Digital India Bill draft soon: What to expect from India’s overhaul of Internet laws

Digital India Bill draft soon: What to expect from India’s overhaul of Internet laws

Context- India’s tech regulations are at an inflection point as the country plans to overhaul rules governing the Internet economy. A data protection Bill is nearing its finalisation and a draft law is being reworked to set a framework for the telecommunications sector. But perhaps the most important law currently in the pipeline is the Digital India Bill, which will be the successor to the decades-old Information Technology Act, 2000, the country’s core Internet law.

(Credits- Slideshare)

First, what is the new law for the Internet?

  • Currently, the Information Technology Act, 2000 is the core framework that regulates entities on the Internet. However, the law needs an update since it was framed for an Internet era that looked very different from the Internet of today.
  • The government has also on occasion found it difficult to promulgate rules since the parent Act is limited in its scope.

What do we know about the Bill so far?

Revisiting safe harbour: Safe harbour – as prescribed under Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000 – is legal immunity that online intermediaries like social media platforms enjoy against content posted by users on their platforms.

  • It is perhaps the most important regulatory freedom afforded to online platforms that has allowed platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and WhatsApp to flourish in India.
  • However, Chandrasekhar(India’s IT Minister) has argued if safe harbour should exist at all. “In the 2000s, intermediaries equalled safe harbour, but today they have morphed into multiple types of participants
  • The concept of safe harbour originally came from Section 230 of the United States’ Communications Decency Act, which has been termed “one of the foundational laws behind the modern Internet”. It is one of the main reasons behind the meteoric rise of Internet giants such as Facebook etc.

Classification of intermediaries: So far, India’s Internet laws do not classify platforms based on their nature. The only distinction has been made with respect to platforms’ size – a platform with more than 5 million Indian users has been called a “significant” social media intermediary and has added obligations.

However, there is no specific provision in the rules that creates a distinction between a social media company and e-commerce company for instance.

  • The Centre is considering regulating a wide gamut of online platforms including social media sites, e-commerce entities, fact-checking portals and artificial intelligence (AI)-based platforms like ChatGPT under the Bill.
  • This classification also interplays with the concept of safe harbour that the government wants to upend.

User harms: A perusal of the public statements that the government has made gives the impression that the Digital India Bill will have a big focus on user harms that are unique to the online space.

  • A long-held complaint has been that offences on the Internet are largely borrowed from offences in the offline world prescribed under rules like the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
  • But the government believes that with the evolution of the Internet, the digital space is rife with online-specific harms and offences. For instance, online misinformation is currently not a legal offence in the country. The Digital India Bill aims to address these shortcomings.

Way Forward- Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) could classify deliberate misinformation, doxxing, impersonation, identity theft, catfishing, and cyberbullying of children as offences under the new Bill. User harms related to emerging technologies, including generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, can also be addressed in the Bill.

Syllabus- GS-2; Privacy; Bills in Parliament

Source- Indian Express

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