Title: E-Commerce Websites & Their Liability as ‘Intermediaries’: Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000
Abstract: Electronic commerce is commerce which takes place online, that is, the purchase and sale of goods or services takes place through online platforms and not from physical brick and mortar shops, malls or kirana stores. In electronic commerce the goods are sold through online platforms where the products are displayed and offered for sale, and a customer who wishes to purchase the product, visits the website (online platform) and browses through the choices that are offered to him; the customer identifies the product, books the order, and upon delivery of the product, makes the payment.Section 79 of the IT Act deals with “Exemption from liability of intermediary in certain cases”. An analysis of Section 79 of the IT Act shows that an intermediary is not liable for third party information, data, links hosted on the online platform. Section 79 (2) and Section 79 (3) of the IT Act qualifies the manner in which protection is granted to an intermediary. Protection granted to an intermediary under Section 79 of the IT Act is not absolute. Under Section 79 (2) (b) of the IT Act, an intermediary is not supposed to: initiate the transmission; select the receiver of the transmission; and, select/modify the information contained in the transmission. If any of these are done by an intermediary, it may lose the exemption to which it is entitled.
Publication Year: 2018
Publication Date: 2018-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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