Big Tech Urges India To Relax New IT Rules
Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), a group that represents US-based Big Tech firms has urged The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to make changes to its proposed amendments to the country`s new IT Rules, 2021 which would "negate the government`s commitment to ease of doing business".
The coalition that represents Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon, Twitter, and Spotify, amongst others, through a letter to the IT Ministry, has conveyed its strong opposition to the new IT Rules 2021. The colation argues that the new rules would "affect continuity in business operations for all intermediaries that have made significant investments in the country in regard to technology, workforce, and other resources."
The coalition argues that tech platforms are mere intermediaries and that restrictions on the user-end would be more beneficial in the larger context. "It is ultimately the user who determines the nature of content to be communicated or transmitted on the platforms/computer resources operated by the intermediaries. Given this, it may be more beneficial to impose mandates prohibiting the dissemination of certain types of content on the user itself," the coalition stated.
"An industry-led self-regulatory mechanism will enable businesses to adopt best practices and ensure long-term solutions by identifying trends and gaps. In this regard, we request MeitY for a period of at least six months to implement such a self-regulatory mechanism," the group said.
"These obligations should only attach to services or parts of services that enable sharing of material to all end users, and where the intermediary reasonably knows, based on past experience, that there is a propensity for material to be amplified or accessed virally on the service," the letter argued.
"We request MeitY to consider providing clarity on the manner in which `due diligence, privacy and transparency` expectations of users must be met over and above existing compliances already present in Indian law," it added.
