Twitter temporarily blocks IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account

New Delhi: Minister for Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad was today reportedly denied access to his own account on Twitter for almost an hour, government sources said.

Though the Twitter account of the Minister was visible for public viewing, Twitter did not permit anyone authorized to access this account to log in or make any post, they added. When the minister and his team tried to log in to the Twitter account @rsprasad, they were presented a message saying, “Your account has been locked because Twitter received a compliant Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice for content posted to your Twitter account.

Under the DMCA copyright owners can notify Twitter claiming that a user has infringed their copyrighted works. Upon receipt of a valid notice, Twitter will remove the identified material. Twitter maintains a repeat copyright infringer policy under repeat infringer accounts will be suspended.

Accruing multiple DMCA strikes may lead to suspension of your account.” About an hour later, however, government sources said that Twitter allowed access to the account by posting a warning message to the minister’s account stating, “Your account is now available for use. Please be aware that any additional notices against your account may result in your account being locked again and potentially suspended.

In order to avoid this, do not post additional material in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorised to post.” Sources from the minister’s team said that Twitter neither gave them any prior intimation before blocking access to the account nor did it specify any content that was found violating the US laws on copyright.

Rule 4 (8) of the newly notified Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 clearly stipulates that whenever content that does not belong to the user is shared on a social media platform the social media intermediary shall ensure that prior to removing or disabling access, it has provided the user who has shared such content with a notification explaining the action being taken and the grounds or reasons for such action.