IT Minister allege he was locked out of Twitter for criticising its actions

Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that he was denied access to his Twitter account for almost an hour on Friday for alleged violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In a Twitter thread of 7 tweets, he also shared screenshots of Twitter's message.

In the message, Twitter explained that the account was locked following a copyright infringement complaint. It explained that under the DMCA, copyright owners can notify Twitter claiming that a user has infringed their copyrighted works. It further warned that repeated copyright infringement might lead to suspension of the account.

"Friends! Something highly peculiar happened today. Twitter denied access to my account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA and subsequently, they allowed me to access the account," the Minister for Information Technology said.

Prasad further alleged that the lock was due to his statements calling out the arbitrary actions of Twitter. He said, "It is apparent that my statements calling out the high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter, particularly sharing the clips of my interviews to TV channels and its powerful impact, have clearly ruffled its feathers."

He further slammed Twitter for lack of notice before locking and alleged that the microblogging platform violated IT Rules 2021. He wrote, "Twitter's actions were in gross violation of Rule 4(8) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 where they failed to provide me any prior notice before denying me access to my own account."

"Further, it is now apparent as to why Twitter is refusing to comply with the Intermediary Guidelines because if Twitter does comply, it would be unable to arbitrarily deny access to an individual's account which does not suit their agenda," he added.

He further claimed to have only shared news clips of him speaking on TV channels. "Furthermore, in the past several years, no television channel or any anchor has made any complaints about copyright infringements with regard to these news clips of my interviews shared on social media," he alleged.

"Twitter's actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of free speech that they claim to be but are only interested in running their own agenda, with the threat that if you do not tow the line they draw, they will arbitrarily remove you from their platform," he said.

Reasserting that Twitter would have to comply with the new rules no matter what, he reiterated, "No matter what any platform does they will have to abide by the new IT Rules fully and there shall be no compromise on that."