Delhi High Court asks Centre's response to Google "new IT rules do not apply to its search engine" claim

Google has argued that Information Technology laws for digital media don't really apply to its search engine, and has asked the Delhi High Court to overturn a single judge ruling that imposed the regulations to the business in a case involving the removal of offensive information from the Internet.

The single judge made the decision while handling a case in which some miscreants posted online a woman's images to a pornographic website, and despite court orders, the subject matter could not be removed completely from the Web, and "errant parties merrily continued" to re-post and redirect the content to other web pages.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice to the Centre, the Delhi government, the Internet Service Providers Association of India, Facebook, the pornographic site, and the woman whose plea had resulted in the single judge's ruling, asking them to respond to Google's petition by 25th July.

Also, the court stated that no interim orders will be issued at this time.

Google claims that the sole judge "mischaracterized" its search engine as a "social media intermediary" or "significant social media intermediary" as defined by the new laws in his 20th April decision.

In its appeal against the April 20 decision, it stated, "the sole judge applied the New Rules 2021 incorrectly to the appellant's search engine. Furthermore, the single judge has conflicted multiple parts of the IT Act and independent regulations enacted hereinafter, and has issued template instructions incorporating all of these offences and provisions, which is unlawful in law."