New IT Rules Not For Search Engine, Google Tells Court; Centre To Respond

Google has contended that the single judge, in his April 20 judgement, "mischaracterised" its search engine as a ''social media intermediary'' or ''significant social media intermediary'' as provided under the new rules.

Google LLC has contended that Information Technology rules for online news publishers are not applicable to its search engine, and urged the Delhi High Court on Wednesday to set aside a single judge order which applied the rules on the company while dealing with an issue related to removal of offending content from the internet. The single judge's decision had come while dealing with a matter in which a woman's photographs were uploaded on a pornographic website by some miscreants and despite court orders the content could not be removed in entirety from the World Wide Web and "errant parties merrily continued" to re-post and redirect the same to other sites. A bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh issued notice to the Centre, Delhi government, Internet Service Providers Association of India, Facebook, the pornographic site and the woman, on whose plea the single judge's ruling had come, and sought their responses to Google's plea by July 25. The court also said that it was not going to issue any interim order at this stage.