Twitter on Friday afternoon locked Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad's personal account over violation of copyright laws. The account was later unlocked, the minister said. "Twitter’s actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account," Prasad tweeted from his account after it was unlocked. Why was the account locked? "Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently they allowed me to access the account," Prasad tweeted. https://twitter.com/rsprasad/status/1408367383052386309 Twitter had sent a notice to Prasad saying his account was locked because the platform received a complaint under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for content posted on his account. Under the act, copyright owners can notify Twitter if any user has infringed their copyrighted works and Twitter will remove the identified material if the notice is valid. The Indian government in 2018 acceded to the WIPO treaties of which the DMCA is a result. What was RS Prasad's response? In addition to saying that Twitter is in violation of the IT Rules, Prasad said that "Twitter’s actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their own agenda, with the threat that if you do not…
