While scrolling my Instagram in a lazy Sunday morning in late august in 2025, I came across this sad news of a new father carrying his dead new born child to the office of the District Magistrate in a remote place in northern India because he wanted justice for the medical negligence shown to his pregnant wife; due to which their new born baby died. Someone had taken the video of his meeting the official which had become “viral”. The man was able to convince the administration and the audience (of online content) about his ordeal and the administration had taken swift action against the concerned hospital.

Who is an originator?

Who created this content? Who uploaded this content? Can he be rewarded for public service for making us all understand how access to medical services is still a distant dream for many women in India? Which this may make us think about ‘whistle blowing’ and genuine reporting, I wanted to emphasize on the this to explain who is an originator in the present context.

S.2(za) of the Information Technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008) defines the term originator as a person who

(i) sends, generates, stores or transmits any electronic message, or

(ii) causes any electronic message to be sent, generated, stored or transmitted to any other person,

This clause very categorically excludes intermediary from the concept of originator.

As may be seen above, originator may necessarily include a ‘person’, whether a biological person or a juridical person ( which includes any organization, Nation, government etc, represented by authorized human being). If we now see the above incident of capturing the sad moment in camera, uploading the same in the social media platform and sharing the same worldwide through his/her authorized and lawfully possessed account, we may understand that the first person who recorded the same may be the first originator of the content. Let us again see S.2(ZA) of the Information Technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008) : it says if any one generates any content or stores the content (electronic message) or causes to do the same, he may be considered as an originator as well.

Are  ‘originator ‘ and ‘sender’  same?

But here one issue may rise doubts about the literal meaning of “originator: whether the term applies for one who generates or stores electronic message (which may be perceived as content) ? or , whether originator is also one who generates, stores or even transmits or causes to do all these?

I have seen in many instances many practitioners, students and common people who may want to understand their rights, may get extremely confused in this regard. If we go by literal rule of interpretation, does one who originates and stores the message or content (which may be offensive), have to take the responsibility and liability as that of the ‘sender’ who transmits the messages to the addressee or the recipient?  In some understandings like shifting liability to the ‘senders’ in WhatsApp messages whereby the recipients/addresses may get victimized due to such ‘sending’ , the former may be termed as originators because he may originate/curate/store the message and then send the same with a knowledge that such content may affect the addressee. But what about the person who originates and stores the content, but does not send the same?   Here, we may apply both Literal Rule of interpretation and Doctrine of harmonious construction which may provide a holistic interpretation to resolve the conflict. A person who may generate any content and stores it, may do so illegally as well if he generates the content without proper permission like generating child sexual abuse contents by capturing real-life child sexual abuse incidences and storing the same with an intention for self-gratification. But not to forget, the content is stored in an electronic device which may be unauthorisedly accessed: hence, he may have to take the responsibility of not only originating an illegal content, but also the responsibility of ‘sending’/ transmitting’ the illegal content which may have more harmful effect than merely generating and storing the content.  

The draftsmen therefore created the concept of ‘originator’ under S.2(ZA) of the information technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008) from a predictive perspective which will attract the liability of a sender to the originator as well. Clearly, this is evident from S.11 of the Information Technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008) where the provision explains about attribution of electronic records by stating

An electronic record shall be attributed to the originator if

• It was sent by the originator himself
• The said electronic record was sent by any authorized person on behalf of the originator
•  The electronic record was sent by an information system that programmed by or on behalf of the originator to operate automatically.

It is for this reason that every user of digital communication technology must be extremely careful about what is being generated and stored by him and what is being sent by him.

Stay safe, stay aware!

Please note: If you want to share /use the write-up for your work, please cite it as Halder Debarati (2025), Understanding the legal meaning of originator under Information Technology Act, 2000(amended in 2008). Published in https://internetlegalstudies.com/2025/08/24/understanding-the-legal-meaning-of-originator-under-information-technology-act-2000amended-in-2008-by-dr-debarati-halder/ on 24-08-2025