Centre’s OTT rules dictatorial, Maha minister
A Maharashtra minister on Saturday opposed the central government's regulations for social media platforms and over-the-top (OTT) players, terming them as "dictatorial" and a "threat" to democracy. The minister of state for IT (information technology) Satej Patil also said these regulations need to be opposed strongly as they infringe the privacy of individuals and free speech given by the Constitution.
The Central government on Thursday notified new guidelines and self-regulatory mechanism for video streaming service providers Netflix, Amazon Prime Video among other OTT platforms even though the OTT platforms were in the process of implementing their own self-regulation code.
The government has put in place a three-tier redressal system, with the information and broadcasting ministry exercising complete oversight over the process.
Speaking with The Asian Age on Saturday, Mr. Patil said that the communication between two people were encrypted earlier. It was not accessible. "Now, they (read government) are going to access the conversation (communication) easily immediately," he added. The things, which are “so called” anti-nationals are removed by the social media like Twitter. Recently, the former US president Donald Trump's twitter account had been suspended due to his tweets, which were said to be anti-national.
He also said that facebook and twitter are already monitoring the contents and if they find some anti-national, they suspend the accounts and delete the contents.
"Why did the government want more access to the contents?," he asked.
"This move by the Centre needs to be fought tooth and nail. Such dictatorial regulations will not be accepted by the people of this democratic country," he said.
He also said that some bureaucrats are deciding on what needs to be published and what not on any media platform is nothing but an attack on the freedom of press in Country.
"Such orders will not have any standing in the court of law," he said.