New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday said that there is a need for a “neutral, independent and autonomous” body for regulating content on online platforms. The observation was made by the bench of the top court, comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, while hearing petitions filed by podcaster Ranveer Allahabadia and other YouTubers challenging the FIRs related to the obscene content in Samay Raina’s “India’s Got Latent” show.
Attorney General for India R. Venkataramani and Solicitor General for India Tushar Mehta told the bench that the Centre has proposed some new guidelines regarding regulating the online content, reported Live Law.
The CJI expressed shock that content creators have no regulation. “So I create my own channel, I am not accountable to anyone…somebody has to be accountable!” CJI Kant said, as quoted by the media house.
“Freedom of speech is an invaluable right but it cannot lead to perversity,” SG Mehta said. “Right to speech has to be respected, suppose there is a programme, if it has adult content, so some warning in advance must be there,” he added.
The issue of ‘anti-national’ content was also highlighted during the hearing. “Where the content is perceived as anti-national. Will the content creator take responsibility for it?” Justice Joymalya Bagchi said, as quoted by NDTV.
“The difficulty we are facing is the response time, once the scurrilous material is uploaded, by the time the authorities react, it has gone viral, to millions of viewers, so how do you control that?” he added.
Notably, advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing a professor with disabilities, raised concerns about labelling content as “anti-national”.
“Forget shreds of anti-national, supposing there is a video which shows that this part is not part of India, what do you do about that?” Justice Bagchi reacted.
