In continuation of Part 1, this Part tests the arguments run by the Platforms where they state that – striking content upon complaint and terminating accounts with repeated complaints is due diligence which the IT Act and Rules requires.
The Concept of a “Voluntary” Takedown
The third proviso to Rule 3(1)(d), in force from 2021 until 15 November 2025, had three notable features. It covered removal “under clause (b) on a voluntary basis” and removal on grievances under sub-rule (2). Its only operative words were that such removal “shall not amount to a violation of the conditions of clauses (a) or (b) of sub-section (2) of section 79,” the conditions of passivity. And it said nothing else, whether about the user, about Section 79(2)(c) or about Section 79(3). Rule 2(1-B), which replaced it from 20 February 2026, retains exactly those operative words and changes only the trigger. Protection now attaches to removal “in compliance with these rules, including in accordance with sub-rule (1), sub-rule (2) or sub-rule (3) of Rule 3,” or upon becoming aware of a violation through “reasonable and appropriate technical measures, including automated tools.” The word “voluntary” does not appear anymore.
The word “voluntary”, after the 2025 and 2026 amendments, now survives only in Rule 3(1)(g), which requires that “where upon receiving actual knowledge under clause (d), on a voluntary basis on violation of clause (b), or on the basis of grievances received under sub-rule (2), any information has been removed or access to which has been disabled,” the intermediary preserve it for one hundred and eighty days. The clause thus distinguishes three routes. Removal upon actual knowledge under clause (d) is mandated by the Rules. Removal “on a voluntary basis on violation of clause (b)” is not. Removal on grievances under sub-rule (2) proceeds through the statutory grievance mechanism.
The provision therefore meets a single objection, namely that a platform which selects content for removal has “selected or modified” the transmission and thereby ceased to be a conduit. A rule which provides that an act does not forfeit an immunity, is not a rule which provides that an act must be visited upon the uploader.
Simply put, platforms contend that Rule 3(1)(b) obliges them to remove infringing content upon complaint. Rules call a removal under clause (b) voluntary, and a removal cannot be at once voluntary and obligatory. Had clause (b) obliged the platform to act on every complaint, the drafters would not have called the removal voluntary, and the third route would have no function. A platform which receives a private copyright complaint is therefore under no obligation under the Rules to act on it, and where it acts it does so of its own volition and on its own responsibility. That is the reason a deeming provision was required at all.
What Rule 3(1)(b) actually requires
What Rule 3(1)(b) requires is a standard of conduct. The 2023 amendment added “by itself” to what had formerly read “to cause the user of its computer resource not to host,” and that addition is the legal support for platforms, since it converts a duty to warn users into a duty to make reasonable efforts of the platform’s own. But the duty is one of reasonable effort, owed to the State as a condition of the exemption, and the enumeration to which it attaches extends from obscenity to malware without distinguishing what a machine may identify from what only a court may determine.
Where the Rules require removal of specific content they say so. Rule 4(4) mandates automated tools only for depictions of rape and child sexual abuse and for information “exactly identical” to that already removed by order of a court or Government, and even there insists on proportionality and “appropriate human oversight.” Copyright is absent. The Rules also prescribe what reasonable effort entails once a complaint arrives. Rule 4(8) requires a significant social media intermediary which removes information “on its own accord” to notify the user of “the grounds or reasons for such action,” to afford “an adequate and reasonable opportunity to dispute the action” and seek reinstatement, and to decide the request “within a reasonable time.” Rule 3(2)(a) requires every intermediary, including a marketplace such as Amazon which falls outside Rule 4, to resolve grievances within seven days, keeps copyright out of the thirty six hour expedited track, and provides that “appropriate safeguards may be developed by the intermediary to avoid any misuse by users.” Rule 3(1)(n) requires the intermediary to “respect all the rights accorded to the citizens under the Constitution, including in the Articles 14, 19 and 21.”
Due diligence in respect of a copyright complaint, upon the Rules’ own terms, thus, also comprehends the protection of the user against the misuse of the complaint. If the Rules do not require a platform to detect infringement of its own motion, they cannot require it to determine contested infringement upon the assertion of another.
The 2025 and 2026 amendments to Rule 3(1)(d)
The amendments to Rule 3(1)(d) confirm this construction. As enacted in 2021 the clause already required “an order by a court of competent jurisdiction” or notification by Government, and thereby abandoned the affected person route of Rule 3(4) of the 2011 Rules which MySpace had construed. The substitution of 22 October 2025, in force from 15 November 2025, provides that the intermediary must act within three hours “and such actual knowledge shall arise only in the following manner,” namely a court order or “a reasoned intimation, in writing” from an officer not below the rank of Joint Secretary, subject to monthly review.
Three consequences follow. First, a private copyright notice is not actual knowledge under the Rules, so a platform which declines to act upon it forfeits nothing under the Rules, and its only residual exposure is the suit under the Copyright Act which Section 81 preserves and MySpace describes. That exposure accounts for the initial takedown and for nothing thereafter. Secondly, the same notification omitted the third proviso.
Thirdly, when the provision was restored as Rule 2(1-B), drafted for the synthetic media regime whose new obligations require proactive technical removal, it returned keyed to compliance rather than to volition. Protection now attaches to removal “in compliance with these rules,” and sub-rule (1) includes clause (n), sub-rule (2) includes the grievance mechanism and the safeguard against misuse, and a removal under Rule 3(1)(b) by a significant social media intermediary complies with the Rules only where Rule 4(8) has been observed.
Thus, a platform which (i) removes upon complaint, (ii) declines to determine the user’s dispute and (iii) maintains the removal upon a plaint being filed in any Court, does not remove in compliance with the Rules, and the 2026 amendment withholds from it even the protection of conduit status. A platform can no longer meet a challenge by asserting that it acted voluntarily, especially once a counter notification is filed.
A filed plaint is not a court order
A plaint is the commencement of that process and contains no finding. Under Order XXXIX of the CPC a plaintiff who seeks to keep content down pending trial must satisfy a judge of a prima facie case, balance of convenience and irreparable harm, and even an ex parte injunction is a judicial act upon those questions, liable to be vacated under Order XXXIX Rule 4 once the defendant is heard. The platforms’ rule confers upon the plaintiff the injunction the court has not granted, on the day the plaint is filed, for the duration of the suit, without any hearing at which it may be vacated, and requires the person who denies infringement to litigate to recover what a mere assertion has taken away.
A platform which treats a filed plaint as an order makes precisely that judgment upon a document whose sole content is the claimant’s assertion, which is not permissible under Indian law while simultaneously claiming safe harbor from liability. Under Rule 3(1)(d) knowledge arises “only” from an order, so a platform acting upon a plaint acts outside the Rules, and a removal not “in compliance with these rules” falls outside Rule 2(1-B) as well.
In other words, an intermediary may remove content upon a specific private complaint, and Rule 2(1-B) read with Rule 3(1)(g) may, at the most, protect that first act as to the platform’s status as an intermediary, hence entitled to safe harbour. However, once the user disputes the removal, the Rules recognise two courses. The intermediary may decide the reinstatement request under Rule 4(8) or Rule 3(2), upon reasons, within the stipulated period and subject to appeal, and which decision may be subject to a liability finding. Or it may decline to decide, in which event its sole source of continued authority is an “order of a court of competent jurisdiction” under Rule 3(1)(d). Yet, it may not decline to decide and continue to maintain the removal solely because a private party has lodged a document in a registry. That is a determination that the complainant is correct, made without reasons, without a decision maker and without appeal. It is the intermediary “applying its own mind to whether information should or should not be blocked” which Shreya Singhal held the Act does not contemplate, and forfeits the very exemption the platform invokes.
Impact on the distinct nature of Exemptions & Limitations under Indian Copyright Act
The strike procedures and the policies of each of these platforms are primarily based on US law. 17 U.S.C. 512, the statute which the platforms implement, requires restoration of taken down content within fourteen business days of a counter notice unless the notifier has filed an action seeking a court order. The takedowns made in pursuance of this rule, however, operate globally.
This has a significant impact on the visibility of content and listings in India. What these processes miss is that copyright is territorial. The lawfulness of a use in India is governed by Section 52 of the Indian Act, which no foreign court will apply, and a foreign judgment binds in India only within Sections 13 and 14 of the CPC. Where content uploaded from India, for which a Section 52 defence is specifically taken in the counter notification, is kept down without a court order, merely on the strength of a court filing abroad, the chilling effect may violate Rule 3(1)(n), which requires compliance with Article 19, especially since a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court in Wiley Eastern v. IIM read Section 52 as a user right having its genesis in Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.
Termination of Channels/ Seller Account upon Multiple Strikes
A strike is a consequence specific to an item of content. The termination of a channel or seller account removes everything the person has published and forecloses everything the person might publish.
Nothing in the Copyright Act or the IT Act attaches a consequence of that character to three unadjudicated complaints, or indeed to three adjudicated ones. Section 69A of the IT Act empowers the State, not any platform, and only in respect of the subjects enumerated in Article 19(2). Every deeming provision in the IT Rules speaks of “information, data or communication link,” and none refers to an account, a channel or a user. The sole provision which articulates the suspension of an account is Rule 3(1)(ca), where the Rules themselves define the violation.
Termination for copyright therefore rests upon contract alone. None of the protection the Rules extend to removal extends to termination, so a platform which terminates exercises a private power and answers for it as a private party would, in contract. Further, the contract is a standard form imposed without negotiation upon every Indian creator and seller, and a term permitting the freezing of a business or a channel upon unadjudicated third party claims, without hearing or finding, is arguably void under Section 23 of the Contract Act as between parties of grossly unequal bargaining power. On any view a contractual power to terminate is a power to act upon an established breach of law, and mere filing of 3 complaints does not establish such breach.
The only Indian law under which an entire online location is removed for copyright infringement is the law of website blocking or DNR suspension, a carefully guarded judicial determination. In UTV Software Communication Ltd. v. 1337x.to, the DHC asked whether the Court “would be justified to pass directions to block the ‘Rogue Websites’ in their entirety,” and answered only after formulating in paragraph 59 the test for a flagrantly infringing online location, foremost “whether the primary purpose of the website is to commit or facilitate copyright infringement.” That is the Indian remedy against a habitual infringer, granted by a court after inquiry into the location’s primary purpose.
A three strike rule is the same remedy used by the platform, granted by no one, upon complaints which no one has examined, against a creator or trader whose primary purpose is manifestly not infringement, unless so held by a Court of law.
On the provisions as they stand, therefore, termination of channels or seller accounts upon copyright complaints has no statutory source, no deemed protection under the Rules and no contractual foundation until a breach is established, and it is subject to Article 19 and Rule 3(1)(n). An argument that a platform cannot judge fair dealing and must therefore err on the side of removal proves too much. A platform which cannot judge, cannot judge in either direction, and the neutral course where a claim is contested is to leave the content where the user placed it and remit the claimant to the court, where urgent remedies are available under law.
Conclusion
In conclusion thus, my answer to the question framed in Saurabh Maurya follows from the statute and the Rules without any alteration of the law. An intermediary may, at most, remove content voluntarily upon a specific private copyright complaint, and Rule 2(1-B) read with Rule 3(1)(g) may protect, in its most liberal reading, that removal as to the platform’s status alone. The voluntary act ends when the uploader disputes it. Continued removal thereafter requires an order of a court of competent jurisdiction under Rule 3(1)(d), and a plaint, an affidavit of filing or a claim before more so a foreign court, or even an Indian court for that matter is not such an order.
Finally, a contested strike, in law, cannot carry any consequence beyond the content complained of, and the termination of a channel or seller account is a blocking remedy which only a court can grant, first requiring it to judicially bring in channels and seller accounts within the purview of the rogue website jurisprudence and then applying it, which no court has, as yet, done.
None of this diminishes copyright protection. A rights holder with a genuine grievance retains every remedy which the Copyright Act provides, including urgent remedies, and the intermediary must act upon the court’s order within three hours. What changes is the decision maker which safeguards a user from a chilling effect upon their Freedom of Speech and Expression.
Part 1 can be read here.
