Rakesh Maheshwari, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology
Key references
The Information Technology Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment), 2018 [download]
IT Rules 2011 [read]
Shreya Singhal Judgment: [read]
Summary of the IT Rules
Intermediaries And Social Media Platforms [read]
Digital News Publishing [read]
OTT Streaming Services [read]
Key developments
Unblocking of handles: IT Ministry notice to Twitter warns of consequences [Read]
CEO Will Cathcart says WhatsApp hopes to find solution to traceability without breaking encryption [read]
India’s FOSS community files plea in Kerala High Court against IT Rules, challenges traceability mandate [read]
Opinion/Analysis Pieces
The Case of the Online Intermediary by Chinmayi Arun [Read]
Guide: All you need to know about the new IT Rules, 2021
March 5, 2021
The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 notified last week will likely change how the internet functions in the country. The Rules can be divided broadly into three areas (i) internet and social media intermediaries (ii) digital news and (iii) OTT streaming services.
The Rules mandate a laundry list of compliance requirements on intermediaries and social media platforms. Perhaps the mandate most worthy of concern is “traceability”, wherein significant social media intermediaries (social media companies with more than 5 million users in India) are required to enable the tracing of a message originator, potentially compromising end-t0-end encryption on their platforms. Meanwhile, on the digital news and OTT front, the I&B ministry has prescribed a “self-regulatory” regime, all the while giving itself powers to virtually block any content on an emerge