New Delhi: Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said Twitter denied access to his official account for almost an hour over alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) and asserted that its actions were against the OTT rules 2021.
“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,” Mr Prasad said in a series of tweets.
Prasad said that 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 the company failed to provide him with any prior notice before denying access to his account. The IT Minister, who has been constantly sharing video clips of his interviews against Twitter on Twitter for the past week, claimed that his statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter have ‘clearly ruffled its feathers.
Furthermore, Prasad posted the details on his handle on the Indian Version of Twitter, Koo.
Twitter and the Centre have been at crossroads after the former failed to comply with the government’s new IT policy.
It may be recalled that recently, Twitter had removed the blue tick from the accounts of several leaders including Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu, and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, after which, a controversy broke out across the country.