The Delhi high court on Thursday issued summons to users accused of adding “defamatory” statements about news agency Asia News International (ANI) on its Wikipedia page.
A bench of justice Subramonium Prasad passed the order taking note of a division bench’s November 11 order allowing the platform to serve summons to the users without disclosing their identity publicly.
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“Let summons be issued to defendants 2-4. The summons can be served through all permissible modes... including email addresses to be supplied by the defendant 1 [Wikipedia], the court said in the order while fixing December 16 as the next date of hearing.
The summons were in the context of descriptions of the news agency ANI.
The characterisation contained references to criticism of the news agency for allegedly acting as a propaganda arm of the government.
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Wikipedia and ANI have been embroiled in two separate cases before different benches of the high court. While one is a defamation suit, the other pertained to Wikipedia’s appeal filed before a division bench against an August 20 order directing it to disclose the details of the users who made the edits.
{{/usCountry}}Wikipedia and ANI have been embroiled in two separate cases before different benches of the high court. While one is a defamation suit, the other pertained to Wikipedia’s appeal filed before a division bench against an August 20 order directing it to disclose the details of the users who made the edits.
{{/usCountry}}On Monday, the division bench closed Wikipedia’s appeal against August 20 order, after the platform and ANI entered into a consent order regarding Wikipedia serving summons to the users and resolved the matter.
The consent order before the division bench was passed after the court reprimanded Wikipedia for its apparent reluctance in disclosing the details and criticised it for its approach towards the disclosure order, warning that it would lose its safe harbour protection, which intermediaries get.
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Section 79 of the Information Technology Act contains a safe harbour clause that provides legal immunity to platforms against content shared by their users. It states that an intermediary shall not be liable for any third-party information, data or communication link made available or hosted by them.
The defamation fight has snowballed into a larger judicial tussle over the liability and duties of intermediaries -- online providers of a service -- when the content posted by their users is caught in a legal tangle.
ANI and Wikipedia could not be reached for a comment.