Parliamentary committee proclaims Social media platforms as publishers

Highlights : India makes it mandatory for social media intermediaries to have an office in India. Social Media platforms will not be permitted to be operated in India if they don’t have an office in India, JCP stated.

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter have been acting like publishers because of which Lawmakers in India have proclaimed that those social media platforms that are not intermediaries should be categorized as publishers.

It becomes immensely crucial for these social media platforms to be made responsible for the content they are publishing. According to the report by the Joint Committee of Parliament, it has been concluded that users will have to mandatorily verify their identity on Personal Data Protection Bill 2019.

Recognizing the issue that as per the IT Act, social media platforms have been designated and the authors of the JCP report noted that the existing laws have not been able to keep up with the pace of the rapidly evolving nature of social media.

After 2 months of profound deliberations, a new guideline is expected to be announced in the upcoming month of Winter. And the report says this gives enough time for the data processors to modify their policies, processes, etc.

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The Committee has additionally taken a view that the Bill ought to contain arrangements to direct both individual information and non-individual information. Taking into account that the enactment needs to cover the assurance of a wide range of information, it has been suggested that it be named The Data Protection Bill, 2021, and The Data Protection Act, 2021.

The consideration of the non-individual information in the enactment which was intended to be a security Bill has not gone down well with the business which has been mentioning the public authority to keep the two enactments isolated.

Specialists are of the view that Jcp’s suggestions strikingly on the guideline of online media, emphasis on information localization just as the incorporation of non-individual information in a similar Bill, will get colossal pushback from the worldwide innovation firms.

Prasanto K Roy, a public policy expert said that the advisory groups’ suggestion on managing Social media is impossible to obtain victory.

Without safe harbor, the online media stages are available to many unimportant, here and there perilous, claims. Therefore, they cannot work without safe harbor insurance as go-betweens, or acknowledge responsibility for content as they would have to close down, he said

The necessity to have an actual office in India to work will cause more modest or less-resourced stages to close down, we want to see the exemptions for this, as per Roy who said that if ( the standards) additionally apply to Wikipedia, ( it) can’t work in India and a great many understudies and analysts will lose their essential pursuit and information asset.