Internet freedom has become an important subject in the present era with growing number of netizens . Pertinently, the recent Supreme Court judgment rendering a provision of the IT Act as unconstitutional has been welcomed and decried as a momentous victory for more than 300 million Net users in the country by the Internet and Mobile Association of India .
As a matter of fact, just few days back in a landmark judgement upholding freedom of expression, the apex court struck down a provision (Section 66A) in the cyber law which provides power to arrest a person for posting allegedly “offensive” content on websites.
Few years back in a new report on ‘Freedom of the Net 2011 – A global assessment of Internet and Digital Media’ by the international Freedom House, India had slipped by two points from 34 in 2009 to 36 in the assessment of the constraints placed on the digital media.
India stands at the sixth place among 18 countries which have been listed as ‘partly free’.
A total of eight countries headed by Estonia and the United States are in the list of ‘free’, while eleven countries figure in the list of ‘not free’. Pakistan is at the bottom of the list of ‘partly free’. China, Cuba, Burma and Iran are at the bottom of the list, in that order.
As a matter of fact, the landmark judgment is also going to impact Kashmiri were youth have used multidimensional social networking sites like. Facebook and YouTube to report on the events, upload images of the violence, and express their deep anger and resentment over the grave human rights abuses.
But in a series of worrying development it was learnt that this important tool of freedom of expression is under grave threat and facing repression from the agencies of state. Nevertheless, this landmark judgment augurs well for internet freedom in India.