After Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged on Friday that Twitter blocked access to his account, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor claimed he was also denied access to the social networking site. Taking to his Twitter account, Tharoor wrote, “Raviji, the same thing just happened to me. Clearly DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is getting hyperactive.”
Tharoor also attached a video clip, stating that the same was deleted by Twitter because it includes the copyrighted BoneyM song ‘Rasputin’.
The Congress MP said that Indians “creatively make videos” using short snippets of foreign music, and most people would deem that “fair use”.
“Instead of letting the clip enhance the popularity of their song, the copyright holders have issued notice. Though I just retweeted it, I’m not about to contest their act,” Tharoor added.
{{/usCountry}}“Instead of letting the clip enhance the popularity of their song, the copyright holders have issued notice. Though I just retweeted it, I’m not about to contest their act,” Tharoor added.
{{/usCountry}}He noted that the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which is zealously defending Sony Music’s rights to ‘Rasputin’ was the complainant in the case. “Ironically, at their last conference in India, I was a keynote speaker,” Tharoor tweeted.
Tharoor pointed out that however “stupid and pointless the request was,” unlike Ravi Prasad, he will not be blaming Twitter for denying him access to his account as the social media platform had “no choice but to honour a DMCA takedown notice.”
However, the former Union minister said that as chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, he can state that they’ll be “seeking an explanation” from Twitter India for blocking access to him and Ravi Prasad, and the rules they follow in their operations in the country.
His remarks come after Ravi Prasad claimed that calling out Twitter’s “high-handedness and arbitrary actions,” have “clearly ruffled its feathers.” “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 toe the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform,” Ravi Prasad wrote on his Twitter, which was eventually unblocked.
The social media giant and the Union ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) have been at loggerheads after the new IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Ethics Code) Rules were announced in February.