The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has decided to keep a watch on these Over The Top (OTT) platforms that operated without any content restrictions or governing laws previously.
The government has always been on and off since 2018 at the decision of bringing these platforms under supervision, but the latest amendment added to the law that has been signed by the President of India Ram Nath Govind to the Government of India Rules 1961 as on November 9.
CBFC has been imposing strict censorship on movies while all other sources of media are also controlled by dedicated organizational bodies, except online streaming platforms.
Several countries have already imposed laws or are considering laws to regulate these platforms. The need for this law is seemingly due to the increase in user base and access to these OTT and the potential influence it can have on its population of the young audience. Countries like the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Australia are already leading the way and after so many considerations India has decided to join the gang.
The ministry under the supervision of Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Information and Broadcasting Ministry will be taking charge of all streaming platforms like Disney+Hotstar, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5 and will be casting censorship on their contents.
These companies earlier claimed that they self-regulate their content but the Government has decided otherwise.
Prakash Javadekar had stated that he had given a call for a talk regarding the credibility of the self-regulation claims of these companies, but they hadn’t come up with a satisfactory proposal about their terms and conditions for regulation. He had insisted on the necessity of censoring these platforms several times earlier.
