Photo: Shailendra Pandey

Assembling and programming any form of communication content like signs, signals, writing, pictures, images and sounds, and placing it in electronic form on electro-magnetic waves on specified frequencies and transmitting it through space or cables to make it continuously available on the carrier waves, so as to be accessible to single or multiple users through receiving devices either directly or indirectly.
- Definition of broadcasting in the draft Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill, 2007

FREE SPEECH activists fear this definition can be used to extend the Bill to cover the Internet. “Of course, they will censor the Net using this Bill,” says technology commentator Arun Mehta. “In any case, the Internet can also be used for broadcasting.” That means not only video or TV broadcasting over the Net, or Internet Protocol TV, would be covered, but just about any online activity. The fourth draft in 10 years and the Union information and broadcasting ministry has still not been able to so much as introduce the Broadcast Bill in Parliament, due to massive media opposition. It’s expected to be tabled in Parliament in the winter session. But so far only television news has been the subject of debate on the “draconian” law.

The definition of “broadcasting” in the 2006 draft included a crucial string of words that has now been removed — “continuously streaming it in digital data form on the computer networks”. But experts say the definition as it now stands could still be extended to the Internet. “It also covers point-to-point wireless, even CB/walkie-talkie!” says Mumbai-based Vickram Crishna of Radiphony, a technology resource group. “It can even be used to cover microwave communication through which large parts of the country are still connected.”

At a seminar in New Delhi, the law firm Amarchand Mangaldas had pointed this out in the presence of I&B Secretary Asha Swarup. “That’s not our intention,” Swarup had replied. The firm pointed out that intentions would be immaterial in a court as the law defines broadcasting as being more than just TV channels.

Casting aside this ambiguity in the Broadcast Bill, the I&B ministry is now working on a new set of rules that would bring under its jurisdictionnews and current affairs content on the Internet — all of it. This is being done, sources said, as part of a draft amendment in the Press & Registration of Books Act, 1867. So bloggers writing about news will have to be extra careful, for instance, but the ministry mandarins even expect websites of international media to register in India with an authoritylike the Registrar of Newspapers (RNI).

That the ministry’s intentions do not stop at television channels is also clear from the definition of “programme” in the proposed “Content Code”. The Code is a separate document that would be enforceable through the Broadcast Bill when it becomes an Act. The purpose of the code is to regulate the “quality” of programmes, to “protect the consumers’ interests”, the national interest and the right to privacy. These could give the proposed Broadcasting Regulatory Authority, to be run by bureaucrats answerable to the I&B ministry, as much discretionary powers over the Internet as over television.

In India, the Internet is already regulated by the IT Act, 2000, which is governed by the ministry of communications and information technology. Through this Act, the government created the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN), which among other things is tasked with ensuring a “balanced flow of information”. Aided with a Gazette Notification, CERT-IN arbitrates on requests from various government functionaries for blocking websites. CERT-IN, the department of information technology, as well as the ministry do not reveal the reasons for blocking a website even on requests made through the Right to Information Act.

Experts thus see the I&B ministry’s move to regulate online content as part of its long-running tussle with the communications and IT ministry over who will regulate the Internet. The Convergence Bill, 2000, was supposed to solve it, but it died a premature death.