The advisory outlined six key points aimed at online content publishers and self-regulatory bodies of OTT platforms, emphasising adherence to existing laws and ethical guidelines.
“This ministry has received references from Hon’ble Members of Parliament, representations from statutory organizations and public grievances regarding alleged spread of obscene, pornographic and vulgar content published by certain publishers of online curated content (OTT platforms) and Social Media,” the ministry said in its advisory.
“In this regard it is stated that Part-IIl of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media, Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, interalia, provide for a Code of Ethics for OTT platforms, and a three level institutional mechanism for redressal of grievances relating to violation of the Code of Ethics. The Code of Ethics, inter-alia, requires OTT platforms not to transmit any content which is prohibited by law, undertake age-based classification of content, based on general guidelines provided in the Schedule to the Rules, implementation of access control mechanism for ‘A’ rated content to restrict access to such content by a child, and also exercise due caution and discretion,” it added.
After the controversy broke, host Samay Raina deleted all episodes of ‘India’s Got Latent’ from his Youtube channel.Dismayed at the obscene content being freely peddled on social media, SC earlier this week had indicated the need to regulate such vulgar online content.A bench headed by justice Surya Kant had called for the Centre’s views on the issue and sought the assistance of attorney general R Venkataramani and solicitor general Tushar Mehta on the next hearing.
The bench had orally observed that it would be “very happy” if the government did something in this regard on its own. In case the government doesn’t, justice Kant made it clear that the top court would “not overlook the importance and sensitivity” of the issue. SC had added that it would not let go of the issue and “would like to do something” to tackle the “vacuum” in regulation of online content.
