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The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed proceedings pending before High Courts including the petition before Punjab & Haryana High Court so far as the cases concerning regulation of Over The Top(OTT) platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, Disney Hotstar etc.

A bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud stated that since notice had been issued on the on February 9, there was no reason for the High Court's to continue hearing the cases.

The Top Court is hearing a batch of plea's on the issue's concerning OTT guidelines.

Today, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the Court that the case(s) will need to be heard extensively and that the Court had already issued notice in Centre's plea seeking transfer of similar petitions before the Top Court.

At this juncture, the bench noted that the proceedings shall remain stayed before High Courts but since the office report reflected that service is incomplete, it shall abstain from transferring the cases to itself for now.

A bench of Justices S Abdul Nazeer and Sanjiv Khanna had earlier issued notice to the respondents on plea(s) seeking guidelines to regulate the hitherto unregulated, uncertified, pornographic, sexually explicit, vulgar, profane and legally restricted contents broadcasted on the online platforms including (but not limited to) Netflix, Amazon Prime etc., or in the alternative; seeking a writ/order/direction to the respondents to frame legal provisions/guidelines for the same, and; to remove such contents.

The Petitioner(s) is an NGO (Justice for Rights Foundation) with one of its objectives ‘To work for Protecting Human Rights and Fundamental Rights’ has taken up this issue affecting people at large. Another petition has been filed by Advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha.

The main contentions of the petitioner NGO as raised in the petition revolves around setting up a regulating body, licencing, censorship and availability of pre-screening remedy.

“the said online platforms are broadcasting content which is self-generated and also stream third party content in form of Internet/Web-series, movies, videos, episodes etc. and the said streaming is not regulated; thereby giving them a virtual license to stream web-series, movies, videos and episodes without any certification by any certifying authority, not regulated by law and devoid of any guidelines by the Courts.”
- Plea in Supreme Court

The petition further states that the RTI dated 23.08.2018 filed in Ministry of Information and Broadcasting seeking information about the name and details of the Licensing authority and also the Act(s), Laws, Bye-Laws, Rules and Standing Orders which govern and regulate the content on online web streaming platforms and to which the reply (15.09.2018) by Respondent had stated that “intermediaries are regulated under the IT Act, 2000 and the Rules made thereunder. Section 79 of the IT Act puts onus on the intermediaries to observe due diligence while discharging their duties under the Act and observe guidelines as prescribed by the Central Government”.

To the above reply the petitioner contends, “That section 79 of the IT Act does not apply to all the online platforms in the present case as a blanket provision as the platforms stream third party content and also give self-generated content.”

The petitioner also stated that, “even if an online platform exercise self-regulation, it still has to comply with established legal procedure and provisions of relevant laws in order to broadcast content on its streaming platform.”

The petitioner prayed for the following reliefs in his petition,

“1. Frame guidelines in order to regulate the said online platforms and contents broadcasted on the online platforms, Or in the alternative;

2. Issue a writ/order/direction in the nature of writ of mandamus or any other writ/order/direction in the similar nature to the Respondents to frame legal provisions/guidelines in order to regulate the said online platforms and contents broadcasted on the online platforms, and;

3. Direct the respondents to pass necessary directions to all online platforms to remove legally restricted contents with immediate effect, and;

(Case title: Justice for Rights Foundation v. Union of India, 2019 | Case Title: Union of India & Anr. Vs. Sudhesh Kumar Singh | Shashank Shekhar Jha Vs. Union of India)