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As the Centre works on a modern law for the Internet ecosystem to replace the two decade old Information Technology Act, introducing online specific offences is expected to be a key focus of the upcoming Digital India Bill.
The Indian Express has learnt that the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) could classify impersonation, identity theft, catfishing, and cyberbullying of children as offences under the new Bill, recognising that offences in the online world, especially social media platforms, can be unique with no equivalent in the offline world.
“There will be a big focus on different user harms in the new Bill. The ministry is considering adding issues like doxxing, gaslighting, impersonation, cyberbullying and catfishing as offences,” a senior government official said. Catfishing is a term born out of online dating where a user creates false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.
The new Bill will replace the Information Technology Act, 2000, which is currently India’s core legal framework that regulates entities on the Internet. Offences listed in the IT Act are essentially borrowed from the offline world given that the law was passed before the era of social media and online dating platforms became commonplace. India currently does not have any laws around online-specific harms.
To formulate the Digital India Bill, MeitY is learnt to have reached out to more than 200 young people and parents asking for their inputs on what they consider a threat on the Internet. “The aim is to modernise the legal framework, and that means we have to ask a varied set of stakeholders about the harms they face on the Internet,” the official said.
In July, The Indian Express had reported that deliberate online misinformation and doxxing, that is an attempt by a person to publish private information about a particular individual on the internet with malicious intent, could also be classified as online-specific offences.
Earlier this month, this paper reported that MeitY is also considering regulating a wide gamut of online platforms including social media sites, e-commerce entities, fact-checking portals and artificial intelligence (AI)-based platforms under the Digital India Bill.
As such, it could redefine the long-held understanding about what an online intermediary is. Traditionally, these platforms are seen as mere conduits to access services on the Internet, with no control over the content hosted by them.
Under the IT Act, there is no classification of intermediaries. In 2021, MeitY had released Information Technology (IT) Rules, which for the first time, created a separate classification for social media intermediaries and introduced specific regulations for them. On Monday (January 2), the ministry released draft amendments to these rules where it classified online gaming platforms as intermediaries as well, and placed proposed additional due diligence requirements on them.
The Digital India Bill is also expected to introduce a regulator for the digital space akin to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), introduce penal consequences for violations, prescribe governing provisions for emerging technologies like the metaverse and blockchain, and expected to have provisions for algorithmic accountability of social media platforms, The Indian Express had reported earlier this month.
