As the push and demand for a safe and accountable internet was flooded in the country, the ministry of electronics and IT has come forward with amendments in Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethic Code) Amended Rules 2022 aimed at protecting the rights of people working digitally. Since the reliance on digital platform has increased tremendously, therefore, the issues regarding the privacy as well as safety of the user. The las few years wherein on one hand witnessed the power of digital platform on the other hand the negative impact such as communicating false information and so on was also on peek. To fulfill the lacunas in the present IT laws the following amendments were notified by the ministry after having public consultation with all the stake holders, the contents of the amendments can be broadly divided in to:
- Intermediary’s legal obligation to prevent user from uploading harmful and unlawful content.
- Rules particularly to deal with misinformation.
- Establishment of grievance appellate Committee.
- Constitutional rights of the users to be respected by intermediaries.
- Intermediary’s legal obligation to prevent user from uploading harmful and unlawful content:
Intermediary shall publish on its website Rules and Regulation, Privacy policy and User Agreement in English or in any language specified in 8th schedule for access and usage of its computer resource by any person. They shall make efforts to cause its user to not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information that either belongs to any other person, or is obscene, pornographic, pedophilic or in invasion of another person’s privacy which also includes bodily privacy, insulting on the basis of gender bias or ethnicity, encouraging money laundering or gambling, crating enmity or inciting violence in the name of religion and caste.
Any complaint made to the intermediary shall be acknowledged by them within 24 hours and resolved within a period of 15 days from days of its receipt. If the complaint requests for removal of information it shall be resolved within 72 hours of such reporting
- Rules in particular to tackle misinformation:
The Intermediary is also responsible to prohibit content which is harmful to child, infringes IPR, misinformation that is misleading in nature, impersonation, threatening unity, integrity, sovereignty of the country, friendly relations with foreign states, causing incitement or preventing investigation of any offence as well as insulting any other nation. Intermediary must prevent from being displayed any information containing any software virus, code or file, designed to interrupt or destroy functioning of any computer resource. The intermediaries shall periodically or at least once a year, inform its users of its, rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement for any changes made to them.
- Constitutional rights of the users to be respected by intermediaries:
Intermediaries to take all measures to provide accessibility to users while also taking care of due-diligence, privacy and trans piracy. Intermediaries shall respect the rights of the citizens especially Article- 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution.
- Establishment of grievance appellate Committee
As per Rule-3(a) the central government shall establish 1 or more Grievance Appellate Committee within 3 months from the date of commencement of these amended rules. Each committee shall consist of a chairman and 2 whole time members. Any person aggrieved by decision of grievance officer may prefer appeal to this committee within 30 days from date of receipt of communication from grievance officer. The committee shall try to resolve the appeal within 30 calendar days from the date of receipt of appeal.
The entire committee shall adopt an online dispute resolution mechanism and every order passed by this committee shall be complied by the intermediary and the report to that effect shall be uploaded on its website.
DUCTUS EDGE 