18 OTT platforms banned for serving obscenity
Indian govt bans 18 OTT apps for posting ‘vulgar and obscene’ content. The Government of India has taken action against the platforms providing obscene content on the internet. they have disobeyed the rules after multiple warnings by govt.
Reason for the ban
The Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, while explaining the reason for this ban on OTT platforms, noted, “A significant portion of the content hosted on these platforms was found to be obscene, vulgar and portrayed women in a demeaning manner. It depicted nudity and sexual acts in various inappropriate contexts, such as relationships between teachers and students, incestuous family relationships, etc.
“The content included sexual innuendos and, in some instances, prolonged segments of pornographic and sexually explicit scenes devoid of any thematic or societal relevance..” the I&B Ministry wrote.
Ministry of I&B takes action against obscene content on OTT Platforms
💠18 OTT Platforms blocked for obscene and vulgar content@ianuragthakur @Murugan_MoS @airnewsalerts @PIB_India @DDNewslive pic.twitter.com/OF6CrFb1va
— Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (@MIB_India) March 14, 2024
Showed women in a derogatory manner
The government says that their content was obscene. In many places women were shown in a derogatory manner. Also, nudity and sex content was served in various contexts. Apart from the relationship between student and teacher, family relationships were also shown in a wrong manner.
The government has taken this decision to ban under the provisions of the IT Act, 2000 after consulting ministries/departments and domain experts having expertise in the field of women’s rights and child rights along with media, entertainment world.
This was held to be a violation of Sections 67 and 67A of the IT Act, Section 292 of the IPC and Section 4 of the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986
Users and downloads of banned platform
Talking about the scale of these OTT apps, the union government said that one of these apps had amassed over 1 crore downloads while the other two had over 50 lakh downloads on the Google Play Store. Meanwhile, the social media handles of these OTT platforms had a cumulative followership of over 32 lakh users.
According to the government release, the I&B ministry has blocked access to 12 Facebook accounts, 17 Instagram accounts, 16 X (formerly Twitter) accounts and 12 YouTube accounts. Total of 57 social media account has been banned in regards to obscene content .
Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting weighed responsibility of platform
Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur has emphasised the responsibility of the platforms to not propagate obscenity, vulgarity and abuse under the guise of ‘creative expression’.
The decision to act against the OTT platforms was taken under the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 in consultation with other ministries/departments of the Government, and domain experts specialising in media and entertainment, women’s rights, and child rights, the statement said.
To foster the growth of OTT platform ministry of I&B started conducting sensitization efforts with its self regulatory body which was set up in IT act in 2021 , Govt conducts meetings ,webinar and workshop in order to develop OTT platform better place to watch as entertainment industry . for that several measures have been taken including introduction of OTT awrds for webseries at 54th international film festival of India . Hence govt is committed to frame a regulatory framework under the IT rules 2021.