Section 79 of the Act grants what lawyers call “safe harbour”. Without safe harbour, a platform could be sued every time a user posted something defamatory, obscene, or seditious. The IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, are organised in three parts. Every advisory, however informal in origin, would become a condition of safe harbour, and therefore as binding as the Rules themselves. First, should the safe harbour of Section 79 be conditioned on instruments lacking the procedural discipline of subordinate legislation?

Source: The Hindu April 10, 2026 08:01 UTC