Yahoo! moves its plea to Delhi HC, challenges magistrate's summons

In what comes as an update the recent spate of court hearings, Yahoo! India Pvt. Ltd., one of the companies the magistrate issued summons to approached the Delhi HC, reports Hindustan Times. Yahoo! was issued summons by a magistrate accusing the popular service of hosting objectionable content. The Delhi HC, too has asked the city police for response to the plea filed by Yahoo!. Senior advocate, Arvind Nigam, appeared as a representative from the company. Now, while the court has agreed to hear Yahoo!'s statements issuing a date (February 10), it has also agreed to hear the petition separately. The report quoted Arvind Nigam, during the court hearing, as saying, "I am not a social networking site like other accused in the case. I only provide email and chat services. Moreover, no objectionable material has been attributed to me and hence my case is different from others." To this, reportedly, Justice Suresh Kait, who's overseeing the proceedings, stated, "Then why you have been made an accused?"

Fighting it out

Reportedly, in addition to this own statement, Nigam referred to the statements of journalist, Vinay Rai, re-iterating that no objectionable content had been downloaded off Yahoo!

For now, we can only dwell over the fact that a later date has been scheduled for the next leg of the hearing to take place for Yahoo!. For those who're not in the know, late last month, acting on a government statement, the court issued summons to as many as 21 social networking sites operational in the country. Popular services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, among several others are being questioned over the quality of the content posted on them. Since then, these brands have been condemning this move of the government, citing freedom of speech and expression norms.