silence over the internet, and the court in recognizing the 'chilling effects' of such laws have set a high standard for what may be denied protection," he said.

The section may have been intended as a way protecting people from abusive trolls and to curb hate speech against individuals or communities, but its vague wording made it an easy tool to curb free expression online. Tinu Cherian Abraham, an influential tweeter and social media activist, calls it a "censor board for the internet". "What's surprising is it took such a long time to get rid of," said Abraham.

Indians have never been afraid of expressing opinion online, and this judgement gives them a safeguard, said Preethi Herman, country director, change.org. "In the past few months, we saw many people reacting on the internet against the taking down of a certain controversial video. People protested whenever they have felt that their freedom of expression is under attack," she said. "But this is not the end. With the striking down of this section, we have merely gone back to the pre-2009 era (in 2009, the section was notified in an amendment to the IT Act). And also despite section 79 being read down, the government still has a say in removing material from websites.

Considering the government itself is party to violation of freedom of expression using the IT Act, we need more fine-tuning of the Act," argued John. Adding to the argument, Liang said Section 66A is rarely filed in isolation, and cases are often accompanied by charges under sedition and hate speech laws (Sec. 153A and 295A of the IPC). "In the long run, if we are to craft a jurisprudence of free speech from the 21st century, we really should aim at shedding a lot of the heavy baggage that we carry from the 19th century penal laws," he said.

Source: TOI