Current Affairs

UPSC Digital India Act, 2023 - English

Why in news: The Union government outlined the Digital India Act, 2023 which is a broad overhaul of the decades-old Information Technology Act, 2000.

Main objective of the Digital India Bill:

• The Digital India Bill aims to ensure that the internet in India is open, free from user harm and criminality and that there is an institutional mechanism of accountability.
• The legislation will cover emerging technologies, algorithms of social media platforms, artificial intelligence, and user risks, as well as the diversity of the internet and the regulation of intermediaries.

Provisions under Digital India Act 2023:

Freedom of Expression:

• Social media platforms’ own moderation policies may now be reduced to constitutional protections for freedom of expression and Fundamental speech rights.
  • Recent amendment to the IT Rules, 2021 says that platforms must respect users’ free speech rights.
• Three Grievance Appellate Committees have now been established to take up content complaints by social media users.
  • These are now likely to be subsumed into the Digital India Act.

Online Safety:

• The Act will cover Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deepfakes, cybercrime, competition issues among internet platforms, and data protection.
• The government put out a draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill in 2022, which would be one of the four prongs of the Digital India Act, with the National Data Governance Policy and amendments to the Indian Penal Code being others, along with rules formulated under the Digital India Act.

New Adjudicatory Mechanism:

• A new “Adjudicatory Mechanism” for criminal and civil offenses committed online would come into place.

Safe Harbour:

• The government is reconsidering a key aspect of cyberspace — ‘safe harbour’, which is the principle that allows social media platforms to avoid liability for posts made by users.
• The term has been reined in recent years by regulations like the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which require platforms to take down posts when ordered to do so by the government, or when required by law.

Constitutional and legal Protection:

• Fundamental speech rights (Art 19) cannot be violated by any platform.
  • However, social media platform’s own moderation policies may violate constitutional protections for freedom of expression.
• There is certainly a case that can be made that weaponization of disinformation is not the same as free speech, and that needs to be addressed.
• IT Rules, 2021: It says that platforms must respect users’ free speech rights.
  • Three Grievance Appellate Committees have now been established to take up content complaints by social media users.
  • Since the appellate committee portal’s launch, seventeen appeals have already been filed.

The need for a New Act:

• Since the IT Act of 2000 was enacted, there have been many revisions and amendments (IT Act Amendment of 2008, IT Rules 2011).
• However, because the IT Act was originally designed only to protect e-commerce transactions and define cybercrime offenses, it did not deal with the nuances of the current cybersecurity landscape adequately nor did it address data privacy rights.
• Without a complete replacement of the governing digital laws, the IT Act would fail to keep up with the growing sophistication and rate of cyber-attacks.
• The new Digital India Act also envisages to act as catalysts for Indian economy by enabling more innovation, more startups, and at the same time protecting the citizens of India in terms of safety, trust, and accountability.

What need to be done

Regulation of hate speech and disinformation on the Internet is a must and intermediaries, including digital news media and social media platforms, have an accountable role to play.

Currently, there are more than 760 million internet users in the country and this is to touch 1.2 billion in coming years. Though the internet is good and aids in connectivity, there are several user harms around it. Therefore, it is essential to bring in laws that will provide new frames on the rights and duties of the citizens and also speaks about the obligation to collect data.

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