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Sabu Mathew George v. Union of India and Others

Writ Petition (Civil) · 2017 INSC 1221Decided 13 Dec 2017
Writ Petition (Civil) No. 341 of 2008
Chief Justice Dipak Misra · Justice A.M. Khanwilkar · Dr. Justice D.Y. Chandrachud

Background

Dr. Sabu Mathew George, a public-spirited petitioner, filed this writ petition in 2008 seeking directions to Google India, Yahoo! India and Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt. Ltd. to block search results and advertisements that facilitate sex-selection/sex-determination services, which are banned under the 1994 Act. Over nearly a decade the Court issued a series of interim orders directing the companies to adopt an "auto-block" system for prohibited search terms and directing the Union of India to set up a "Nodal Agency" to receive and forward complaints about offending content.

Decision Breakdown

On this hearing date the petitioner's counsel complained that the Nodal Agency mechanism had not been effective in stopping offending material, while the search engines argued that content could only be removed once specifically flagged, since automated filtering of all possible word combinations was not feasible. The Court did not resolve this dispute on the merits but directed the Nodal Agency and an "Expert Committee" to hold a meeting, with the assistance of the petitioner's counsel, to reach a holistic, cooperative solution, and directed representatives of Google India, Yahoo! India and Microsoft to appear before that Committee. The writ petition was disposed of on this basis, with liberty granted to the petitioner to file a fresh petition if problems persisted.

Lesson Learnt

Even when a law (here, the ban on advertising sex-selection services) clearly applies online, courts may prefer a cooperative, administratively-supervised compliance mechanism between government and technology platforms over a one-time blocking order, recognising both free-speech/right-to-information concerns and the practical limits of automated content filtering.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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