The Government of India has released a draft Intermediary guidelines 2018 under Section 79 of Information Technology Act 2000 (ITA 2000/8) for public comments before January 15th. (Refer here).
The notification records that a calling attention motion on “Misuse of Socal Media platforms and spreadig of fake News” was admitted in the Parliament (Rajya Sabha) in 2018 (Monsoon session) and the Hon’ble Minister for Electronics and IT, responding to the calling attention motion on 26/07/2018, made a detailed statement where he inter alia conveyed to the House the resolve of the Government to strengthen the legal framework and make the social media platforms accountable under the law.
The department (MeitY) has now prepared the draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2018 to replace the rules notified in 2011.
Comments and suggestions can be sent to gccyberlaw@meity.gov.in, pkumar@meity.gov.in, and dhawal@gov.in.
The Copy of the proposed guideline is available here.
As has been the trend of politics today, there has already been comments by many politicians that this is an attempt at the Government trying to take control of the social media as a part of the strategy to win elections etc. It appears that the politicians are only exposing their ignorance of law and bias by making extreme comments which are misplaced.
These comments supported by some of the known biased journalists will be spreading disinformation to the extent possible. For the time being let us ignore these comments.
We will try to explain the changes and put out our views in this regard.
Naavi
New Intermediary Guidelines… Legitimate and Well within the rights of the Government:
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Draft Intermediary Guidelines 2018… Public Comments invited:
Copy of the guidelines:
PS: As per the addendum released on 31/12/2018, the public comments released upto 15th January 2019 would be placed on the website on 18th January 2019 and a 10 day period upto 28th January 2019 would be allowed for receiving counter comments if any…. Group Cordinator, gccyberlaw@meity.gov.in
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