Digital India Bill consultation: Stakeholders suggest retaining safe harbour provision

Stakeholders taking part within the first session of the Digital India Bill instructed that the federal government retain the protected harbour provision within the present Information Technology Act, 2000.

The authorities is reconsidering the protected harbour provision, due to which social media intermediaries are usually not accountable for what third events submit on their web site. Social media platforms get immunity from posts made by customers.

The first Digital India Bill session was held in Bengaluru on Thursday with as many as 300 stakeholders taking part. These stakeholders comprised legal professionals, know-how coverage teams, know-how firms and customers amongst others.

Kazim Rizvi, founding director of The Dialogue, who participated within the session, advised ET the protected harbour precept has been the important thing enabler of web freedom and on-line free speech.

“Even though rising online harms necessitate greater accountability from platforms, it will be important that the Bill balances the requirement of greater responsibility with the need to preserve safe harbour and the open nature of the internet,” he mentioned.

The regulation ought to align with the middleman legal responsibility jurisprudence prescribed within the Shreya Singhal case, Rizvi mentioned, including that classification of intermediaries should not be finished by means of a straight-jacketed method, and will think about the evolving multi-functional method of the web, primarily based on dangers and harms.

Online platforms which might be pretending to be dumb intermediaries and permit cybercrime to proliferate won’t be tolerated, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and knowledge know-how, had mentioned throughout his presentation on the proposed Digital India Bill on Thursday.The minister had additionally spoken in regards to the want for separate guidelines for every class of intermediaries like e-commerce, digital media, search engines like google, gaming, AI, over-the-top platforms, telecom service suppliers, ad-tech, and vital social media intermediaries.

Arun Prabhu, accomplice & head-technology, media & telecom (TMT follow) at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, who was current on the session, advised ET there are nonetheless a transparent class of entities reminiscent of cloud service suppliers, infrastructure suppliers and related suppliers who’re clearly pure play intermediaries.

“Over regulating them can have a chilling effect. Further, where certain types of activities like filtering and sorting are automated, and follow basic principles like transparency and non-discrimination, they should be protected,” Prabhu said.

The Digital India Act will replace the 23-year-old Information Technology Act of 2000. It is expected to manage the complexities of the internet and rapid expansion of the types of intermediaries.

Ashish Aggarwal, vice president and head of public policy at Nasscom, who joined the consultation virtually, told ET a nuanced treatment of intermediaries is a positive.

For industry, the suggested focus on ease of doing business, and recognition that we need the law to enable the startup ecosystem to thrive are also some of the positives, he said.

“Sectoral regulators could perceive dangers however they could not totally perceive the applied sciences,” Aggarwal said. Nasscom will be discussing various aspects of the proposed law with the industry and provide its inputs to the government.

Prateek Waghre, policy director, Internet Freedom Foundation, who also participated, told ET while the specifics of what will be in the Digital India Bill are awaited, the emphasis on it being ‘evolvable’ and ‘rule-based’ need to be watched with caution.

“If this interprets to a state of affairs the place the laws and its scope are considerably modified by means of executive-issued guidelines, as a substitute of a legislative course of which inherently has extra checks and balances, then the declare for its evolvability wants better scrutiny,” he said.

The minister, during his presentation, proposed age-gating by regulating addictive tech and protecting minors’ data. He spoke about the need for safeguarding safety and privacy of children on social media platforms, gaming and betting apps. He proposed a mandatory do-not-track requirement to prevent children from becoming data subjects for ad targeting.

Venkatesh Krishnamoorthy, country manager, India, BSA, The Software Alliance, said his organisation highlighted the role of enterprise technology service providers who enable the operations of other companies with their services rather than having a direct relationship with an individual consumer.

“We really useful that the Digital India Act acknowledge this key distinction by making certain that enterprise know-how service suppliers are recognised within the Act and ruled by acceptable obligations and never a very broad, one-size-fits-all method,” Krishnamoorthy mentioned.