Why Criticisms of New IT Rules 2021 are illogical?

Why Criticisms of New IT Rules 2021 are illogical?

These IT rules 2021, are not discretionary or arbitrary. These rules are aimed towards creating a level playing field. In recent times, a number of organizations wrote to TRAI to accept or reject these regulations. Some of the criticisms received by TRAI were impractical to implement while others simply don’t add up.

Background of the New IT Rules 2021

Supreme Court of India has asked Union Communication and IT Minister to come up with a stricter law for regulation of National and International Social Networking Web sites to prevent any misuse by persons having criminal outlook.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of India observed that the Indian Government may frame necessary guidelines to eradicate child pornography, rape and gangrape imageries, videos and sites in content hosting platforms and other applications.

In 2020, an Ad-hoc committee of the Rajya Sabha submitted its report on the issue of social media pornography and its effect on children and society as a whole. The report recommended tracing the originator of such content.

In 2020, the GOI also brought OTT platforms under the ambit of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

Important provisions of new IT rules 2021

The new regulations might have no immediate impact on the existing online content, but the existing online content providers like news websites are expected to be more cautious while publishing online content and will have to follow certain guidelines of the IT Ministry in order to avoid any penal actions. The two major provisions of the new IT rules 2021 are,

• Self-Classification of Content: The OTT (Over the top) platforms would self-classify the content into five age-based categories i.e. U (Universal), U/A 7+, U/A 13+, U/A 16+, and A (Adult).
• Three-tier grievance redressal framework: Both the digital news publishers and OTT platforms have to establish and follow the three-tier grievance redressal framework.

Criticisms against new IT rules 2021

The new IT rules in India have been retorted by many different areas of business such as legal industry, Banking Sector, private Radio and News Broadcasted media, Airline Industry.  But however the IT Rules are mainly criticised by the Private sectors because they all consider the IT Rules unconstitutional according to them. The main reason why there has been a lot of controversy over IT Rules is the discretionary power given to the Government by the new version of IT Rules. Some few points of the criticisms are

• 5 Stage content classification on OTT platforms is arbitrary
• Government influence in 3-tier Grievance redressal mechanism
• The new IT rules were not consulted with OTT platforms
• Government right to ban any content on OTT platforms
• Furnishing basic information of a user violates privacy

Counter-arguments against the criticisms

There are many criticisms against the new IT rules in 2021. But these criticisms are meaningless. Before starting to delve into the criticisms, let’s take a look at what the objectives of the new IT rules in 2021 are. Its objective is to provide a level playing field between offline and online media. Some of few meaningless criticisms of new IT rules in 2021 are mentioned below.

The government has invited more than a dozen global tech firms for the drafting of a road map for the content classification policy. Before embarking upon the creation of a road map, the government must not ignore the fact that there are major flaws with this policy. With all due respect, it will be a disaster if this is enacted into law.

Some of the anti-OTT platform lobby groups are claiming that the government has adopted self-classification without any community consultation. This is totally false. Under self-regulation, there is a pre-classification stage and a post-classification stage. The system of pre-classification through a multi-stakeholder body is already in place. This multi-stakeholder body will make the regulator’s job much easier by preventing any contentious content from being classified in the first place.

One of the commonly cited reasons for the new rules and regulations is that they are a result of pressure from the Government to route all complaints through a 3-tier mechanism. This is completely a wrong criticism. Tier 1 and tier 2 of the self-regulatory body are to be formed by the OTT platforms themselves, not by the government. The government only wants to have Tier 3 entities which will help users with policy related issues and take strict action against offenders if needed. It also wants complainants to get contact details of who they are complaining to.

The government says the lack of consultation with OTT platforms is not true. This is in reference to the claim that the government did not consult and involve them before framing policy. They have cited a meeting that happened in November, in which internet companies had been invited.

It is not surprising the so-called free-speech activists and liberal intellectuals in India are quite upset with this new move by the Government. Under the Information Technology Rules, 2009, the government uses the same provision to ban the content. Further, these provisions are aimed at National Security to protect its national interests in digital platforms.

Furnishing basic information of a user does not violate privacy. Instead, it is transparency. The private players always advocating transparency from the government, but they themselves don’t want to be transparent. This prevents private parties from hiding behind the “privacy” excuse and enables us to question them about what personal information they are putting out there.