Digital India Act to be principle-based, rules to be prescriptive: Rajeev Chandrasekhar

The minister said that two additional consultations will be conducted, with at least one taking place in New Delhi.

Chandrasekhar said that different categories of platforms will be regulated differently.

For example, fintech platforms will have different rules as most of the rulemaking will be under the purview of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will largely say that in the event of a cybersecurity breach, it must be reported. However, in the case of social media intermediaries, the rules will be a lot more exhaustive. Online gaming may also have exhaustive rules, but they will vary from those of social media intermediaries.

In his introduction, he outlined areas that might be included in the Bill, which also looks to define who qualifies as an intermediary for the purposes of receiving safe harbour protections under the law. “Online platforms that are pretending to be dumb intermediaries and allow cybercrime to proliferate will not be tolerated and will be addressed,” he said.

The new law also looks at user harm and aims to take strict action against nine types of content, including misinformation, disinformation, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM), among others.

“Disinformation and misinformation are very, very dangerous threats. The looming threats are even worse than the current because of deep fakes and AI. So, therefore, we certainly don't want our internet when our goals are safe and safety and trust on the internet to be rampant with misinformation. What we are saying today is on misinformation, fake news, it is the government and the platforms that will have to work together to make sure that we agree that the principle that the DIA is on that that will be clamped down,” he said.

In this case, a clampdown means that whenever there is an instance of misinformation, it will come under the category of user harm. “Therefore, we will decide what the regulator will do, whether it's a punitive punishment, whether it's a criminal offence, etc. Misinformation qualifies amongst many things, including but not limited to CSAM and others at the same level as user harm as we see the internet of the future,” he said.

He said that the Bill must address not only CSAM but also content that causes psychological harm to children.

“It is very important that we deal not only with child exploitative content, but also that creates psychological harm and addiction. It is certainly an area that we should think about that our platforms, apps that have an addictive impact that creates psychological harm are also deemed to be causing user harm. This is a thinking or a construct in our mind. But what will be the consequences of that determination? We still have to figure out in consultation with people,” he said.

Concerning free speech and moderation, Chandrasekhar said that free speech is a fundamental right and that the government is a trustee of those rights.

“In this day and age, the internet has to be a safe and trusted space without diluting even the slightest the right to free speech. We are architecting something where the user harm part will be dealt with to protect the right of the digital naagrik to a safe and trusted space,” he said.

He added what constitutes “harm” will also be clearly defined.

“A category of harm is the psychological harm being caused by doxxing, gaslighting. Now, especially for children, for women, these take on a very very important manifestation. Therefore, psychological harm caused by doxxing, gaslighting or any other form should constitute user harm. Now, what is doxxing under Indian law, should we define it? Of course, we will define it. It cannot be your view of doxxing versus my view. Doxxing will be this is the victim, this is the harm, this is the consequence of what happens if you doxx. No ambiguity there,” he said.