New Delhi:The Supreme Court has restrained all the High Courts from hearing individual cases pertaining to regulation of OTT platforms and issued a notice on the centre's plea seeking transfer of cases to the top court.
The bench led by Justice DY Chandrachud was hearing a plea by Advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha who sought the constitution of an autonomous body namely the Central Board for Regulation and Monitoring of Online Video Contents (CBRMOV) to regulate OTT platforms.
The centre told the court that there is no need to constitute an autonomous body as via various notifications, it has regulated the activities of the OTT platforms. It said that there is a mechanism for regulation of the OTT platforms under the provisions of the Information Technology Act 2000, and the newly framed Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules,2021 has been notified by the government under Section 87 (2) of the IT Act 2000 for the regulation of Online Curated Content.
READ: Govt's new guidelines on regulating OTT platforms have "no teeth": SC
IT rules 2021 includes due diligence by intermediaries, code of ethics for publishers of news and current affairs on digital media and OTT, three-tier grievance redressal mechanism relating to code of ethics, power of centre to ensure adherence to code of ethics and mandatory disclosure of information by the publishers and placing it in public domain with details regarding grievance redressal.
The affidavit read that the " government has notified Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021 on 25th February 2021 to put in place an institutional mechanism for adherence to principles laid down in the Digital Media Ethics Code, specified in the appendix to the rules, by the publishers of Online Curated Content on OTT platforms".
"The prayer in the present petition no longer survives. The petition was filed at a time when the central government had started taking active steps towards framing the Information Technology(Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules,2021," read the affidavit.
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