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How can minors have agreement with social
media sites, asks court
Thursday April 25, 2013 08:17:40 PM,
IANS
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New Delhi: The Delhi
High Court Wednesday asked the central government to apprise it
how children below 18 years of age can have an agreement with any
social network site including Facebook.
A division bench of Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru
also issued notice to US-based Facebook Inc and Google Inc to file
their responses on a plea seeking directions for social networking
sites to restrain children below 18 from having an account with
them.
The court was hearing a plea that said children below 18 years are
allowed to open an account with social networking sites including
Facebook which is illegal as Indian laws don't permit it.
The bench said: "How the children below 18 years can have an
agreement with any social network sites including Facebook. Union
of India is directed to file an affidavit on the issue within 10
days."
"Both Facebook Inc and Google Inc are US-based entities and are
hereby impleaded as respondents. Notices to be issued to the
newly-added parties," the court said while impleading both the
foreign companies as parties in the case.
The court posted the matter's next hearing for May 13.
The court's direction came on a public interest litigation filed
by former Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue K.N. Govindacharya.
Appearing for Govindacharya, lawyer Veerag Gupta told the court
that penalties should be imposed on social networking sites and
other internet-based companies for non-verification of age of
their users.
He added that the children below 18 are getting into an agreement
with the social networking sites to open an account which is
against Indian Majority Act, Indian Contract Act and also the
Information and Technology Act.
The counsel further added that the Indian government is not taking
any action against the foreign companies which have their Indian
operations.
It said that "on the basis of unlawful agreements, data of 50
million users is transferred to the US and used for commercial
gains in violation of the right to privacy".
"Due to non verification of users, more than eight crore Facebook
users across the world were found to be fake which the Facebook
admitted before the US authorities," he added.
He said that five or six percent accounts on social networking
sites were fake or being operated by anonymous users due to
non-authentication of details by the company before the opening of
accounts.
The plea also sought order to recover tax from social networking
websites, arising out of their internet-based business in the
country.
The plea asked the court to direct the government to recover all
"past and present" direct and indirect tax demands arising from
business income from Indian operations of different social
networking websites.
The petition sought direction to ensure proper accounting
compliances as per the Reserve Bank of India guidelines.
Govindacharya pleaded for a court order to these companies to
implement the verification norms issued by the central government.
The petitioner, at present involved in social service through his
organisation Rashtriya Swabhimaan Aandolan, said: "Facebook gross
revenue for previous year was approximately $37 billion..."
"...They are not paying due taxes on their Indian operations as
per provisions of double taxation avoidance agreement and the
government is not taking any action to safeguard the national
interest and sovereignty of India."
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