The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed all proceedings pending earlier than varied excessive courts throughout the nation for regulation and functioning of Over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hotstar, and so forth by the federal government.
A bench, headed by Justice DY Chandrachud, stayed additional proceedings of pleas pending earlier than varied excessive courts and mentioned it might hear the petitions pending earlier than it on the same concern in the second week of April.
Justice MR Shah, additionally comprising the bench, mentioned there are lots of excessive courts the place these circumstances are pending and proceedings of all these circumstances can keep.
The apex court docket was listening to a batch of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha, showing for Justice for Rights Foundation for regulating OTT platforms by an autonomous physique.
The petitions sought a correct board, establishment and affiliation for the monitoring and administration of content material on totally different OTT, streaming and digital media platforms.
The central authorities has additionally filed the switch petition looking for switch of circumstances pending in totally different excessive courts for the regulation of OTT platforms. The Supreme Court bench had earlier issued a discover on Centre’s plea and tagged it with different petitions.
Also, the ministry of knowledge and broadcasting, in the affidavit submitted earlier than the apex court docket, assured it that agency examine on the content material on OTT platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime as new laws are in place.
It said that the brand new Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 has been notified to handle the difficulty.
Earlier, the highest court docket had requested the Centre to apprise it on what authorities proposes to do to manage OTT platforms and requested it to file an affidavit on what it’s planning on doing after the federal government mentioned it”s engaged on the difficulty.
One of the petitions, filed by advocate Jha, mentioned that at current there isn’t a legislation or autonomous physique governing, monitoring and managing such digital contents and it’s made obtainable to the general public at massive with none filter or screening.
The PIL mentioned that not one of the OTT/streaming platforms together with Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, and Hotstar have signed the self-regulation offered by the knowledge and broadcasting ministry since February 2020.
There are over 40 such platforms offering paid, ad-inclusive, and free content material to roughly 130 crore individuals throughout India, the petitioners mentioned.
The petitions mentioned their goal is to guard the constitutional proper to life, by stopping these platforms from abusing their freedom of expression.
The plea requested the organising of a board headed by a secretary-level IAS officer, with members from diversified fields together with film, cinematographic, media, defence forces, authorized, and schooling.
The plea said, “With cinemas theatres unlikely to open anytime soon in the country, OTT/Streaming and different digital media platforms have surely given a way out for filmmakers and artists to release their content without being worried about getting clearance certificates for their films and series from the censor board.”
In a separate case, the Centre had earlier instructed the apex court docket that there’s a want to manage digital media and that the court docket could first appoint a committee of individuals as amicus earlier than laying down tips with respect to the regulation of hate speech in media.Â
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