The India Digital Act Will Scrap Information Technology Act; MoS IT

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for Electronics & IT(MoS), recently said that The India Digital Act is coming up in April 2023, one of the most significant steps taken to protect digital personal data of India’ citizens and have the rights to govern entire country’s Digital Law in coming decade.

The Bill (India Digital Act) which is in last stages of being drafted by consulting senior stakeholders, keeping in mind the comprehensive IT ecosystem and enable that all rules and regulations followed thereby.

The key focus of the law is to bring in regulation for the internet which is similar to Telecom Regularity Authority of India.

The purpose of the bill is to process digital personal data in a manner that recognizes both the right of the individuals to protect their personal data and the need to process personal data for lawful purposes.”

Mr. Chandrashekhar said ‘the Act will enable and support a vibrant start-up and innovation for the Indian ecosystem’. In an interactive session he further said, “India will lead the world in all things blockchain- both in size and scale and how we migrate to web 3.0.”

The draft is likely to be issued in April, followed up with more rounds of public consultation for about 45-60 days before being placed in the Parliament for final approval.

Key points in the bill:

Creating new regulations around newer technology, including 5G, IoT devices, cloud computing, metaverse, blockchain, and cryptocurrency.

Removing “safe harbor” immunity for online intermediaries for purposeful misinformation or other content violations from third parties. Under the Digital India Act, each intermediary category will be subject to new regulations with a heavy focus on fact-checking to prevent misinformation or misuse of data.

The Digital India Act will begin to categorize all online intermediaries into different buckets, such as cloud service providers (CSPs), social media platforms, internet service providers (ISPs), metaverse, OTT providers, online gaming, and more.

Protecting user safety and privacy will continue to be the center of the Digital India Act, which hopes to adequately address and monitor the use of AI in today’s world said Chandrashekhar.

The India Digital India Act will focus on accountability keeping in mind that AI has boundless opportunities to build and innovate; it also represents new avenues for misuse and harm.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) plans to classify new forms cybercrime, such as cyberbullying, impersonation, identity theft, identify fraud and malicious unauthorized sharing of personal information, as new criminal offenses under the Digital India Act. Previously, these offenses were penalized through fines and not criminalized through the IT Act.

Regulating monetization of content creation and its creators by advertising technology (adtech) companies.

This will help build up Indian content creators and their digital platforms. With global adtech companies like Amazon and Google dominating the ad space, it has become extremely difficult for Indian content creators to negotiate revenue sharing and become visible on a global scale.

Further the minister said the aim is to increase India’s cyber resiliency and sovereignty so that the country will have the ability and access to all technology and platforms without relying so heavily on foreign services.

Removing monopolies in the digital space which is predominantly crowded by (big tech) and allowing fair competition, from local start-ups and more choices for users. The goal to increase India’s cyber resiliency and sovereignty so that the country will have the ability and access to all technology and platforms without relying so heavily on foreign services said Chandrashekhar.

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