 Right, a very good evening, everyone. I am delighted to welcome you on behalf of the team at the Software Freedom Law Center in India to this panel discussion and the launch of a report, Finding 404, a report on website blocking in India. My name is Kahan Mehta, and I am a research fellow at sflc.io. I will not be blocking much of today's time, which I would like to reserve as much as possible for the discussion. So I will be giving a quick introduction of the report, of sflc.io, of the report, and of our moderator, Mr. Pukharsar, today, who has kindly agreed to help us through the conversation. sflc.io is a donor-supported not-for-profit organization based out of New Delhi, India, which protects digital rights and defense freedoms in the digital space by creating awareness, understanding advocacy, undertaking advocacy, and conducting policy analysis and also by engaging in strategic litigation. As a part of its continuous effort to protect rights in the digital space, sflc.io has prepared this report, Finding 404, which we will launch today and which will be available publicly post this panel discussion. This report is a comprehensive study of the phenomena of blocking websites in India. To be able to do this successfully, the report has conducted an extensive analysis of all the laws and subordinate legislations, which form a part of website blocking in India. In particular, we've studied the legal text of Section 69A of the Information Technology Act and concerns subordinate legislations. And we've analyzed the interpretation offered to it by Indian courts over the years. And the report also studies the technicality and the technical process of blocking websites in India under these concerned rules. In addition to this legal analysis, the report also presents empirical data, which draws information that we have compiled and updated over the years regularly by engaging with the state through the Right to Information Act 2006 by filing RTI applications. And also by considering the data available through other second resources, which also track blocking of websites in India. Through this web of unorganized data, we've been able to establish different parameters, such as the grounds on which websites are blocked in India, the statistics for each ground, the authority which has blocked the websites for different reasons. For example, we were able to identify that several websites were taken down for the reason of spreading fake news or for having content which allegedly undermines the democratic processes in elections. As you will see in the launch report soon, 55,580 websites have been blocked between January 2015 and September 2022 in India. We've also made an attempt to understand the experience of comparative jurisdictions for the purpose of which we've briefed judgments from foreign nations to observe how legal principles have been used by foreign courts to place an embargo on arbitrary blocking of websites. The culmination of all of this information has become the basis of actionable recommendations, which we have supplied in this report, which seek to bring up fair, just and equitable procedures and increase accountability and transparency in the process of blocking websites. A legal mandate to provide unambiguous reasons for blocking websites which show an application of mind, a more inclusive and representative review committee which checks executive action, legislative prescription of principles of natural justice throughout the entire process of blocking websites. These are some of the suggestions that have been offered in this report, and the report goes into further detail on how to bring about these recommendations into practice. I'm very happy to introduce Mr. Praveer Purkhayastha, who will be moderating today's discussion as well. Mr. Purkhayastha is the editor of NewsClick.ion. He's an engineer and a science activist and works largely in the power and telecom and software sector. He is the author of two books, Uncle Sam's Nuclear Cabin and Enron Blowout, Corporate Capitalism and Heft of Global Commons. He's also on the advisory board of sffc.in, where we benefit from his wisdom and experience regularly, and for which we have a very grateful sub. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very glad to have been able to prepare a flexible resource through this report for lawmakers, for policy persons, and laypersons. And we hope that this is the first step and acts as a springboard for further conversation action, conversations like this one, for which we have invited distinguished panelists, whom I will be giving way to shortly. Before I yield, I would like to thank our media partner for today's event, the NewsClick.ion. Thank you so much. Mr. Purkhayastha, may I please invite you to take the floor now? Thank you. It's a difficult task to share such a distinguished panel. So I'm going to speak as little as possible, only to say that this is a very important topic, obviously, particularly for news organizations, because we can be shut down. Our content can be taken down very easily. And it is of importance both to the users, which is the readers, who read or view whatever content is there on the websites, as well as, of course, those who create content for both. And increasingly, content creators and people who view content are not dissimilar in number, because the number of blogs, websites, YouTube videos, Facebook pages, Vibo, and other chats, all of this is very, very largely today. So this is a very important issue. And I'm really grateful for SFNC and the team to have done what they have brought us not only a report of what is happening in India, but also what is happening in different parts of the world, and therefore a comparison, how we shape up regarding that. So I'm going to start with one of our most distinguished panelists here, Maria Zinou, who is a research director at Open Observatory for Network Interference, who has worked on this not only for help with this report, but really works on this much larger space, particularly for not only specific countries, but looking at it worldwide. So Maria, I've got to ask you, since you have looked at this from different points, geographical points of view, different countries and so on, how would you place the Indian experience, both in terms of blocking and in terms of having access to information, why sites have been blocked as compared to other jurisdictions? Thank you so much for the question, and thank you so much also for having in this panel, and congratulations to SFLC for producing this very important research report. So yeah, I work with the Open Observatory of Network Interference, commonly known as UNI, and as mentioned, we essentially measure internet censorship globally since 2012. And over the last 10 years, we've had the opportunity to look at censorship in many different countries. And what I'm gonna briefly share to answer this question is based on data that has been collected from networks in India over many years. Generally speaking, I would say that internet censorship, as we've seen it through network data, is definitely not as pervasive and as advanced as in other countries, such as in Iran or China. But essentially what we've seen is that a lot of, for example, file sharing websites are blocked in the country, particularly following a 2014 court order. But I also think that it's maybe not so much the question of the number of websites that are blocked, but the types of websites that are blocked and the impact that they're blocking has. And on this note, it's probably worth mentioning that in the past, what we've seen is that on multiple networks in India, a number of news media articles, blogs, and human rights websites, such as delitzdan.org, which is the website run by organization defending the human rights of the delits, that they have been blocked in India in the past on several networks. We've also seen the blocking of various articles discussing violence against Muslims in Assam. And this is just to say that in such cases, I think the biggest danger is the impact that censorship can have on marginalized communities. So in summary, to answer your question, I think that it really depends on the context. I think generally speaking, when looking at censorship, it's important to look at it within the framework of countries, laws, regulations, political environments, and other factors, which can make it very difficult to compare censorship across countries. But if we are to try to think about this question, I think it's worth looking at the types of websites that are blocked and the impact that it has on local communities. And I think comparatively to other countries, in other countries such as in Iran, China, and Russia, we definitely see much more pervasive and advanced forms of censorship. But for sure, the blocking of content in the past in India, which has impacted news articles covering situations that impacted marginalized communities is definitely of concern. Okay. We have Mr. Divan, who's a well-known lawyer working in this particular area. Could you take us to a quick overview? What the laws are and how can we access the information regarding blocking? And what is it addressed that both websites have and what is it addressed to readers have? Okay. Very quickly, I thank you again for this question and I thank the organizers and I commend them for publishing this report. I think it's an excellent asset in terms of advocacy. And I'll probably come back to that in a moment. But I think the broad framework which we have is something called the Information Technology Act of 2000. And under the Information Technology Act of 2000, we have what we call a umbrella provision or a statutory provision which sanctions. It doesn't prohibit individual types of websites, but it's an empowering provision or an enabling provision. And this provision, section 69, capital A, enables the central government to follow a set of rules. So the statute itself says as maybe follow the procedure, as maybe prescribe. We find that this prescribed procedure is contained in a set of rules. And the set of rules essentially lays out as to how there can be a complaint, how there is an evaluation by a designated officer and thereafter there is a decision which is taken with regard to blocking a particular website. There's also a sort of a review mechanism which is provided under this particular scheme. So this is broadly one set. And I think in common understanding when we speak about how does the government block websites, this is the generic manner. They use the rules under, framed under section 69, capital A of the 2000 Information Technology Act. So that's one set. In this regard, I should also mention that the constitutional validity of this provision was tested in the Supreme Court of India and the Supreme Court of India found that there was sufficient guidelines as far as this section is concerned. So it was constitutionally valid. And if it were constitutionally valid, the government can therefore now proceed in an exercise powers under this particular section. So that's one. And in reaching that conclusion, the court also found that we have protections under our constitution, essentially under Article 191A with certain restrictions or limitations prescribed under Article 192. And it found that section 69A of the act were comported, the grounds on which you could block a website were broad, were within the framework of the constitutional permission. So that's one. The other are individual cases. So you could always have a situation where a court directs that a particular website is blocked or a certain, and that can happen for a variety of reasons. It could, for example, happen in an intellectual property kind of a situation where you have someone who is employing the goodwill of a rival business and projecting to the world at large through the net that look, I am him or her or I am the same company as XYZ to promote my sales to market, et cetera. And then you can have the party which is offended going to the court and securing an injunction. So that is of course case by case. And it sort of, that's how it sort of plays out on an individual case by case basis. So this broadly is the schema which we have in India for the purposes of potentially blocking websites. Just one point that I'd mention over here, maybe a couple. Usually if there is someone who is aggrieved by the blockage then in our system for several decades now we have what is termed as tribunalization of our dispute resolution machinery. So we've moved business away from courts and created tribunals. It's my sense that in the last few years access to justice is being constricted in a manner of speaking and it's being constricted by for example, not appointing judges. You hear that or you read about that very commonly. If you don't have judges, you don't have personnel in tribunals, you can't make a complaint and have a resolution of that complaint within reasonable time. So it's an access to justice issue. But here the fault is that we don't really have an independent tribunal at all. So that's another serious problem. I think the policy of the government is to curtail or to curb or to limit the number of tribunals. So apart, that's also very, very restrictive of access to justice. And I think there is a necessity perhaps for having a quick and swift remedy, inexpensive remedy by people who are aggrieved by having access to an independent tribunal when a person is aggrieved. The final point I'd like to make, and actually this was this, I read this in the Times of India on the 1st of January, 2013. And I was so startled by the report that I thought that is this some sort of an April fools kind of news item, but apparently not. So the Times of India report, which I've tried to see as to whether it's carried in other media outlets and it hasn't, says that there is a rule of law index which is published and India had improved two spaces on the rule of law index, but we're still lower than Sri Lanka, we're lower than Nepal. And there's a concerted effort by the government of India to enhance our position and status in the rule of law index. And I wish to connect this present report to this effort, because as a tool for advocacy, I think increasing access to justice, if this is going to be the governmental objective to improve rule of law, then I think the report makes lots of suggestions and provides a wonderful framework for really building on the rule of law or improving our rule of law by providing redress and providing a greater access. So that's my first bit. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think that lays the broad contours of the space. The only quick response that I would make on this is during emergency, we had as you made yourself internal security act order and ask people to put in jail. And there was a redressal mechanism, which is very close to what you have today regarding taking down a website. And lo and behold, not a single one of them ever disagreed with the initial order. So here also we have a situation, orders are fast, there is supposedly a review, but the review doesn't change the status of the order fast. So therefore, what do we do? Is it still an open question? Tribunals or going to rich jurisdiction of the High Court and the Supreme Court seems to be the only possible solution that is left. We have Dr. Muktesh Chandar. Is he, are you on the, yes, he's there? Yes, yes, Pabir I'm there. So I think this is, this brings us really to the issue that you would be probably more familiar with that there are procedures that is set up for blocking of the websites and their procedures for review of the websites. But what is the information I get? Why my website has been blocked? Or if I'm a user of the website, how do I know this has been blocked? The website has been blocked or is it just that the website is not functioning? So information A and B, if I disagree with a step that has been taken, what is the review mechanism? Is it really functional or is it just for, just for the sake of it? First of all, I would like to apologize that I couldn't get access to a proper place because I'm traveling. And therefore, I hope my voice at least is clear if not the video. So pardon me for that. The earlier speaker had mentioned about the procedure established in law about the blocking of the website. Now there are two parts of it he mentioned, the basic act and the subordinate legislation in the form of the rules. So in the basic act, the purpose for which a website can be blocked have also been defined. They are the security of the state, sovereignty and friendly relations with the countries as well as under one important aspect, defense of the country and the important part is public order. Now any of criminal, cognizable offense connected to with these, if it is felt that this particular post will lead to that, then that blocking order can be issued. So first of all, we have to agree that under the constitution of India, there is a freedom of expression, but with certain riders and the riders have been well-established, well-defined and various court judgments have agreed to that. So there is no dispute on that, on the grounds on which the website can be blocked. And for that matter, similar provisions exist in interception of telephone, conversation under the Indian Telegraph Act and also similar contents, similar situations are mentioned in the IT Act for the interception of the internet traffic also. So having agreed that the basic purpose for which these provisions can be invoked, there is no dispute. There should not be any dispute on them. Now coming to the procedural part of it. Now again, the procedure has been defined. There is a mechanism which has been mentioned. And obviously, when a new technology is there and a new principle is used, there may be certain limitations in its functioning. And over the period of time, the law improves through various court judgments and also by the wisdom of the executive in implementing these laws. And at some point of time, the procedures are amended and changed as has happened in telephone interception matters over a long period of time. So what I believe is that the procedures are there and as a police officer, we have used these provisions in past, the provisions have been effective. There may be certain limitations on the transparency part of it or the intermediary coming to know about the reasons about it. And then, so these I'm sure the report which has been prepared would be very beneficial to the government machinery also to look into this aspect. And subsequently, I'm sure things can improve a lot. And we also have to see one more important difference that every country has got a certain kind of situation to deal with. For example, opening a SIM card anywhere in countries like UK and other places is easy. You go and pick a SIM card from any railway station or any airport without submitting any documents. But the same thing is not there applicable in our country for certain reasons. In the same way, we don't see it's too much of internet blocking, shutting down the internet in a crisis situation of serious public order. But we see it very often in several countries and including India. So the ground realities have to be seen into the context. And that is why certain things are there in our country and certain things are not there in other countries. So I'm sure the report would be highly useful to the society as well as to the government machinery. And this is an ongoing process of learning and the civil society bringing out points of difficulties. That's all I have to say. Okay, thank you Dr. Chandran for being so clear about what you feel about these issues. But the problem that still remains which I'm going to ask Dhania Rajendran who is co-founder of News Minute quite well known to all of us. To talk about, okay, fair enough the government has underlaw certain rights to do what it might think is in the interest of the larger interest of the Indian state or the people of this country. While not disputing that right, the question is after it has been exercised with the government, I as a person who owns a website which has been either blocked or a page has been blocked should be able to know why it has been blocked so I can appeal against it. So question is, is there any information that is available in public domain? How many sites have been blocked? Why they have been blocked? Who has passed the order? Or do we also have any clear lines by which we can take these issues up? Okay, this is what has happened. This is now the procedure for me to follow. So what's your experience of it and how do you think that we need to address the issue? Thank you, Prabhi for the question. The report was very insightful. So I will just first take your question about takedown notice itself. I am the chairperson of Digipub. Digipub is the first organization for digital media in India. We have around, I think, 120 members now. We've not had any takedown notices for members but we do face a lot of other issues. To just specifically reply to Prabhi's questions, we randomly get these press statements from the INB ministry or other ministries saying that 50 websites have been taken down or 50 YouTube channels have been blocked. There is absolutely no explanation given as to why these channels have been blocked, why these websites have been taken down. And in most cases, at least the YouTube channels which I have seen, nothing that I've heard of. So you can't even be sure what these channels were doing and there is no explanation given as to why they were taken down. There is a case which is going on in the Supreme Court in the media one broadcasting limited which is the channel run in Malayalam, they run a channel in Malayalam, they also have a newspaper. Suddenly the union government last day decided to block the channel. They said it is for reasons of national security and despite the channel asking multiple times both in the Kerala High Court and in the Supreme Court it was never divulged as to why the channel was taken down. I think in a sealed cover, a certain portions of the report by the whole ministry were given to the judge in the Kerala High Court and the judge had quoted some portions in the judgment but not everything was revealed. And the judge said that he was convinced that yes, there were enough reasons for the channel to be blocked. But when the case came to Supreme Court the block was removed as a stay order now. So it is really ambiguous as to there is no clarity when the government takes down a website, a YouTube channel or even a television channel like in media one's case. They simply seem to be using this excuse of it's all for national security. What is national security? Who decides what is a threat to national security? Is something which the government is just not ready to reveal. In fact, that's what the government has clearly said in the media one case. Now, as far as websites go, ever since the digital media rules came in, couple of points I want to make one is that it has become a bit more difficult for all websites, especially the smaller websites, because there's three tie system which we have to follow as per the new digital media rules. The first is that everyone has to have a grievance officer. So that's additional work now. People have to appoint grievance officers or at least someone already working in the office has to allot a certain point of time to address grievances. All websites have to be part of a grievance committee. For example, Digipap has 120 members because all of them have to be part of a grievance committee which includes a former judge, a social worker, et cetera, a committee of around three people. So Digipap has a committee which is led by a former Supreme Court judge. Now, it is not easy for smaller websites because they have to pay a grievance officer, they have to pay an organization like Digipap to be part of it. So everything is in added expense. And we've also realized that this whole thing is not seamless. For example, the IMB ministry keeps a record of who registers with them. For example, if you are starting a website or if you're already running a website, you're supposed to register with the IMB ministry. Now in Digipap itself, out of 120 members, not all have registered. Some have not registered because they've taken a stand that they will not register as they have gone to court. Many of our members are in court against digital media rules. I'm a litigant myself. So a lot of people have not registered with the ministry. Others simply have not done it for whatever reasons. So what has happened is that the ministry also has a list of Digipap members. So in that list, they will not include those people who have not registered with the ministry. So two of us never met. So this whole experience has been quite difficult because we had to continuously write to the ministry saying that we have more members than who you have recognized. So eventually what will happen? If there is a problem, what kind of action in the ministry take nothing is clear as of now. And the other issue that we face is of course intimidation. Many of our members have been facing cases and it's only been increasing with time. Zubair who's part of Altnews was one of the founder, Altnews is one of the founding partners of Digipap. He was of course arrested and you saw how multiple cases were filed against him. Many Digipap members and even other websites who are part of other associations and organizations have got criminal defamation cases, civil defamation cases, sedition, many cases against them. But something that happened a little bit differently was recently when the Karnataka police gave a notice to this website called the file. The file is an investigative website in Canada and this journalist who runs it called Mahanteesh, he has been doing a lot of investigative stories. And on the base of that people have been getting arrested, suspended, et cetera. The Karnataka police have served him a notice saying that they want to know who the source of a story is. This is the first time that something like this at least in my knowledge has happened in the Southern states. So we are also thinking about how to counter that. So these are of course the many issues that we are facing due to the digital media rules and outside it problem. Thank you, Danya for giving us an overview. What as a digital media as a website involved particularly with news because a sensitive issue for the governments and all governments is really news. If you're an entertainer, yes, but 95%, 98% of the time, unless you comment comment about really current affairs as an entertainer, you don't really come under the scandal. But if you're dealing with news, of course, always sensitive everywhere in the world. So Mishi, you have both the advantage of looking from outside as well as looking from inside. And you have been also the driving force in SFLC. So how do you see this report in building it? What are the problems you had because there is no list, consolidated list where you can see, well, these are the sites blocked and these are the reasons why it has been blocked. So how did you actually go about getting this? Must have been a very difficult task. So why did you do it? Why did you do it? What did you do? I think we just like to be the people who try to look for data where none exists and then decide that for any kind of evidence-based policy, you need actual evidence. You need some data. So starting from internet shutdowns to website blocking or apps blocking, we have always been interested in understanding how India censors anything. That's why we run the free speech tracker to understand what the bookbands exist here, what kind of mechanisms under the intellectual property right regime are used in order to block access to information. For any kind of online rights, which we defend here at SFLC.in, anything starts with data. So whether it is the government's job of policy making, they also require that data or it is for industry who are trying to build various kind of products to understand what the landscape is or for people like us who at least in Deaver to ensure that there is an internet which is open as well as accessible to everybody. We need to understand what is not out there. Just like Duke Ellington, it's the notes you don't play which tell you a much bigger story about everything. So website blocking is something SFLC has been actually doing it right from its inception. In fact, when we were collecting that data, that's how we discovered that in some parts of the country there were complete blanket shutdowns of internet which led to our internet tracker. So this is something which is a continuation of the first step of any substantive change which we bring either through the legislature or the executive or the judiciary have data and then argue with that data. So to your point that there isn't much in terms of that you can go to a website and see such are, these are the various orders issued by Metis or by courts and these are the various websites for a variety of reasons they are not allowed access in India, we don't have that. So we decided to just create that resource. And what we do is, and that's why this report is dynamically updated also because there are right to information requests which we get or there are court orders or certain other litigations where we have challenged to say that we need that information. And as and when more data is available, we update the report as well as the trackers which we run. Our view is that this is not only going to highlight what is not available to the general public but also help the government to understand what is happening, where it is happening and for what reasons. So the current report tells us from January, 2015 to September of 2022, 55,580 websites or apps or channels have been blocked in India. Now, Metis which is the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology which blocks under section 69A which Mr. Devan talked about, they blocked 26,447 websites. Court orders which are primarily about copyright infringement but can be about variety of other reasons as well. They occupy the second big chunk which is around 24,578 websites. Thereafter is Ministry of Information and Broadcasting which is a much smaller number compared to this but as Danya was saying, it also is not about, it's not like cost-based pricing, it's value-based. How important it is if it's a news website or what exactly is happening there. So what we have mostly understood is that we believe in the rule of law because rule of law makes tyranny so much harder to achieve and use that it's best in freedom the internet can abolish ignorance and free the full power of human creativity and genius but use that it's worse under farms of state control that well-intentioned government officials are calling for. It can eradicate the very possibility of human freedom and what happens depends entirely on what citizens of democracies like ours demand from the government but it's very hard to demand anything if you really don't know. And my view has been that under section 69A when the court industry a single judgment which Mr. Devan said said, okay, this is fine. This is constitutional. We understand that sometimes you need to do certain such things. Here you go, but here are the certain safeguards which you must follow if you want to do anything out there. What we have noticed is that for the safeguard to exist you need to tell the public that there is something which is blocked. Nobody knows what is blocked in India. It is all a black hole. No information is given when the review committee to your point, Praveer what you were talking about in times of emergency. Similarly here, the review committee which is required to review the decisions under the rules which are formed under section 69A. They check their own examination papers and give grade A, which is a common phenomenon here. They have never, never turned over any decisions which have been taken about blocking of the website. The people whose websites are blocked or applications or channels are taken down. They are not informed. So it violates the basic principle of natural justice that if you don't tell me that you're taking down my content for a reason then I have no recourse to actually challenge that order or give you a reason to Dhania's point to give you and explain what I actually do by what you have decided is not the correct thing. That opportunity is never provided to people. And that is why what we see is that although the Supreme Court said that you must have an ability to assail this order and go to high court and challenge it. I don't know what the Supreme Court thought about the fact that if you don't mandate making these orders transparent and public then how is anybody going to challenge it? So even if I am willing to understand that security of the state might be an argument in certain cases. CSAM, which is child sexual abuse material might be a relevant argument in certain cases. But if I am never given an opportunity if there is no transparency at all then we're all operating in this black hole where nobody understands what's really going on and rule 16 tells you that you have to keep everything secret. So everything is cloaked in secrecy. The same executive which issues these orders that's the same executive which also then reviews the orders has never turned over anything. And it just becomes harder and harder for the public to understand anything what's going on. We've been filing right to information requests for a very long time. We have studied court's orders up and down on states because they're not always Supreme Court orders. They're high court orders. There are other courts also who are issuing orders now about certain matters like these. So to collect that data, to study that data that's why SFLC.IN's team and kudos to them for keeping us sane and also back it up with evidence and keep that data. Now that data is available and we are hoping that we can work with the government to bring more transparency, to understand what their concerns are, but also to understand the citizen's point of view or the owner's point of view, whose channels or whose websites or apps have been taken down because blocking and access to information is an important part of how we exercise our freedom of thought as well. Well, to keep us sane is important, but it does appear that you have to do an insane amount of work to get to that point of sanity because this information, as you said, is not available anywhere. It has to be collected bit by bit and the fact that it's cloaked in secrecy also means that whoever is passing the order is the judge, the jury, as well as, if I may say so, the executioner of the order. I will not call him an executioner, an executor of the order. So effectively you have the judge, jury and executor all together. Now this, of course, leaves out the other half of the problem which is there today, which is that a lot of, what shall we say, blacking out of information, taking down content is also done by large digital monopolies, as I call them, really what I also call the social media companies. Of course, it also gets taken down because the government has asked them to take certain things down. Even all that information is also quite opaque. So I will ask Maria, go back to her. And of course she can respond to anything that's come up in the discussion. So this is a free floating round. So you can respond to questions not asked which you have, answers that you have, you can respond to other families also. But how do you bring these things into the mix? The social media companies, they have a lot of power to both propagate as well as censor. And the other issue which has been always very troubling, the argument that government sometimes gives that if you are a large company, you should be able to do this using artificial intelligence. Of course, the assumption is we don't have intelligence. Therefore we need artificial intelligence to do all these tasks. But I'm gonna leave that to you. How do you respond to these kinds of issues? But you're welcome to not answer these and answer things that you think are more important. Thank you so much. And this is really an excellent question. And I think that's, it's very important when thinking about government censorship to also make the connection to how that relates to censorship implemented by these huge digital monopolies as you frame them, the social media companies. So I think one thing on this note that is probably interesting to mention is that, so basically like in the past when most websites were on HTTP, it was possible at the time for India and for many other governments around the world to limit the blocking to specific web pages. So for example, if they wanted to censor a specific article hosted on a news website, they didn't at the time have to block the entire news website, but they could limit the blocking to that specific news article. And at the time we did see through network measurement data that a lot of blocking was implemented targeting these specific web pages. Now that most websites are hosted on HTTPS, it is no longer possible technically speaking to limit the blocking just to a specific webpage hosted on the website, which means that in order to censor an article on a website, they would have to block the entire website. In practice, what this means is that for example, if they want to censor an article that is hosted on Facebook, they can no longer block just that specific article they would have to block the whole of Facebook. But blocking the whole of Facebook for an extended period of time, obviously comes with some important political and economic costs, but I think most governments will often not be willing to take. So I think this essentially it raises an interesting dilemma and an important dilemma, which is that are they willing to block an entire service with a cost that will come from that in order to censor a specific article and how will that change the nature of censorship? Censorship implemented by governments is implemented on the network level. So while in the past, we would have seen block pages, now that most websites are in HTTPS, we're seeing more forms of DNS based tampering. And because now in many cases, the articles that they may want to censor are hosted on HTTPS encrypted websites and they cannot block just those articles. It creates more of an incentive to ask these big social media companies to implement the censorship for them. So essentially we're likely going to be seeing more sort of outsourcing of government mandated censorship towards these big social media companies. And I think you're very rightfully raised the question and the concern of transparency. I definitely agree with what Michi and many other panelists mentioned before that there definitely is need for more government transparency in terms of which websites are blocked, how they're blocked and why they're blocked. And of course, it's important to inform the website owners when and why they decide to block access to their website. And in a country like India, just as in many other countries around the world where censorship in a way is implemented differently from on network to network, it can be very difficult to track which websites are blocked when and how and it can be very difficult to distinguish intentional government censorship from the many other reasons that can result in a website being inaccessible, which may have nothing to do with censorship. So for sure there is need for more government transparency around the world in terms of which websites are blocked why and how. But there's also a need for more transparency from social media companies who seem to be taking on, who seem to be receiving more pressure from governments to censor specific content on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and other platforms. While they do have the transparency reports, I think these transparency reports don't provide nearly as much detail as they should. They usually just provide aggregate stats instead of specific information that can, as Mishu said, enable those who are running content that has been censored to challenge these decisions. So for sure I think more transparency is needed both from governments and from companies, specifically as they will likely be collaborating more closely more and more in the future as the nature of the internet evolves. Absolutely correct that we are going to face a world in which the social media companies, what they do are going to be as important and what the government and the relationship between the government and the social media companies are going to be. Because obviously social media companies do not want to lose markets as you pointed out and the government once, the government will pay a price if they want to throw a big social media company out of the country. So of course you've done it, we said we take talk in this country, but nevertheless you can't do it with respect to all social media companies or particularly those which have already built up a large business. But the point that remains is that legally the intermediary guidelines, so to say, provide a degree of protection to these companies and therefore they can say, well, we are not responsible for it and the government then can of course use the criminal processes which it has, the powers it has to prosecute specific people. We said they are, the one we are talking about really an area which is yours that when we talk about what Mishi has raised regarding protection, yes, the law has these things, but how do you exercise our rights both against the government and against the social media companies? Because I think they are also big players. And as I said, you can think or answer a completely different set of questions, you can speak on anything that has come to your mind while we have been discussing. This is only just a peg. Thanks very much. I'll just make a couple of points. The first point that I'd like to make is that independent of the topic in the context of social media companies or big tech, there is a need which is felt across the world for having some accountability from corporations. And so you have this evolving notion of business and human rights. An aspect which we read about far more than just general human rights is also business and climate change. So these are trends which are strengthening the world over and societies across the world are trying to come up with solutions and fixes as to how do we bring large corporations, including say social media companies under the ambit of law and responsibility and accountability. So the way an Indian court would look at this is that we have our fundamental rights which are essentially, essentially designed against the state. So you have the citizen on one side and you have the state on the other side. And these are persons, I mean, an Indian citizen, it could be a corporate body as well. You can exercise these constitutional rights and the person against whom you exercise them or enforce them traditionally is known as, is the state or an organ of the state. Now we have a judgment, a privacy case, a Supreme Court judgment and very recently in the first week of January, that's last week, we have a judgment of the Supreme Court on free speech as well. And both the privacy case as well as the free speech case suggest and indicate that there is a certain horizontal dimension to these fundamental rights. So it's not just that you can exercise them against the state, but you can perhaps exercise them against certain types of private entities as well, where say your right to privacy is being transgressed or you have a, your free speech rights, freedom of expression, et cetera is being transgressed. So that is a gradual creeping process of incremental judicial extension of its power to bring to account corporations and businesses. So that's one development. My own personal view is that I think our courts, they periodically sort of lay out principles which are extraordinarily high sounding, but then when the crunch comes, they find some way on a case by case basis to either duck the issue or kick the can down the road and leave it to some other judge to really confront a difficult situation. So solutions are, I mean, the courts are, of course, your ultimate final arbiter, but I think solutions like the report which we're discussing and which is to be released bring about on the strength of the data is to secure reform, to secure safeguards and to secure an architecture for greater freedom, both qua the state as well as social media companies through hard fact-based alterations in what we have. So I mean, one of the themes which came up during these deliberations was that you really do not have an effective review at all in terms of an appellate review or an appellate consideration from a decision to take down a website. And secondly, the expression mentioned was natural justice which means the most basic elements of fairness, the most basic elements of fairness are missing in the current procedure. And I think there is a scope there for courts to recognize, to accept that yes, we have upheld section 69A, we have, we recognize these rules, but when they are combined with the kind of experience and data which is produced by this report and we find that there's really no effective redress at all which is available to the complainant or the person who finds his or her website pulled down, we must have an adequate machinery. So you could do that through the court, but perhaps if you're persuasive enough, you can probably do that through some sort of discussion, deliberation and engaging with government itself. I think that might be probably more effective than through the court system because the court system apart from taking forever is the records as I understand it of the Supreme Court is at best very patchy in this kind of freedom and the expansion of freedom situation in its current phase of jurisprudence. I think that's a very point well taken that not only have you to approach the courts, not only have you to approach the government, but we also have to approach the people because if the public opinion, people's opinion can be raised to a level, then there is a pressure on both the governments as the government as well as on large multinational corporations, large corporations that people will deserve them if they do not redress the problems that people see on their platforms. So yes, the task, the ball is not only the hands of the judiciary or of the state or the large social media companies, but also all of us, particularly those who are working on this issues and of course, groups like SFLC who are then have to share a larger part of the burden or organizations like Digipub. Dhania, back to you, what do we do or as a famous book was, what is to be done? As organizations, as activists, as journalists. So when the digital media rules for first brought in, we were also thinking what should we do? And I think the decision taken by various organizations, individuals is what you're saying that we will have to oppose this at many different levels. Go to court as organizations, go to court as individuals who are part of media organizations. For example, the first litigation against the digital media rules was filed as a combined petition by the wire and me. So the wires foundation was one of the petitioners and I was also a co-petitioner. Then later a lot of organizations started filing cases. Live Law went to the Poochee High Court, Quint I think went to the Delhi High Court, Newslaundry, many other started filing cases. So that's one thing that you go to the court and ask for relief, but it was not just journalists and media organizations. For example, in Chennai, Internet Freedom Foundation and TM Krishna were the petitioners who went to court. TM Krishna said, I am a news consumer and these digital media rules do impact me. Something which the alternate law forum in Bangalore was doing is that they were holding conferences, they were holding these small, in fact, it was a time of the pandemic also. So we couldn't have large gatherings, but they had these small gatherings where they inviting, they were inviting students, people from various sectors in Bangalore to speak about, to discuss about how digital media rules will impact them. So I think it's very important that these discussions do not just remain in the media circles. For example, we call a Digipub conference and all of us are just ranting about how the rules are impacting us, but we need to speak about it more to people engaged with them to create public opinion. For example, when the media one case came, there was a lot of public opinion foreign against, the point is there was discussion. People were discussing it, news channels were debating it. So people were aware of what is happening. So I think creating a public discourse on this is also extremely important as far as websites go. Well, good point. We have to mobilize the people through our websites, not only through our platforms. But Dr. Chandan, I'm going to give you, before I hand it back to Mishi for her last words, a quick question that people have been complaining that the mechanism for addressing is actually not an effective mechanism because we don't know what the complaint is. We had just told we have done something wrong and even now we have what is called the something which is given to the judges, but not shown to the defendants or shown to the people. The seal cover as it has been called. So don't you think there is the mechanism for all of this needs to be much more transparent and should be at least available to people to know why they have been blocked? Even if it is one line center, you are doing things which we think is subversive. That's okay. But at least something. Of course, this point is very important. Of late in the past few years, we have sealed what is now being called as sealed cover, jurisprudence and a number of ex-judicial officers do not approve of it. But the fact is that it is there and certain information which is classified in the government's judgment. Of course, then that information cannot be made public. But of course, the content creator knows for sure that what has been blocked and probably the reasons also. See, for example, a particular defamatory thing has been posted, which is hurting the sentiments of a particular community and certain people have seriously objected to it. Obviously, the content creator knows that this is because of this reason. Of course, his participation to defend that, no, no, this is not raising any problems in the public. This will not raise, this is my freedom of speech. That is for the executive to decide what kind of reaction it will take place. I would like to give an example. For example, a particular food item, maybe milk. It is allergic to some people. But inherently, he may say that, no, no, no, no, the milk is not, what is the fault of the milk? But the reaction it causes to a larger public that is important to be kept in mind. So for a particular content, which he says that expression, this is my expression of freedom of expression. But if it has got potential to create a public order, then it is necessary for the state to step in to control it. And probably that was the reason before these intermediary laws and regulations came in. The Twitter and so many other organizations, social media organizations, thought that they were outside the purview of the sovereign government in India because their headquarters are situated somewhere else. But they did not realize that the potential of creating a serious law under communal situation because of a particular content is a reality in India. So they cannot just sit away and say that our headquarters are there and we are governed by US laws. So as a result, the government was compelled to bring this kind of regulation in which a grievance officer has to be stationed in India and they are subject to the law of the land. So while I fully agree that there must be transparency and there must be a proper accountability of a decision being taken, but because one organ of the state is taking a decision, that does not mean that the entire executive is not applying its mind. There are various levels at which these decisions are put up and approvals are taken. That is the case even in telephone or internet interceptions. Most of these matters are treated as top secret. Therefore they are not available to the public whose telephone is being intercepted because it defeats the overall purpose of the entire exercise. So, but I would agree with the sham and machine on these issues that yes, the reforms have to is a continuous process. This will come by the way of various judgments, by the way of opinions being formed using platforms like SFLC and the reports being prepared. And I'm sure it's a continuous process, it goes on. While at the same time the fundamental duty as well as the right of a sovereign government must be acknowledged. While acknowledging the sovereign right of the government to ban milk, I would still argue that because it's allergic to some people we shouldn't really ban milk. And I think you've given a very apt example of how things should not be banned. But given they're taking, leaving that aside, I must tell you two very important issues. One is of course, as you know, the bulk orders for interception, which are signed not only by the executive in India but also by the judiciary in the United States under the National Security Act has already come up that you do, you take, give blanket permission for essentially bugging people. Now that is not that we're asking all this should be made public, but the procedure, how many have you blocked? How many have you intercepted? How many people's phones have you banned? And what is the procedure to be followed? Under the review, was any of these orders rescinded? Did you sign 20,000 orders on one day? Those are information that are still important. And I think those are the kind of information we're seeking. We're not seeking that we're not challenging that under 19, two exceptions, the government has certain duties to preserve public order, security of the nation, et cetera, those are not being questioned, but are the procedures such that it has become blanket permission is really the issue? I'm gonna leave the last word with Mishi, not going to take my opportunity as chair, misuse my opportunity as chair to give the last word. So Mishi over to you, what is the path forward? So I actually quite like the idea that we can always make the American platforms the villain in everything and conflate all issues and then all problems are easy to solve. So path forward is kick them out, we can all have a great time because everything else would be perfect. I do want to, so jokes aside, I really want to underscore something Dr. Chandler just said about, it's not that we don't recognize the pressures of a position such as he is in or some authorities of the government are. However, I don't think that we have seen a direct correlation between what is presented in form of security of state and actual impact of any of this. So for example, in the past 13 years, Metis has blocked 27,000 plus websites and has never overturned one decision of theirs, not once in 13 years. Then to say the fact that some of these platform companies are not giving us or information because they used this Lex Locai server argument. My servers are in America. I think that's a separate issue and an actual issue. And because of that, a lot of other problems were created but those are now being addressed. However, the same obligations which some of these companies should have considering their size and the business and the number of users they serve cannot be applied to every single website or a channel, et cetera, who is doing any of these jobs. So I will say that those are two issues which are equally important, but the way forward has to be very different considering where we are right now. In terms of, I will point the attention of everybody to the four recommendations the report makes which is about the problem with the confidentiality clause which is transparency's problem. The problem of this composition of the executive committee which actually reviews these decisions, the audio ultrampartum which is about principle of, here the person who you are punishing for all of it and don't block all entire websites. There might be certain issues which might be there but that doesn't justify taking down of all kinds of orders. I will also say there are certain cases like Quitters interesting case about that it was not only what is allowed by the constitution but the government wanted to block far more than what is permissible. That is one instance where we see these companies actually trying to do something for their users rather than just for their businesses. I will say the problem in this entire fight between government and companies is that we as users are asked to sit on the sidelines and watch whatever happens when the power brokers have made certain decisions and our endeavor with work like this report and other such things are to say that the impact of what a company does whether it is about public order or about free speech and expression what the government requires them to do all of it is on us as a user whether I'm running a website whether I'm providing news or analysis or I'm just a consumer. The impact is on us and why are we not given that seat on the table or asked about what our rights mean out here. So I will say that we take note of the fact that going to courts is not a short short path to get what we want because by the time the courts actually come up with a thing the petitions are in fractures the facts have already happened things have already rolled out in a way that now always the judiciary says well it's already done what can we do now? Well you could have actually heard the cases in time and come up with something timely and that's why I think there's a little bit more to explore to the idea of what Mr. Devan is saying to have some specialists think about these issues. The only other thing I will say is that giving ministry of information broadcasting powers under through subordinate legislation that kind of cleverness to control the narrative is something which is not gonna go down as well with a variety of people because it's not that people are unreasonable but when such a thing happens then of course various questions are raised about is it about controlling the narrative or is it actually about solving crimes? I think if we had more evidence about how any of these blocking orders or taking down of channels or apps, et cetera really does create any kind of impact there would also be a better argument here. I will say finally is that people have to demand from the governments that we receive the benefits of the digital transformation but with the power to govern ourselves about rights under the rule of law increased not traded away in the name of security of the state or because it is convenient and that means that using technology, politics and law in concert for true public interest and that will only happen when we will be serious about users rights about all of it and everything will not be about let's just have one kind of narrative or let's only do data monetization of one kind or the other but an actual multi-stakeholder way of discussing and saying I recognize what the limitations of the government's job are but here are my rights and here is the perhaps the obligation of a business. I will then only I think what we can achieve is a civil society which is robust well organized so that we can hold all the bigger players accountable and at the end of the day ensure that the rights we are all talking about are respected and perhaps emboldened and we aspire to a higher level and not basically regressing away and saying a lot of more limitations can be imposed. Well, Vishy I think what you were saying is we have to build or appeal to the court of public opinion because that is the final court in the country let's accept that courts also listen to the court of public opinion gives a certain viewpoint. So how do we reach the public is as important for us as it is to reach the courts. So I think both these aspects have to be taken into account and ultimately whether it's the government whether it is the judiciary that really does make an impact and that's something that both organization like SFLC, Digipap, news organization and all of us as citizens have to do. I'm not going to be able to continue this fantastic discussion we've had this evening thanks to all of you for your strong viewpoints and particularly on issues such as extending fundamental rights to also apply horizontally on large corporations. I think that's an interesting position what Vishy has said what Maria shared with us Dr. Tark Chander who has been very passionate in his arguments why we need certain things. Yes, of course we do agree that we need to protect the state and protect the people but how do we do it is really the question. So all of us are I think agreed on the fundamentals but the devil is always in the detail and at the moment the detail is what we're not seeing. So I think I will rest with that. Thank all of you for being here sharing with us your viewpoints keeping it short my task very easy and to SFLC kudos for what they have done and hopefully continue to do for us but of course we'll lend our helping hand as well. We have a number of listeners who've joined us on YouTube viewers who've joined us on YouTube thanks to all of them we're going to wind this up and I have kept as chair the time schedule as given to finish at 746. I finished at 746. So at 745 I finished at 746. Thanks to all of you for this wonderful evening. Thank you.