Singhvi's legal safeguard falls through the Net, 'video' surfaces

The efforts of the legal team of Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi to keep the contents of an alleged controversial video away from public reach were frustrated by social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook today. Within hours of Singhvi's lawyers obtaining a permanent injuction from the Delhi High Court against the publication or broadcast of the contents of the reported video -- allegedly containing sexual acts -- on Thursday, the video was out on YouTube and had been viewed, commented upon and circulated by many across the Internet.

Almost 13-minute long, the video was also linked to a Facebook page belonging to a person identifying himself as 'True Nationalist', who threatened that if the video was pulled off, he (or she) would put out scandalous videos of some well-known politicians, including a Cabinet minister at the Centre.

The video, which was live on the page till 6 pm and had been viewed by more than 350 people, was eventually removed. The YouTube video was also removed several times but kept popping up repeatedly and was sent as link by several across different online platforms.

Sources close to Singhvi said his team was constantly monitoring the online platforms and reaching out to their administrators asking them to remove the video. They maintained that the permanent injunction received on Thursday applied to all print and broadcast platforms and that this covered the online platforms as well. Since the order pertaining to the permanent injuction was not publicly available, The Indian Express could not verify this claim.

"Yesterday's order permanently restricts the publishing, broadcasting, disseminating or distributing in any form or manner the contents (of the alleged CD)," said one of the lawyers.

Without responding to the questions sent by The Indian Express, a Google spokesperson sent a statement saying: "As a matter of policy, we don't comment on individual videos on YouTube. However, our policy prohibits posting of inappropriate content on YouTube and our community effectively polices the site for inappropriate material... The users can flag content they feel is inappropriate and once it is flagged, it is reviewed by our staff and removed from the system if it violates our Community Guidelines."

... contd.

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