The Digital India Bill UPSC
Source : The Hindu
GS II : Government policies and issues arising out of it
Overview
- Salient provisions of the Digital India Bill
- Need for a new Act
Why in News ?
The MeitY has been building consensus on the proposed Digital India Bill that will replace India’s 23-year-old IT Act 2000.
Key Facts
Background
- The IT Act of 2000 was written 22 years ago during the initial era of internet.
- In 2000, pre-digital India made provisions for the emerging IT ecosystem because there were no current internet-based services like e-
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Commerce or social media platforms.
- Limited mandate: legal acceptance of electronic transactions, records, and signatures made in India via electronic means.
- Internet, technology, and information have given citizens more power.
- However, these have also brought up difficulties such as user injury, uncertainty in user rights, security, women’s safety, orchestrated information warfare, radicalization, and dissemination of hate speech, as well as false information and unfair business practises.
Salient provisions of the Digital India Bill
- Classification of intermediaries: To assign distinct rules to various sorts of intermediates, such as social media platforms, e-commerce platforms, AI platforms, and fact-checking platforms.
- In order to classify intermediaries into appropriate groups, it necessitates that they conduct risk evaluations.
- A new Internet regulator: similar to the TRAI or the SEBI.
- Deliberate disinformation, identity theft, child cyberbullying, and other behaviours might all be considered crimes by the MeitY.
- There may also be changes to some of the fundamental guidelines that now govern online platforms, such as safe harbour standards.
- Penalties for infractions and user damages using developing technologies, such as ChatGPT and generative AI systems.
Need for a new Act
- After the IT Act of 2000 was passed, several changes and amendments have been made
- Aim of defining the digital world that it controls and emphasising the data management standards.
- IT Act was initially intended to safeguard e-commerce transactions and outline cybercrime offences, it did not sufficiently address either data privacy rights or the intricacies of the present cybersecurity scenario.
- The IT Act would not be able to keep up with the speed and increasing sophistication of cyberattacks without a comprehensive revision of the governing digital laws.
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