‘SOME ACTION’ IN WORKS ON OTT REGULATION, CENTRE TELLS SC

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it was contemplating “some action” on the issue of regulating OTT platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

A bench comprising Chief justice S A Bobde and justices

A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, which was initially of the view that the petitioner should approach the government for the remedy, asked the government to file its response within six weeks to the PIL seeking OTT regulation by an autonomous body.

At the outset, additional solicitor general Sanjay Jain said the Centre was contemplating some action on the issue of regulating OTT platforms.

The CJI sought to know from Jain as to what would be the action from the government and asked him to file the response in six weeks while tagging the matter with the pending petition.

The top court had on October 15 last year issued notices to the Central government, ministry of information and broadcasting and Internet and Mobile Association of India.

The plea filed by advocates Shashank Shekhar Jha and Apurva Arhatia also sought a proper board/institution /association for the monitoring and management of content on different OTT/streaming and digital media platforms. “With cinema theatres unlikely to open anytime soon in the country, OTT/ streaming and different digital media platforms have surely given a way out for film makers and artists to release their content without being worried about getting clearance certificates for their films and series from the censor board,” the plea said.

At present, however, there is no law or autonomous body governing the digital content to monitor and manage these digital contents and it is made available to the public at large without any filter or screening, it said. None of the OTT/streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5, and Hotstar have signed the self-regulation provided by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting since February 2020, it said.

THE CJI HAS ASKED THE GOVT TO FILE ITS RESPONSE, CLARIFYING ITS ACTION PLAN, IN SIX WEEKS