Micro-blogging site Twitter is yet under the scanner for blocking Union Minister of Law and Justice, Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad for allegedly violating the copyright act of the United States of America.

On Friday, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad posted a tweet saying something highly peculiar happened to his account. The Minister said that Twitter had denied access to his account for almost an hour on the alleged ground that there was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of the USA.

Though the Twitter account of the Minister was visible for public viewing, Twitter did not allow anyone authorised to access this particular account to log in or make any post, according to reports.

When the minister tried to access the Twitter account @rsprasad, Twitter sent them a message saying, “Your account has been locked because Twitter received a compliant Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Notice for content posted to your Twitter account. Under the DMCA copyright owners can notify Twitter claiming that a user has infringed their copyrighted works. Upon receipt of a valid notice, Twitter will remove the identified material. Twitter maintains a repeat copyright infringer policy under repeat infringer accounts will be suspended. Accruing multiple DMCA strikes may lead to suspension of your account.”

Strangely, an hour later, according to the Union Minister, Twitter allowed him to access to the account with a warning message to the minister’s account stating, “Your account is now available for use. Please be aware that any additional notices against your account may result in your account being locked again and potentially suspended. In order to avoid this, do not post additional material in violation of our Copyright Policy and immediately remove any material from your account for which you are not authorised to post.

Reacting to the incident, the Union Minister said that the micro-blogging site subsequently allowed him to access the account. Following the arbitrary action by Twitter, the Union Minister said that the actions by Twitter were in gross violation of Rule 4 (8) of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, where they failed to provide him with any prior notice before denying me access to his own account.

The Indian government is reportedly unhappy with the brazenness of the social media company, which has been continuously enforcing its own rules while disrespecting Indian laws.