3
grievance, there is a Grievance Officer, who can be directed to
conduct an enquiry. He would also submit that even if any
inappropriate or obscene is posted, immediately, the Mobile
Application will come into play and Artificial Intelligence
Moderation Machine and Human Moderation would act as filters.
5. Mr.Arvind P.Datar, learned Senior Counsel would submit that
the Information Technology Act, 2002 and Rules and Regulations, are
comprehensive enough to address any problem. He also referred to the
provision of Information of Technology Act, 2002, particularly,
Sections 67(A) and 69(A) and the Information Technology (Procedure
and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public)
Rules,
2009
and
the
Information
Technology
(Intermediaries
Guidelines), Rules, 2011. By referring to some of the provisions of
the Rules and the Act, the learned Senior Counsel further submitted
that adequate machinery is provided under the Act and Rules to deal
with the intermediaries, who fail to act or respond to a compliant
or request made by any person, regarding any negative or
inappropriate contents, that has been transmitted through the
platform.
6. Mr.M.C.Swamy, learned Counsel as a parent/grandparent, would
submit before this Court that the children and teenagers, who are
vulnerable to pornography
are sharing their personal videos
unmindful of the possible of consequences causing permanent
damages / social stigma.
7. From the above arguments, this Court expresses a serious
concern over the possibility of woman and children of our country
being sexually abused by video sharing and some predators are
exploiting the innocent victims. The learned Senior Counsel for the
respondents 6 and 9 has agreed with the same and submitted that the
Government should be keen in taking appropriate action in the larger
public interest.
8. Having heard the parties, this Court is convinced that Tik
Tok Mobile Application is a platform or otherwise called Online
Application, which does not have any control over the users. On a
perusal of the counter affidavit filed by the respondents 6 and 9,
it is evident that the Company has got required Applications,
namely,
Machine Moderation or Manual Moderation for filtering
inappropriate or obscene and negative content of materials posted in
the app. Secondly, after the order passed by this Court, the 6th
respondent Company is said to have erased six million videos, the
contents of which are doubtful.
9. The ninth respondent has filed a detailed reply denying the
allegations and highlighting the safety features deployed by them.
Para 36 to 40 of the reply are relevant and hence extracted as
below:
http://www.judis.nic.in
“36.....
Thirdly,
the
Platform
in
India
has
implemented industry standard solutions to address problems