The proposed Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, seeks to directly regulate streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+Hotstar as over-the-top, or OTT, broadcasting services, but under the Bill, anybody who broadcasts news and current affairs programmes online is liable to attract the same obligations as OTT streaming services.
That means certain accounts and users on social media platforms can also be treated as OTT broadcasters unto themselves.
According to Gowree Gokhale, partner at Nishith Desai Associates, and Nikhil Narendran, partner at Trilegal, the move will bring streaming platforms and online news organisations, who were recognised as publishers till now, under the category of broadcasters.
"This will bring them solely under the domain of MIB," Narendran said.
Thus far, Part III of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, was governing streaming platforms and online publishers of news and current affairs.
"Part III [of the IT Rules] will have to go," Gokhale said. In the savings and repeal clause, the Broadcasting Bill does not mention repealing Part III of IT Rules.
"That is not required because an act, or a section of an act, must be repealed through another act. Parts of subordinate legislation, as in the case of IT Rules, can be repealed through a simple government notification," Narendran said.
Clause 20 of the bill says "any person who broadcasts news and current affairs programs through an online paper, news portal, website, social media intermediary, or other similar medium but excluding publishers of newspapers and replica e-papers of such newspapers, as part of a systematic business, professional, or commercial activity shall adhere to the Programme Code and Advertisement code referred to in Section 19".
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