Something About The Law

I just heard news about the individual who claimed he ate a bull frog and published it as his facebook status. Unfortunately for him, there were a couple of NGO’s and police attempting to clamp down the poaching of the endangered animal and saw his facebook status. He now faces possible prosecution under the Wildlife [...]

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While every citizen of the country has a right to free speech and publication, the right is quite limited when it comes to writing an unauthorised biography about somebody else. The constitution itself provides an exception in the manner of actions that seek to injure the reputation of another. Infact, it is quite easy to [...]

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I sat in front of the computer today to read the judgment of the Supreme Court in Amar Singh v. Union of India. The expectation of reading a landmark judgment on the right to privacy of public figures turned out to be a disappointment. In this case, Amar Singh had challenged the ‘authorised’ tapping of [...]

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To clarify, ‘Rolling Stone’ in this sense has no reference to Dylan or Mick Jagger’s band but a reference to the Ugandan newspaper that a few months ago published contact details and photographs of gay men who were later targetted by the community there. In or around October 2010, the Rolling Stone in Uganda published [...]

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Firstly, for everyone who has not noticed the EPW’s newfangled and updated website, please do so right now. It is nice. Secondly – this week’s magazine contains a fantastic article by Usha Ramanathan on the Unique Identity Bill. Ramanathan’s basic point is that the new UID project ignores pressing concerns of privacy guaranteed by the [...]

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“One of the fundamental contrasts between free democratic societies and totalitarian regimes is that the totalitarian governments rely on secrecy for the regime and disclosure for all other people, where as in the civic culture of liberal democracy, the position is approximately the reverse.” -         Geoffrey De Q Walker The new national ID card scheme [...]

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