Cannot Block all Pornographic Material over the Internet: Centre informs the SC

The petition filed by Mr. Kamlesh Vaswani asking for a ban of all pornographic material over the internet came up for hearing today before a three judge bench headed by the Chief Justice RM Lodha.

Mr. Vijay Panjwani, the advocate appearing on behalf of Mr. Vaswani started the arguments by citing examples of how countries like China and Pakistan have banned pornography. The Chief Justice responded saying “What China, Pakistan or any other country does is not our concern. We have to see the problem and remedy it with respect to our own society.”

Mr. Vaswani with his lawyer Mr. Panjwani in the Court today

Additional Solicitor General, L. Nageswara Rao, appearing for the Centre explained to the court that pornographic videos and images are uploaded outside India. When they receive a complaint, they contact the concerned intermediary (such as Google) and ask them to block the content. He further stated that he has discussed the problem with the Government (DeitY) whose major problem is that even if the content is removed from one place online it is uploaded again in multiple different places. The court seemed to sympathise with this difficulty faced by the Government in enforcement and Justice Nariman even compared the problem to the sprouting of a Hydra’s head.

The Chief Justice stated that “the Centre should not be so helpless and ideally the law should develop faster than the technology”. He however admitted that “technology will always develop faster than law as the human mind is very fertile and innovative’. He also added a cautionary note stating that ‘though technology can do wonders but it can also lead to destruction”. Justice Kurian Joseph stated that these things lead to prurient interests in the younger generation and to rising instances of sexual exploitation.

The ASG informed the court that the problem has been placed before the Cyber Regulation Advisory Committee constituted under Section 88 of the Information Technology Act. The committee was currently examining the matter and one of the ways can be to ask all the big intermediaries to have servers in India. The ASG also categorically informed the court that it cannot pass orders to block all the pornographic websites.

The Court explained to Mr. Vaswani that if his prayer (which includes declaring section 66,67,69,71,72,75,79 and 80 of the Information Technology Act unconstitutional) is accepted in its entirety all the preventive measures currently present to regulate the production, distribution and transmission of the pornography will no longer exist and the spirit of the petition will be lost. The Chief Justice also added that that any measure to regulate porn will have to be within the constitutional framework and the Court cannot be expected to make law. The bench stated that ‘there needs to be a synthesis of law, technology and governance for effective control of pornography over the Internet and the law alone will not be effective if it is not enforceable’.

The bench acknowledged that it was dealing with a complex issue and that there may be multiple methods to achieve the result of regulating pornography over the internet. It directed the Government to place the writ petition before the Cyber Regulation Advisory Committee, so that they can assess the issues that are placed before the Court and come back with its views after four weeks.

(Sarvjeet is a Project Manager and Research Fellow at the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi)