The Government Lays Down the Rules To Regulate Digital Media and OTT Platforms

The government has finalised the regulatory standards and guidelines to direct Digital Media and OTT Streaming Platforms . The Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 has recommended major changes in how web based businesses and associations which include all social media platforms, OTT streaming services, digital media sources, among others will be managed by the public authority.

A copy of the draft rules titled Information Technology Rules, 2021 (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) which is required to be delivered not long after a question and answer session today by IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar was delivered by advocacy body Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF).

Guidelines for Digital Media

The Information Technology Rules, 2021  have characterized “Digital Media” as “digitized content that can be communicated over the web or computer networks”. It incorporates content received, stored or sent by a mediator or online papers, news portals, news aggregators, news organizations and other such distributers of information and current affairs. It avoids “replica” e-papers of papers and User Generated Content (UGC) potentially, public comments.

“Significant publishers” of news and current affairs would have to notify the Broadcast Seva portal of the I&B Ministry. Entities that (i) publish news and current affairs as a “systematic business activity”, (ii) operate on Indian territory and (iii) have no less than five lakh subscribers or fifty lakh followers on any significant social media intermediary will be considered “significant publishers”.

Recognizability Ordered

As with the past adaptation of the draft rules, detectability of the originator of messages is obligatory on “major digital and social media interceders “. This apparently challenges end-to-end encryption on online messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Signal.

OTT Streaming Services

The Information Technology Rules , 2021 would drive streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, who protested an autonomous investigative body for hearing streaming grievances, to submit to the authority of an offers body headed by a resigned high court or Supreme Court equity. In the event that this body accepts that the substance disregards the law, it is engaged to send the substance to an administration controlled committee for blocking orders to be given.

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