The Supreme Court on Thursday said that there is a need for a “neutral, independent and autonomous” body for regulating content on online platforms. The observation was made by the bench of the top court, comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, while hearing petitions filed by podcaster Ranveer Allahabadia and other YouTubers challenging the FIRs related to the obscene content in Samay Raina’s “India’s Got Latent” show.
Attorney General for India R. Venkataramani and Solicitor General for India Tushar Mehta told the bench that the Centre has proposed some new guidelines regarding regulating the online content, reported Live Law.
“I have spoken to the concerned Minister. Before dealing with obscenity, we must first deal with wrongful acts. Anyone can create a YouTube channel, say anything under the garb of free speech, and the law is helpless. That cannot continue,” Mehta told the apex court.
The CJI expressed shock that content creators have no regulation. “So I create my own channel, I am not accountable to anyone…somebody has to be accountable!” CJI Kant said, as quoted by the media house.
Freedom of speech is an invaluable right but it cannot lead to perversity,” SG Mehta said. “Right to speech has to be respected, suppose there is a programme, if it has adult content, so some warning in advance must be there,” he added.
Notably, advocate Prashant Bhushan, representing a professor with disabilities, raised concerns about labelling content as “anti-national”.
“Forget shreds of anti-national, supposing there is a video which shows that this part is not part of India, what do you do about that?” Justice Bagchi reacted.
The latest developments come against the backdrop of earlier hearings, where the Supreme Court reprimanded several stand-up comedians, including Samay Raina, Vipul Goyal, Balraj Paramjeet Singh Ghai, Sonali Thakkar, and Nishant Tanwar, for making insensitive jokes about an infant suffering from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
