Content becomes challenging for online platforms itself

PUNE: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE- The Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology has prepared a draft, Information Technology Rule 2018 and has come up with suggestions from people and cyber experts have pointed that it will be a tough job for online platform to deploy technology to enable access to content seen as unlawful. The draft as well as pushes the intermediary to publish the rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement for access or usage of the intercessor’s computer resource.

Other side, experts have pointed out that with free internet and the rising number of internet users in the country, there has been a rise in content in terms of text, image and video. There is also a rise in the number of social media applications which is inviting content from people in text, image and video. Seeing this, the challenge to regulate the online content becomes challenging for online platforms.

Cyber expert, Anil Raj added that the solution lies in making people aware and mature to handle the content. In religious communities, we can create experts who can help people in verifying the content. Similarly, people should rely on experts for verifying the content and not believe on the internet as the number of fake messages on the online platform is massive.

The technology can bring some small changes to curb such content, however, it is a mammoth task. While there is keyword filter for textual content how can we filter audio, image and video contents which are unlawful.

Another cyber expert Herald D’costa said that the rule is a big step which is beneficial. However, laws have always been there, and we need massive awareness about the law and also conviction in cybercrime cases.

He also specified that of the total internet users, there are around 2 % users who are troublemakers and are creating fake, morphed contents. “Our energy should be focussed on catching these miscreants and not affecting the privacy of other 98 per cent people. The rule states to break the end-to-end encryption of online content which will affect the privacy of genuine internet users,” D’costa said.

The law for the same is already there while there is a need for awareness in people about such a thing. “People carrying such content on their devices can be penalised by the law. However, people are not aware of the law and so the online platforms should carry a disclaimer message and even after this, a user is violating the law then we can call it intentional and then take action against the person,” D’costa added.

“The last time IT Act was amended was in 2008 and now it is being a decade and things are changing rapidly in the online world which points the need for us to bring rapid changes in the IT Act,” added D’costa.