Representational photo.

MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Wednesday vacated its April 3 interim order prohibiting downloading of TikTok after the Chinese company submitted that it had put moderating mechanisms in place to regulate obscene content. However, the HC warned that the company would be charged with contempt of court if the regulatory mechanisms were not found in place.

Senior counsel Isaac Mohanlal representing TikTok argued that the company followed all laid down standards and had better privacy provisions than other social media platforms. It also told the division bench of justice N Kirubakaran and justice S S Sundar that it was only an intermediary platform and did not upload content.

When senior counsel claimed that TikTok had not violated any laws, the court said it was only because there were no laws to address the issues concerning social media platforms, and cited instances where the Parliament took several years to pass legislation.

The court also took note of submissions by amicus curiae Arvind Datar, who said that banning the app -- which is only an intermediary website -- cannot be the solution and cited previous judgments of the Supreme Court and the guidelines of the Information Technology Act. “An intermediary shall not be liable for any data not uploaded by them. There is no obligation on their part for pre-censorship,” said senior counsel citing Supreme Court judgments.

The amicus curiae also said that he met with the officials of the ministry of electronics and information technology and, so far, the Union government had blocked 14,220 websites between 2010-2018 and that this was the first case in the country on an intermediary website.

Datar said any person with a grievance against an intermediary website should first approach the grievance official of the company and then the authorities and the courts only as a last resort. “What is statutorily legal cannot be judicially impermissible,” Datar said.

The court, however, expressed concern that there was no statutory protection for children and asked whether the Union of India would enact a statute like the Children Online Privacy Protection Act, enacted by the United States, to prevent children from becoming cyber victims.

On April 3, the court issued an interim direction to the Centre to prohibit downloading of TikTok mobile app. The court observed that pornography and inappropriate content were made available through the app. The court directions were in response to a petition which sought a ban on the app stating that it encouraged disturbing content and degraded culture.

