Broadcasting Bill 2023 relies too much on delegated legislation: Industry bodies to MIB
DIGIPUB, NBDA, Access Now, Broadband India Forum, US-India Business Council and Cyber Cafe Association of India expressed concerns about over reliance on delegated legislation.
Multiple industry bodies and civil societies criticised the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill for relying too much on delegated legislation, having ambiguous definitions, creating a pre-censorship regime through pre-certification of content, and not distinguishing between streaming services and traditional broadcasters among a host of other issues, according to RTI documents made public by digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation on Tuesday.
The comments were submitted to the ministry of information and broadcasting on the November 2023 version of the Bill.
International digital rights organisation Access Now and DIGIPUB, a coalition of digital media organisations that was established after the notification of IT Rules, 2021 necessitated the creation of a self-regulatory body for all news publishers in the country, called on MIB to withdraw the bill in its entirety.
DIGIPUB and News Broadcasters and Digital Association (whose members include NDTV, TV Today and Zee Media) raised concerns about the ambiguous definitions. DIGIPUB criticised the then clause 20 that encompassed anyone disseminating news and current affairs on the internet, including individuals. It raised concerns about the Broadcast Advisory Council as it has the potential to grant “unchecked censorship powers” to the executive. NBDA said that the requirement to create content evaluation committee (CEC) to pre-certify content would lead to pre-censorship.
NBDA also said that OTT broadcasting services and digital transmissions are “fundamentally not Broadcasting services”, and that both are already regulated under IT Rules. It raised concerns around overlapping regulation under different ministries.
The Indian Newspaper Society (of which HT is also a member) sought an exemption for websites and news portals run by registered newspaper publishers in addition to the exemption given to the e-replicas (such as the e-paper available on platforms such as Magzter) as the websites run by the newspaper publishers “often serve as natural extensions of their traditional publications, offering additional news articles relevant to the platforms” and use “the same journalistic resources”.
DIGIPUB, NBDA, Access Now, Broadband India Forum, US-India Business Council (USIBC), and Cyber Cafe Association of India (CCAOI) expressed concerns about over reliance on delegated legislation.
Access Now said that the bill has “unreasonable limitations on free expression; enhances government control over online content without independent oversight and safeguards; hampers free flow of information on the internet --- the lifeblood of democracy in the digital age; and significantly curbs press freedom, including by making news and current affairs content subject to content regulation measures applicable to other types of content”. It said that the bill granted the central government “too much unchecked power to restrict content on unspecified grounds”. It said that content restrictions should not exist for news and current affairs programmes.
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) said that the Bill overlaps with IT Rules, 2021, and this could “stifle the investment, innovation and landscape of the OTT platforms”. It said that the CEC posed a “heavy compliance burden” that subverts the self-regulatory mechanism set up through the IT Rules while USIBC and BIF said that the CEC was overly prescriptive and should be scrapped altogether.
Access Now said that internet based services should not need registration or any kind of licensing as they differed from traditional media broadcasting services. All industry bodies, including USIBC, IAMAI and BIF said that the bill did not distinguish between streaming services (’pull’ service) and other conventional types of broadcasting (’push’ services), something they said are regulated differently across the world. They said that streaming platforms are not broadcasting networks --- a suggestion that has been incorporated in the 2024 bill shared with selected stakeholders between July 24 and July 25 --- as they operate on the “application layer” of the internet, not the “network layer”.
USIBC and IAMAI also said that the Bill should succeed, not precede, the National broadcasting Policy on which the TRAI is holding a consultation on the recommendation of the MIB. USIBC, NBDA, CCAOI and BIF called on the government to include the outcomes of other consultations on similar issues before proceeding with a law. It also said that the broadcast sector suffered from heavy-handed and overly prescriptive regulation. USIBC, CCAOI and BIF said that the Bill did not clarify the scope of TRAI’s jurisdiction.
USIBC, IAMAI and BIF said that the bill did not address issues around ease of doing business in the broadcasting sector. USIBC also called on the government to exclude audio only services as while audiobooks could undergo pre-certification via the CEC, the same would not be feasible for music streaming services, a concern that Spotify had raised in one of the stakeholder meetings with MIB, HT reported on July 12.
Other comments included those from DeepStrat, CIVIS and Yuva Jagran Manch. A response from an individual, whose details have been redacted by either MIB or IFF, said, “Please stop corporate owenership of media companies. How aajtak, zee news etc is functioning much less said the better. don’t go after digital news media. They are doing good journalism. Make a BBC model for Doordarshan, so that Doordarshan viewership increases. Make DD the one stop google search for news, web series, movies etc. [sic]”