The Indian Music Industry’s response to MeitY’s Draft “The Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018” outlines its concerns about the definitions of an intermediary, safe harbour and the content takedown notifications. These are all the important points the association raised in its submission. The notes are paraphrased unless explicitly quoted. General: The association asks MeitY to “set out clear rules” on primary and/or secondary liability for intermediaries that “engage or whose services are used in copyright infringing activities.” Definition of intermediaries The IT Act, 2000 defines “intermediaries” broadly, and the 2018 Rules should take care that “liability privileges and/or other benefits and obligations of the regime are not applied to types of service for which they are not intended.” IL limitations “only make sense if the underlying liability for the relevant wrongful or tortious act is clearly established.” On Safe Harbour, the reinstatement of the deleted Rule 3(4) “Any intermediary safe harbours should be limited to technical, automatic and passive intermediaries and on the condition that they operate in the manner expected of a diligent economic operator to prevent the availability of infringing content on their platforms.” IMI says that entities like YouTube which “bear little resemblance to essential infrastructure providers” have relied on safe harbours, depriving copyright holders of fair revenues. This also gives these services an unfair advantage over other digital music services which license directly from right holders. It cites the ‘Value Gap’ market distortion which states that “active user upload services are (i) engaging in…
