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A committee consisting of the designated officer and representatives from the ministries of Law and Justice, Home Affairs and Information and Broadcasting and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) examines within seven days all the request received for blocking access to online information according to Section 69(A)(1) of the IT Act (see above). Section 69A of the IT act provides the government with the "power to issue directions for blocking for public access of any information through any computer resource . . . where the Central Government or any of its officers specially authorised by it in this behalf is satisfied that it is necessary or expedient so to do, in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or...

as amended by the Information Technology Act 2000 This statute came into force on and provided legal recognition for electronic commerce and gave effect to a resolution of the UN General Assembly. The statute was subsequently amended in 2008 along with the definition of intermediary and the provision for safe harbour for intermediaries provided under Section 79 of the IT Act. (1) Definition of Intermediary. An ‘Intermediary’ with respect to any particular electronic records is defined under Section 2(w) of the Information Technology Act as ‘any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web-hosting service providers, search engines...

(1) If the Government is of the view that it is necessary to block certain information 'generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource' it can direct the intermediaries to block access to such content. However, such blocking can only be ordered if it meets certain criteria have to be met which are laid down in clause (1) of section 69A. The section also mandated that the reasons for the blocking must be recorded in writing. Additionally, the section carries criminal penalties and intermediaries can be punished with an imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years and are also liable to fine if do not comply with the requests. (2) The detailed procedure for blocking access to any such information has been laid down in the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for...

(1) Setting up due diligence provisions to be observed by intermediaries while discharging their duties, including the publications of rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement for access-or usage of the intermediary's computer resources. (2) Rule 3 of the Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011 lays down the due diligence standard that needs to be observed by the intermediary. The rules require the intermediaries publish rules and regulations, privacy policies and user agreement. These published terms and conditions or user agreement shall forbid the user from publishing any information that is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging...