The Delhi High Court has dismissed a civil suit for defamation against an admin of a social media group, stating that an admin cannot be made liable for defamatory statements made by any other members of the group, reports LiveLaw. Interestingly, the court likened holding the admin of a group accountable for defamation to holding a printing press responsible for defamation for materials published by print media. The court said that “When an online platform is created, the creator thereof cannot expect any of the members thereof to indulge in defamation and defamatory statements made by any member of the group cannot make the Administrator liable therefor.” Read the full judgement here (pdf). Note that this case was regarding materials shared on Telegram and Google Groups, but the ruling should apply to admins on WhatsApp Groups and the like as well. This is important as admins have been held responsible for content before. For example, in October last year, a WhatsApp group admin was arrested in Latur over objectionable content. Similarly, a mandate by the district magistrate of Kupwara district of Jammu & Kashmir in April held group admins responsible for all posts on their groups. In August, two youths were arrested by police in Chhattisgarh following a complaint against the admin of a WhatsApp group. It needs to be pointed out that group admins generally don’t really have control over the flow of content in a group, and erratic platform specific rules, like WhatsApp randomly assigning a new admin…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...