The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed all the petitions seeking regulation of content on over-the-top (OTT) platforms, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, pending in high courts across the country.
The order came on a transfer plea moved by the Centre to club all these petitions filed in various high courts.
During the proceedings, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the apex court that the Centre had moved the transfer petition as more multiple high courts are dealing with the same matter.
The Solicitor General further stated that one of the high courts had also said that it will proceed to hear the matter unless the Supreme Court decided to stay the proceedings.
Seeking Regulation of Content on OTT Platforms.
However, despite the order by the apex court various High Courts including the Punjab and Haryana High Court is proceeding in the issue, hence it is pending there. The bench headed by Justice D Y Chandrachud, observed that notice on transfer petition means that proceedings going on have to stay.
While staying the further proceedings of pleas pending in various High Courts, the bench stated that the case will now be heard after Holi on March 29.
The development comes in response to the public interest litigations filed by NGO Justice for Rights Foundation and another by lawyer Shashank Shekhar Jha, in which they have demanded has that a pre-screening committee be set up before the content on OTT platforms is streamed online. They sought an effective regulation to curb content on the OTT platforms.
As per reports, the plea further asserted that the self-regulation code or the Indian government’s new IT Rules are not effective tools to curb the content that hurts the religious, social and regional sentiments of the public at large.
The matter pertains to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, under the Information Technology Act, 2000. The government had notified the rules on February 25. The rules are framed to regulate social media companies, streaming and digital news content, virtually bringing them, for the first time, under the ambit of government supervision.
Under the rules, the OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon will have to set up a mechanism for addressing any grievances. While films have a censor board, OTT platforms will be required to self-classify their movies and content based on age. Detailed classification of content on the basis of age, sex, violence and nudity will also have to be listed.
The rules would force streaming services to submit to the authority of an appeals body headed by a retired High Court or Supreme Court justice. If this body believes that the content violates the law, it would be empowered to send the content to a government-controlled committee for blocking orders to be issued.
