The Amazon Prime logo appears on the side of a delivery van as it leaves an Amazon warehouse.
The government told the Supreme Court on Tuesday it was contemplating “some action” on the issue of regulating OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.
A court made up of the president of the Supreme Court SA Bobde and judges AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, who initially believed that the petitioner should approach the government to obtain reparation, asked the government to present its response to the PIL within six weeks. that requested the regulation of the OTT by an autonomous body.
The center was contemplating some action
At first, Additional Attorney General KM Nataraj said that the Center was contemplating some action on the issue of regulation of OTT platforms.
The CJI sought to know from Nataraj what the government’s action would be and asked him to submit the response within six weeks while tagging the matter with the pending petition.
On October 15 last year, the high court issued notices to the central government, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Internet and Mobile Association of India.
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The statement presented by advocates Shashank Shekhar Jha and Apurva Arhatia also sought a suitable board / institution / association for monitoring and managing content on different OTT / Streaming and digital media platforms.
“Since it is unlikely that movie theaters will open soon in the country, OTT / Streaming and different digital media platforms have surely given an outlet for filmmakers and artists to publish their content without worrying about obtaining authorization certificates for their films. and series from the censorship board, ”the statement said.
There is no law or autonomous body that regulates digital content at present
At present, however, there is no law or autonomous body that regulates digital content to monitor and manage this digital content and it is made available to the general public without any filter or projection, he said.
“The lack of legislation governing OTT / Streaming platforms is evident with each passing day and with each new case that is presented for these reasons.
The government faces pressure to fill this gap with regulations from the public and the judiciary; Still, the relevant government departments have not done anything significant to regularize these OTT / Streaming platforms, ”the statement said.
Netflix, Amazon Prime, others have not signed the self-regulation
None of the OTT / Streaming platforms, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5 and Hotstar, have signed the self-regulation provided by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting since February 2020, he said.
The ministry had previously told the high court in a separate case that there is a need to regulate digital media and that the court may first appoint a committee of people as amicus before setting guidelines regarding the regulation of hate speech in the media. .
(With PTI inputs)
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.