Censorship or Certification: How should OTT platforms be regulated?

One member asked what should be done when certain communities and Gods are shown in “bad light”. It was then that other members intervened to explain that creativity needs to be understood within the larger context. Tikoo and Khan said creative freedom should not be curtailed. In response to an unknown question, Khan explained that in his upcoming movie ’83, which stars Ranveer Singh as World Cup-winning cricket captain Kapil Dev, he has shown batsman Krishnamachari Srikkanth smoking in order to depict reality.

Currently, movies released in theatres are certified by CBFC prior to their release while the Broadcasting Content Complaints Council, a self-regulatory body, takes complaints related to non-news content on television. IT Parliamentary Committee’s chairperson Shashi Tharoor in January 2019 had argued that the CBFC “should not have pre-censorship powers”.

In the past, Tikoo has argued for self-regulation of OTT platforms that should be distinct from how movies are certified. “When you watch a movie in a theatre with a thousand-odd people who are strangers, the impact is completely different from watching it in private or with three members of your family. That distinction needs to be understood,” she had said.

There was also discussion on whether or not censorship is even possible in the digital age given how easy it is to circumvent it.

In his deposition in January, Prasoon Joshi, chairperson of CBFC, had also argued in favour of regulating OTT platforms. In a July 2020 opinion piece for The Indian Express, Joshi had argued that due to the pandemic, even consumption of content on OTT platforms had become a collective exercise, thereby raising need for “greater scrutinisation of content by the viewers”.

On January 31, Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Prakash Javadekar, according to an ANI tweet, had said that guidelines for regulating OTT platforms would be released soon. In September 2020, 15 streaming services, including Disney+ Hotstar, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, had released a self-regulatory code, titled “Universal Self-Regulation Code for Online Curated Content Providers”. However, this code was not endorsed by the I&B Ministry.

Seventeen MPs, including former MIB Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and actors and MPs Sunny Deol and Sumalatha Ambareesh, attended the IT Parliamentary Committee meeting on February 5. It is understood that Deol and Ambareesh voiced their opinion in favour of preserving creative freedom.

Report on India’s 5G preparedness due soon

A day before the meeting about the functioning of the CBFC, the Standing Committee discussed its upcoming report on 5G preparedness in India. The almost-120-page document makes 26 recommendations to Parliament which stress on the importance of national security and cybersecurity when it comes to rolling out 5G infrastructure. The report was extensively discussed and adopted on February 3 and is expected to be tabled in Parliament in the coming days, Forbes India has learnt.

While it is not clear whether the report explicitly mentions Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE, or forbids them from participating in 5G trials, it is understood that the committee has recommended that national security must be accorded utmost importance while granting tenders for 5G equipment. It has also been recommended that equipment should not be purchased from just one party but from multiple parties.

The committee has laid special emphasis on using indigenous technology for testing 5G, and on ensuring domestic development and manufacturing. However, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had told the committee in August 2020 that not all components could be manufactured in India; some will have to be imported. At that time, the DoT had informed the committee that 5G infrastructure was being assembled in India, not made in India.

In addition to national security, it is understood that the committee emphasised on safeguarding users’ privacy. It has also recommended that cost must be kept at a minimum, not just for service providers, but for users as well.

The committee has adopted a number of recommendations that were made in the report submitted by IIT-Madras Director Bhaskar Ramamurthi. He is leading the Centre’s Building an End-to-End 5G Test Bed project, under which ₹224 crore were awarded to IIT-Madras, IIT-Hyderabad, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kanpur, Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology, Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, to develop a 5G test bed through which academia and industry can collaborate on operationalising 5G networks.

To prepare the report, the committee headed by Tharoor had heard depositions from DoT, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the three largest telecom service providers in India—Airtel, Jio and Vodafone Idea—and industry organisations Cellular Operators Association of India and Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India over three meetings.