SC notice to Centre on plea to regulate content on OTT platforms

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice to the Centre on a plea for setting up an autonomous body or board to monitor and filter the "inappropriate and obscene" content and regulate the videos on various online platforms for viewers in the country.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian sought a response from the Union government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, among others, in a PIL filed jointly by two advocates Shashank Shekhar Jha and Apurva Arhatia.

The petitioners pointed out that currently, there was no law or autonomous body governing the digital content made available to the public at large without any filter or screening resulting in abuse of artistic liberty.

They claimed over 40 OTT (Over the Top) and video streaming platforms providing paid, ad-inclusive, and free content abused the freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under the Constitution.

"No censoring allows exploitation of creative liberty and pushes for more ideas to get incorporated which in turn let writers, directors, and producers to experiment limitless due to which there has been more violence, sex scenes, obscene languages and even characters smoking on screen- that would normally be cut or displayed alongside health warnings," their plea stated.

"Due to no monitoring body, the language of the contents has become more colloquial. Visuals and dialogues are crueler and more barbaric," they claimed.

The petitioners further pointed out the Internet and Mobile Association of India had announced the formation of its Digital Content Complaints Council to address government and user complaints related to content on streaming platforms.

However, several OTT and a streaming platform like Netflix, Amazon Prime, TVF Play, Yupp TV, Hungama Play, YouTube, and Facebook had given their dissent to sign the self-regulatory code.

The petitioners said that the Defence Ministry had recently written to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) urging that production houses may be advised to obtain an NOC from it before the telecast of any film, documentary or web series on Army theme in the public domain.