The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, after hearing senior counsel representing social media platforms, reserved orders in the suo motu contempt case against YouTuber and blogger Savukku Shankar.
A Division Bench of Justices G.R. Swaminathan and B. Pugalendhi had sought response from the social media platforms on dealing with and removing defamatory content from the platforms.
During the hearing, Senior counsel representing Twitter, Facebook and YouTube told the court that pre censorship of the contents would not be possible. The contents could be taken down based on court orders / directions and orders / directions from the Central government. If the particular Uniform Resource Locator (URL) was mentioned in the orders, the content could be taken down, it was submitted.
Taking note of the submissions made, the court reserved orders on the suo motu contempt case which was initiated following Mr. Shankar’s remarks on the higher judiciary which was made on a YouTube channel in July.
In September, the court held Mr. Shankar guilty of contempt of court for his remarks, “The entire higher judiciary is riddled with corruption”. The court had sentenced him to six months imprisonment. The court had also directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to ensure that the offending interviews were taken down forthwith and had ordered notice to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
