Delhi High Court judge Justice Prathiba M Singh called for an adjudicatory mechanism to regulate streaming platforms and broadcasters on Wednesday. "Unchecked growth [of OTT streaming platforms] could also lead to sudden disruption, especially because there are local issues and sensitivities which would get affected," Singh said, recommending something akin to the neutral adjudicatory system established by the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy that is used for resolving domain name disputes. Singh was speaking at the FICCI event Fast Track Digital, broadcast here. "Some self-regulation is on the anvil in the form of the Universal Self-Regulation Code for Online Curated Content Providers. However, the expanse and the effectiveness of this code is not known," Singh said, referring to the self-regulation code signed by most major Indian streaming services that the government has refused to endorse. "And these platforms have been recently brought under the MIB regime with the amendment in the Allocation of Business Rules." Singh said that an independent adjudication framework should be there for broadcasters and streaming services, with their participation. "The convergence of free-to-air broadcasting, OTT, VOD, DTH, has shown that there is a need for an independent adjudicatory mechanism which does not consist of functionaries of broadcasters. In order to lend credibility, transparency and fairness, the same could be under the aegis of an independent service provider," she said. The system that comes closest to what Singh describes is the Digital Content Complaints Committee, an authority conceived by the Internet and Mobile Association of India that ran…
