Government Will Govern OTT Platforms Like Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime And Others From Now On

History so far

The Department of Information and Broadcasting found a lot of unrecorded content on online and over-the-top (OTT) platforms that don't follow any regulatory architecture. While print media has been regulated by the Indian press and council, as well as TV, news, and entertainment, both of which are governed by the Cable Network Regulation Act (2005), online content, according to the government, was unsupervised black content. 

It is also worth remembering that last month the Supreme Court of India issued an opinion to the Internet and Mobile Center and the Association of India on a petition to regulate OTT platforms.

Some time ago the Ministry wrote to the Ministry of Information and Technology to look into the possibility of regulating online content. The Ministry already controlled the content of news and entertainment on television and radio through legal entities of the Ministry. In addition, senior ministerial officials said they had received a number of complaints from the public highlighting the concern and need to regulate online content.

Final outcome

A notice from the Cabinet Secretariat dated November 9 said that films and audiovisual programs made available by online content providers on the online platform, as well as news and current content, would be covered by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It will be implemented immediately. Ministry officials believe that this regulation is an important online discipline for ministerial officials.

How is the ministry proposing to regulate online news and OTTs?

Details are not yet available, but it has been revealed that the programming code that governs the content of television, which has found a paragraph in the Cable Television Network Regulation Act 1995, is a template that defines the rules for online content. The program code lists several nodes that are required to view and track the channels. The Electronic Media Monitoring Center, established in 2008, is currently responsible for monitoring content on television. It reports program code violations. The conclusions are forwarded to an inter-ministerial committee. The monitoring service can be extended to include online content for a short time.

However, 24/7 content monitoring has its own challenges. Will the department set up a public committee to review the available complaints?