Twitter has responded to the matter of temporarily restricting Union Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s access to his Twitter account. The micro-blogging platform clarified that it was done due to a DMCA notice, adding that it responds to valid copyright complaints. A Twitter spokesperson informed that the tweet in question has been withheld.
The company’s submission on a transparency database titled ‘DMCA notice to Twitter’ revealed that the IT Minister’s account was temporarily restricted because of a copyright claim by Sony Music Entertainment for a clip that is reported to have used musician A R Rahman’s song ‘Maa Tujhe Salaam’. Twitter on Friday blocked Union information technology (IT) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s account for nearly an hour over alleged violations of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) amid the social media network’s deteriorating ties with the central government in the context of the new IT rules in the country. Twitter has been at loggerheads with the Indian government over compliance with IT guidelines, where after it lost its status as an intermediary platform in the country over non-compliance with the new intermediary guidelines. As a result, the company has lost its legal shield in India from facing prosecution over users’ posts.
