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Supreme Court stays all petitions on regulation of content on OTT platforms pending in high courts
The order came on a transfer plea moved by the Centre to club all petitions seeking regulation of content on OTT platforms filed in various high courts.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed all the petitions seeking regulation of content on over-the-top (OTT) platforms, including Netflix and Amazon Prime, pending in high courts across the country. The order came on a transfer plea moved by the Centre to club all these petitions filed in various high courts.
The top court issued notices to all petitioners, who have filed pleas in Punjab and Haryana High Court, Madhya Pradesh High Court and Allahabad High Court, in February on the plea jointly filed by the ministry of information and broadcasting, electronics and technology and the ministry of law and justice.
Tuesday’s order was passed by a bench of justice DY Chandrachud, justice MR Shah and justice Sanjiv Khanna. The top court took up the transfer petition along with public interest litigations filed by NGO Justice for Rights Foundation and another by lawyer Shashank Shekhar Jha, in which they have demanded has that a pre-screening committee be set up before the content on OTT platforms is streamed online.
The government has currently identified 40 OTT platforms that live stream content.
The ruling comes days after the government notified a set of regulations for OTT platforms, which according to the Supreme Court lacked teeth. In a separate proceeding, the court had said that the regulations lack provisions for enforcement following which the Centre agreed to revise the rules.
