“Starve your distractions, feed your focus”, these are the words said by a famous personality.
‘Social media’, the name says it all, where fame and defame goes hand in hand, where power of opinion subsides within each and every individual, where right is the voice of the majority and wrong is a face of the sarcastic mechanism known as “trolls”.
Trolls are all around the internet. Created intentionally just for fun, trolls can be really troublesome. Every day there are endless instances of people being trolled for no rhyme or reason on the social media, be it celebrities, politicians or any other person, no one can get away with the trolls but it is important to know how you can tackle the trolls legally!
Introduction:
A troll is a statement delivered by someone deliberately in order to obtain a provoking comment. Basically troll is to be termed as “slang” used by individuals to start an argument or graze someone’s point of view. Sometimes trolls maybe constructed because to have a healthy debate regarding their point of view or just wants to sow the seeds of abuse.
There is no legal definition of a troll, and “troll” can range from lame jokes to harassment. Hate speech and harassment are generally illegal, but the act of “trolling” is not specific enough. The fact that something is called “troll” when it happens on the internet is not relevant to the law, even though the word troll, if well defined, can be used to describe various social internet phenomenon. So the concept of online trolling can be only be made punishable offence when it exceeds the degree of words used or exceeds the limit which cannot be in turn be termed as normal or healthy.
But troll can be postulated as two sides of the same coin i.e. healthy troll or negative/bleak troll. It can be determined in various ways –
- Receiving of horrible messages to your private inbox, that’s not trolling that amounts to bullying.
- Perceiving of such comments which leads to a disruption of one’s identity or character, that’s defamation.
- Comments those which leads to physical or mental abuse, leads to harassment.
- Making of funny memes which do not trigger any of the above said criteria may lead to trolling; which will be resolved by the degree of words, content or language used.
But troll could differ from situation to situation. But mostly the statements which creates a conflict on internet is tendered to become famous and leads to display controversial statements online.
Ceteris paribus online trolling could be converted to online bullying if not taken proper care of and appropriate measures to be taken.
There are no specific laws against trolling in India as it would prohibit freedom of speech but yet there are some laws to extent which may help in tackling the online goons. They can be categorized according to its types:-
- Online stalking – u/s 345D of IPC, an act of monitoring on women online platforms is a punishable offence
- Defamation – u/s 499 of IPC, posting discord comments on individual to destroy their identity is punishable.
- Sexually explicit content – under IT act, transmitting of images or prohibited content of women is punishable.
- Criminal intimidation – u/s 503 of IPC, if an act of threatening is done it can be punishable.
- Cyber- bullying laws are also provided, will be made punishable on the person held liable for such a criminal act done.
- Violation of privacy – u/s 66E of IT Act, if any photograph taken of an individual without consent that act is punishable having a criminal liability.
- Sexual harassment – u/s 354A of IPC, if an individual on the name of troll posts an indecent comment to be treated as criminal act and is punishable.
These are the legal provisions which can be clasped in order to treat online trolling of criminal nature and declare it as a punishable offence, if any act done which falls under these categories. These were the legal responses to an online trolling but there are non-legal responses too one can opt to handle the online trolling such as: by reporting, blocking, not feeding trolls, etc. but these acts are not of criminal nature and can be handled otherwise. But the main difficult task is finding where to draw line in terms of legal provisions to be intervened except these provided provisions.
Conclusion:
The lack of proper laws against trolling in India might cost us in the future. However, people can feel safe to some extent to which laws are provided till the date but there have been healthy discussions about social media trolling in the Parliament and a proper law might just be around the corner.
According to my view point there is no straight answer for whether online troll to be punished or not because there is no bar set yet, so online trolling is to not be considered as punishable offence but can made punishable when healthy trolling gets converted in any sort of damage caused to any individual.
Basically the whole situation depends on the types of comments made and the improper use of freedom of speech which does not amount to give freedom to speak anything without being held accountable.
Furthermore, as per various legal provisions provided under Indian Penal code or Information Technology (amendment) act, online training has been termed as a criminal act and can be punished under these laws if all criteria fulfilled.
But it is clear in future that government will take more proactive decisions to tackle this situation because of recent cases taken in consideration, it is not determined when a troll is converted into bullying or harassment or any colossal circumstances.
Trolling is the new age digital wrongdoing and trolls are the new age of lawbreakers on the web who gets the incredible savage joy to spread this online wrongdoing of condescension.
Last but not the least, no need to ignore the trolls fight against them and put behind the bars!
“THINK before you tweet, meme, post, tag and troll. It could ruin someone’s life. Your own included.”― Shaune B. Ryder
This article is authored by Shrishti Sharma, Third-Year, BBA. LL.B, student at Delhi Metropolitan Education, Noida affiliated to GGSIPU.
Also Read – Right to Freedom of Speech and Expression
