MoS questions ‘safe harbour’ for digital service providers

NEW DELHI: The government is reconsidering “safe harbour” protections for social media companies as it looks to classify them based on the functions they perform, the junior minister for electronics and technology said on Thursday during a consultation meeting for the much-awaited Digital India bill.

The government has proposed to include a wider class of digital service providers, such as search engines, ad technologies, artificial intelligence, e-commerce and gaming platforms, and regulate them as intermediaries under the bill, along with social media companies, digital media and over the top platforms.

“There is a need for a different set of rules for each class of intermediaries,” Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said. “There is a question about how many different types of intermediaries today are deserving of safe harbour. Internet in 2000 was a place of good and a place to do good. Now, it is also a place of criminality and user harms. [So] should there be safe harbour at all for intermediaries?”

Section 79 of the IT Act, 2000, absolves social media firms of liability for third party content, or those made by users.

The provision, may now be read down in the Digital India bill for which a draft is yet to be released, Chandrasekhar said on Thursday.

According to Prateek Waghre from the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation, if an intermediary is not responsible for creating the content, then by definition it should be eligible for safe harbour protection. “Before getting to the question of whether some or all intermediaries require these protections, there needs to be a consensus on an understanding of what the harms in the Indian context are,” he said.

“Attempting to enforce liability on internet platforms for insufficiently defined harms that do not have a clear legal basis risks creating significant gray areas which will result in them having greater power and discretion,” he said.

The minister said that there was no definitive timeline for the Act and full consultations will be done in several cities over the next few months, while stating that the new law must be “future ready” and ahead of the technologies it seeks to regulate.