NEWS Recently, the central government introduced Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 to regulate all types of digital platforms.

IN THE GARB OF PROGRESSION

• Electronics and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, while launching ‘The Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021’, presented it as a “soft-touch oversight mechanism”.
• A government press note termed it “progressive” and “liberal”. It also claimed the rules seek to “address people’s varied concerns while removing any misapprehension about curbing creativity and freedom of speech and expression”.

ISSUES WITH THE RULES

• There are concerns that these rules will end up giving the government a good deal of leverage over online news publishers and intermediaries. This can have implications for freedom of expression and right to information.
• The rules force digital news publishers and video streaming services to adhere to a cumbersome three-tier structure of regulation, with a government committee at its apex.
• This is unprecedented in a country where the news media have been given the space all along to self-regulate, based on the mature understanding that any government presence could have a chilling effect on free speech and conversations.
• The new rules hardly provide comfort as they pertain only to digital news media, which is increasingly becoming a prime source of news and views and not to the whole of the news media.
• Further, it is of significant concern that the purview of the IT Act, 2000, has been expanded to bring digital news media under its regulatory ambit without legislative action.
• According to the rules, “Any person having a grievance regarding content published by a publisher in relation to the Code of Ethics may furnish his grievance on the grievance mechanism established by the publisher.”
• Hence, this rule has enormous potential for misuse.

INCREASED BURDEN ON SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM

• The new rules have increased the compliance burden for social media platforms.
• Now, the bigger of these platforms will have to appoint chief compliance officers, to ensure the rules and the laws are adhered to, and a nodal officer, with whom the law enforcement agencies will be coordinating, apart from a grievance officer.
• Also, such platforms in the messaging space will have to “enable the identification of the first originator of the information on its computer resource” based on a judicial order. The triggers for a judicial order that require such an identification are serious offences.
• Thus, the rules require messaging apps such as Whatsapp and Signal to trace problematic messages to the originator.

CONCLUSION

• Though some amount of tightening of policy is inevitable given new challenges, but it would be wrong to imagine that by implanting itself in the grievance redress process or by making platforms share more information, the government can solve these problems.
• Instead, it could prove counterproductive in a country where the citizens still do not have a data privacy law to guard themselves against excesses committed by any party.

Regulation has an important place in the scheme of things, and the laws to combat unlawful content are already in place. What required the most is their uniform application.

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/a-wolf-in-watchdogs-clothing-the-hindu-editorial-on-indian-governments-move-to-regulate-digital-media-platforms/article33956670.ece