{"id":36009,"date":"2023-06-21T02:41:55","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T21:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=36009"},"modified":"2025-04-21T14:18:40","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T08:48:40","slug":"the-digital-india-bill-online-fact-checkers-may-need-to-register-with-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/the-digital-india-bill-online-fact-checkers-may-need-to-register-with-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital India Bill and Fact-checking Unit"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>About the Digital India Bill<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Key Provisions of the Digital India Bill<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The Fact-checking Unit<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in News?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Online fact-checking platforms could be required to obtain a registration from the Centre, as part of a government plan to seek greater accountability from them.<\/li>\n<li>The measure is currently being considered as a key provision under the upcoming Digital India Bill, successor to India\u2019s core Internet law.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>About the Digital India Bill:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a key component of a \u201c<strong>comprehensive legal framework<\/strong>\u201d that the government is preparing for the online space.<\/li>\n<li>It will subsume the <strong>Information Technology Act 2020<\/strong>, which according to experts and government officials <strong>needs a revamp owing to changing internet scenarios<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>The proposed bill, alongside <strong>the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill 2022 <\/strong>and the Indian Telecommunication Bill 2022, will contribute to the evolving framework on <strong>regulation, consumer rights and innovation<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Once finalised (draft could be released soon), the Bill will <strong>impact Big Tech companies<\/strong> like Google, Amazon, Meta, Amazon and Apple, among others.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Key Provisions of the Digital India Bill:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A departure from the long-held understanding of \u2018intermediaries\u2019 on the Internet<\/strong> &#8211; sites that typically act as a platform for users to access services on the Internet.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Present Scenario:<\/strong> Under the IT Act 2000, <strong>there is no classification of intermediaries.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Proposal: <\/strong>Intermediaries will be classified as social media platforms, e-commerce platforms, AI platforms,<strong> fact-checking platforms<\/strong>, etc., to prescribe specific rules to different types of intermediaries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>New Regulator for Internet: <\/strong>On the lines of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) or the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Other provisions:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The IT Ministry could classify<\/strong> deliberate misinformation, doxxing, impersonation, identity theft, catfishing, and cyberbullying of children as offences under the new Bill.<\/li>\n<li>The Bill may also change some of the fundamental rules that presently apply to internet platforms, such as<strong> safe harbour norms.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Penal provisions for violations and user harms related to emerging technologies<\/strong>, including generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google\u2019s Bard, will also be addressed in the Bill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Fact-checking Unit:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Earlier proposal:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had <strong>previously suggested<\/strong> that news that has been deemed &#8220;fake&#8221; by the PIB&#8217;s fact-checking team will not be permitted on online intermediaries.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The reference to PIB was dropped<\/strong> from the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules 2023.<\/li>\n<li>The social media companies have submitted a proposal to the Center to establish the <strong>Misinformation Combat Alliance<\/strong> &#8211; <strong>a network of fact-checkers<\/strong> that will verify misleading content on their platforms.\n<ul>\n<li>The alliance will act as a \u201c<strong>certification body<\/strong>\u201d that will serve as a means of identifying &#8220;trusted&#8221; fact-checkers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Recent proposal:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Online fact-checking platforms could be required to obtain a <strong>registration <\/strong>from the Centre.<\/li>\n<li>The registration plan could be<strong> carried out in phases<\/strong>, with fact-checking units of legacy and reputed media companies being allowed to seek registration in the first phase.<\/li>\n<li>There is also a plan to not register \u2018non-legacy\u2019 fact checking bodies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The government is also in conversation with the industry to develop a <strong>self-regulatory organisation for fact-checking information<\/strong> which does not relate to the government.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1) What is the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill 2022?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The purpose of the Bill is to \u201cprovide for the processing of digital personal data in a manner that recognises both the right of individuals to protect their personal data and the need to process personal data for lawful purposes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2) What is Bard?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Bard is a conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Google, based initially on the LaMDA family of large language models and later the PaLM LLM.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/india\/online-fact-checkers-may-need-to-register-with-govt-bill-on-table-8678543\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Online fact-checkers may need to register with Govt: Bill on table<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Digital India Bill is a key component of a \u201ccomprehensive legal framework\u201d that the government is preparing for the online space<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":36010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36009","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}