To curb the dangers posed by misinformation through deepfakes, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology notified the Rajya Sabha on Friday. They have issued advisories to major social media platforms, urging them to incorporate suitable provisions within their rules, user agreements, and regulations. These provisions aim to prevent users from hosting, displaying, uploading, modifying, publishing, transmitting, storing, updating, or sharing any content prohibited under IT rules.Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar shared the input, clarifying that “the policies of the government are aimed at ensuring that the Internet in India is open, safe, trusted and accountable to all users.”
Chandrasekhar informed the Upper House that cheating by personation by using computer resources is punishable with imprisonment up to three years and a fine up to Rs 1 lakh under Section 66 D of Information Technology Act, 2000.
Further, the Minister responded in a written reply, “Under Rule 3(1)(b)(vii) of Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, (“IT Rules, 2021) every social media intermediary is mandated to observe due diligence, including ensuring the rules and regulations, privacy policy or user agreement of the intermediary inform users not to host any content that impersonates another person.”
“Under Rule 3(2)(b) of IT Rules, 2021, an intermediary is obliged to remove and disable access to content in nature of impersonation within 24 hours from the receipt of a complaint in relation to such content,” said the Minister while responding to the query of Independent MP Kartikeya Sharma, adding, “Under Rule 7 of IT Rules, 2021, where an intermediary fails to observe these rules, the provisions of sub-section (1) of Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (immunity) shall not be applicable to such intermediary and the intermediary shall be liable for punishment under any law, including the provisions of the Act and the Indian Penal Code,” he added.
