PUNE: While the Ministry for Electronics and Information Technology (MEIT) has prepared the draft Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2018 and has invited suggestions from people, cyber experts have pointed that it will be a ‘tough job’ for online platforms to deploy technology to enable access to content seen as “unlawful”. The draft rule pushes the intermediary to publish the rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement for access or usage of the intermediary’s computer resource. 

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 text, image and video format. There has also been a rise in the number of social media applications which is inviting content from people in text, image and video formats. Considering this, the challenge to regulate the online content becomes challenging for online platforms. 

Speaking on the issue, 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 cyber crime cases,” said D’costa.

The expert pointed out that of the total internet users, there will be around 2 per cent users who are miscreants 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,” added D’costa.

Speaking on the spread of paedophilic content on social media, D’costa said that 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,” he said. 

“The last time IT Act was amended was in 2008 and now it is been 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.

Another cyber expert Anil Raj of Cybervault Securities Solutions Private Limited said that although such ‘unlawful’ content cannot be taken off the internet completely, we can aim at reducing the number of such content. “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?” added Raj.

The expert pointed out 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,” added Raj.