Foreign companies and websites are increasingly finding themselves in the legal net for violating Indian laws. As per the recent trends predicted by Perry4Law and Perry4Law Techno Legal Base (PTLB) the cyber litigations against foreign websites and companies in India would increase further.However, not all cases filed against these foreign websites, social networking websites and foreign companies are legally sustainable. For instance, the criminal case filed by Vinay Rai is suffering from many irregularities. The chief among them is the fact that he did not contact the websites in question for removal of offending contents.
Similarly, the civil case filed against many websites and companies by Mufti Aijas Arshad Quasmi is also suffering from irregularities. Many parties to the case have been added without ascertaining whether they are actually liable or not.
However, what is really troublesome is the fact that the civil and criminal courts of India did not apply their mind to ascertain whether a prima facie case is made out against the accused social media websites, foreign websites and accused companies. Legal processes were issued against them without application of mind by the courts.
The only solace comes in the form that some of them have been pronounced to be not liable to be prosecution by the civil court and criminal court. While the Delhi High Court quashed the criminal trail against Yahoo the civil court dismissed the case filed against Microsoft as not maintainable. Even better is imposition of fine of Rs. 5000 upon Mufti Aijas Arshad Quasmi for making unwarranted accusations against Microsoft.
This entire harassment to Yahoo and Microsoft could have been avoided by simple application of mind by concerned courts while summoning them. If foreign websites violate Indian laws they must be severely prosecuted. However, if they are not violating any Indian law, such frivolous cases and complaints against foreign websites should be seriously discouraged by Indian judiciary.
