Stakeholders air reservation over government's plan to remove safe harbour provisions in Digital India Act

The safe harbour provision gives internet platforms legal immunity against content shared by users on the platforms and was allowed by the IT Act, which the forthcoming Digital India Act seeks to replace.

At a time when the government is considering to remove safe harbour provisions in the upcoming Digital India Act (DIA), stakeholders from civil society, industry and think thanks in a discussion, submitted their reservations over the idea, stating that the provision, was "core to the possibilities of the internet".

Stakeholders in a talk organised by the Broadband India Forum said that although the provision can be conditional, it should not be downright removed.

The safe harbour provision gives internet platforms legal immunity against content shared by users on the platforms and was allowed by the IT Act, which the forthcoming Digital India Act seeks to replace.

Earlier in March, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology held a pre-consultation on the upcoming Digital India Act's key features, one of which is the removal of save harbour provision for internet intermediaries.

Sunil Abraham, Meta's public policy director for data and emerging tech said, "It is core to the possibilities of the internet that you have safe harbour. But more and more I think all stakeholders are in agreement that safe harbour. And what those due diligence obligations should be is being debated across the world."

As a whole Abraham, said that the DIA should not be filled with 'executive discretion'. "It should be filled with self regulation and co-regulation." Abraham also batted for the regulation to be protective of user rights, promoting innovation and preservation of the capacity for governance based on "constitutional tests".

Amrita Choudhury, director at CCAOI, hoped that  the DIA would bring a kind of an oversight or accountability mechanism over the State.

"(The DIA should) perhaps have a light touch regulation for emerging technology; some kind of transparent, oversight or accountability mechanism over the State," Choudhury said. She also called for harmonisation between different regulations that will be brought in by the Indian government.

"My biggest wish list for this regulation to come in is involving all stakeholders properly in that consultation so that we can come up with something which serves us for some more time because this landscape is, you know, changing ever evolving," she added.

Stakeholders also discussed about the possible reforms in provisions regarding surveillance in the upcoming Digital India Act.

Saikat Datta, CEO of Deep Strat said, "In India, that surveillance is a much bigger problem, because the agencies which are empowered to carry out surveillance, they have not been and enacted as an act of Parliament. What is their charter? What is their transparency?"

Datta called for narrowly defining the grounds under which surveillance can be taken up, and also at the same time codifying the "legitimate needs" of a government to take up surveillance.

"We also have to recognise, that the State has certain legitimate needs for national integrity, security etc. I would want that the DIA recognised and also encodes that within the Act. This will create certain kind of gold standards on what can be done and what cannot be done," he said.