circumstances, that counsels have primarily addressed the Court. Further,
none of the Defendants have any objection for blocking the URLs for the
territory of India i.e., the India domain.
Submissions on behalf of the Plaintiff
8.
On behalf of the Plaintiffs, Mr. Darpan Wadhwa, ld. Senior Counsel
submits that if a defamatory article, book or any other content is printed or
published, then the publisher of the same is liable for defamation. The
Defendants are seeking protection under Section 79 of the Information
Technology Act, 2000 (hereinafter ‗the Act‘) on the ground that they are
intermediaries. Since they claim that their role is that of passive
intermediaries, they are bound to follow the due diligence required under
law. As per the judgment in Shreya Singhal v Union of India AIR 2015 SC
1523, the phrase “actual knowledge” in Section 79 is a Court order, thus,
once the Court passes an order, they are bound to disable the content
globally and cannot raise objections to the geographical extent of
implementation of the injunction. It is Mr. Wadhwa‟s submission that if the
Defendants claim that they do not have an obligation to comply with the
orders of the Court, then they are no longer entitled to safe harbour under
Section 79 of the Act. He relies on the definitions of “computer resource”,
“computer system”, “computer network” and “data” in Sections 2(1)(k),
2(1)(l), 2(1)(j) and 2(1)(o) respectively to submit that the Act does not
provide that the blocking has to be restricted to the territory of India. Thus, a
Court of competent jurisdiction can pass effective orders directing global
blocking. He further submits that an intermediary‟s role cannot be to
adjudicate as to whether the content is defamatory or not, but to remain
CS (OS) 27/2019
Page 5 of 76