Digital India Bill draft post consultation to be ready by July

The draft Digital India Bill, which is able to change the Information Technology Act, 2000, is more likely to be prepared by early July, sources informed ET.

There shall be a minimum of two extra consultations on the rules of the Bill by March 20, and the draft session will final 90 days, they added.

The first session assembly on the Bill was held in Bengaluru on Thursday. It was attended by as many as 300 stakeholders, of whom greater than 200 attended nearly.

The stakeholders consisted of legislation corporations, know-how corporations, know-how coverage teams and shoppers.

The Bill seeks to handle the complexities of the web and speedy growth of the kinds of intermediaries, shield residents’ rights, tackle rising applied sciences and dangers, and be future-proof, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and IT who presided over the session mentioned.

“There are as many as 850 million Indians on the internet today, the world’s largest digitally connected democracy. There are multiple types of intermediaries – ecommerce, digital media, social media, AI, OTT, gaming etc. There is space for criminalities and illegalities, and new complex forms of user harms like catfishing, doxxing, cyber stalking, cyber trolling, gaslighting, phishing etc. There is also a proliferation of hate speech, disinformation and fake news,” Chandrasekhar later informed ET in an interview

The new Bill will try to deal with these issues, he added.“The Digital India Act (DIA) will not be prescriptive, it will be principle-based,” he mentioned. “There are facets within the presentation within the openness part which are being handled by the Competition Commission of India within the competitors legislation amendments. We are additionally speaking about competitors and anti-competition actions. We will take a name finally on whether or not it must be inside the DIA or the competitors legislation. It cannot be in each locations,” he said.

Safe harbour

Under Section 79 of the IT Act, certain intermediaries enjoy safe harbour and they cannot be prosecuted.

Chandrasekhar told ET, “Under the DIA, we want to have one or two categories of intermediaries which can be offered safe harbour provision, everybody else will be platforms like e-commerce, fact-checking, online gaming, which will have rules for each category.”

He posed two inquiries to the stakeholders through the session.

“Should there be secure harbour provision in any respect? If there’s a secure harbour, what’s the standards of these intermediaries or platforms which are entitled to it?” he asked.

He later told ET, “Stakeholders suggested that safe harbour should be retained only for pure/classic intermediaries who do not have the power to moderate or modify content hosted on their platforms.”

“There are platforms of the web which are area particular, like well being, finance and many others. As far as their conduct and consumer hurt is worried, MeitY or the web regulator will regulate however by way of what companies they provide, the sectoral regulators will regulate. Also, there actually shall be joint regulation for a number of platforms between MeitY and sectoral regulators,” Chandrasekhar said.

On what the Indian framework of cyber laws will look like, he said the DIA will operate alongside the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, National Data Governance Policy, the Indian Penal Code’s Amendments for Cybercrime, and the DIA Rules.

On a regulatory body akin to the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) for the digital space, he told ET, “We actually don’t need an enormous monolithic regulator as a result of that is like regulating the younger, improvements and startups. We need one thing that’s mild contact. But on the similar time on the subject of consumer hurt and criminality, there must be efficient deterrent energy to deal with these points. We do not know what the regulatory design is but however will definitely discuss to folks.”

He mentioned there was an pressing want for a specialised and devoted adjudicatory mechanism for on-line civil and felony offences.

It must be simply accessible, ship well timed treatments to residents, resolve cyber disputes, develop a unified cyber jurisprudence, and implement the rule of legislation on-line.