Proposed Digital India Act aims to make internet free, safe space: Can it?

Speaking in a conference in March earlier this year, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY) Rajeev Chandrasekhar drew attention to the need to bring in a new law to cover the vast digital universe that Indians now inhabit.

The government is now reportedly looking to introduce a new law, which it is calling the Digital India Act (DIA), in the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament. The proposed law is supposed to be modelled on similar regulations in Singapore, Australia and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.   

What the proposed law intends to cover

The proposed law is expected to cover anything and everything that is digital. It will cover crimes on social media platforms like Meta (earlier Facebook) and Twitter; will monitor the content on over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video; regulate online app stores; and put checks in place to monitor blockchain technology and metaverse, among other things.

The worry is also that the law might police content in the digital space. While the Central Board of Film Certification will remain in place, DIA, it is expected, would empower the government to ask OTT platforms to pull down content if it is found violating provisions of the proposed law.

On the upside, DIA is expected to address matters of child safety, women safety and being in regulations against doxxing (publicly revealing private personal information about an individual or organisation) and inciting violence online. In addition to this, the proposed law would also try to address challenges arising out of next generation technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, manipulation of algorithms and monopolisation of digital space. Wearables, too, would come under its ambit.  

  

The need for the new law

Currently, Information Technology Act, 2000 is the core legal framework that regulates social media platforms or e-commerce companies. The new law is expected to replace the existing IT Act, which does not cover most of the crime scenarios online since it borrows offences from the offline world. For instance, while the IT Act doesn’t view doxxing as illegal, the Indian Penal Code looks at it as defamation.

Hinting at the obsolescence of the existing law,  Chandrasekhar had said that the term “internet” doesn't even feature in the IT Act, whereas the digital space has transformed enormously over the past two decades. 

The proposed law is expected to be a part of the new digital jurisprudence that will support innovation by the industry and startups and protect the users as well. 

Protection or policing question about the new law

Opinions about the proposed law are divided, with some welcoming it and others viewing it with scepticism. Speaking at the annual general meeting of TCS, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran described the Digital India Act as "essential" because of the huge transformations that the technological sector has experienced in the last few decades. 

However, the proposed legislation is still in the consultation stage and it is still difficult to put a timeline for it, given that the government just withdrew the Data Protection Bill after a cumulative effort of over four years.

Pointing to the absence of consultations and lack of transparency over the proposed Digital India Act, Prateek Waghre, policy director, Internet Freedom Foundation, told Business Standard that “the government should have at least presented a white paper as was done by the British Parliament while introducing the Online Safety Bill, which seeks to approve what types of ‘legal but harmful’ content that platforms must tackle”.

Referring to the creation of a new online jurisprudence, he said that countries have struggled in recent years in defining the exact scope of online and offline, and there is a risk of the governments using such laws to clampdown on freedom of speech.