The Law Commission of India, as a part of a process looking into the laws pertaining to the governance of media in India, is also taking a look issues related to Social media and privacy, apart from cross media ownership, paid news, fake sting operations, trial by media and regulation of government owned media. You may download the consultation paper here, and submit your views to lci-dla@nic.in. The paper was released around the 20th of May, so you should get yor submissions in latest by the 10th of June. Once ready, MediaNama will publish its submission to the Law Commission, for your reference. We had submitted our views to the Standing Committee on IT on the issue of Paid News (download), which you can refer to here. Questions that the Law Commission is looking into: A. Social Media and Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000: 1. Should the existing law be amended to define what constitutes “objectionable content”? 2. Should Section 66A of the IT Act be retained in its present form or should it be modified/ repealed? 3. Is there a need for a regulatory authority with powers to ban/suspend coverage of objectionable material? If yes, should the regulatory authority be self-regulatory or should it have statutory powers? B. Cross Media Ownership 1. Is there a current need for restrictions on cross control/ownership across the media sector? If so, what shape should such restrictions take? 2. Are mergers and acquisitions guidelines necessary for the sector to regulate concentration of media…
