If you read an editorial about the proposed regulations for streaming services in a mainstream news publication recently, then you might have come across phrases like "controversy around OTT platforms" and "lack of regulation". Such descriptions, even from publications that largely opposed strict rules for streaming services, have effectively swept under the carpet one of the most significant steps impacting creative freedoms in our country in the last decade. There was no "controversy". There were conservative attitudes, sure. But none of those attitudes were pronounced. Some are upset about foul language in web series. But that's because TV and cinema have been subjected to a state that is hell bent on suppressing realistic portrayals of everyday life on the big screen and the small screen for generations. An actual exercise of creative freedom can thus feel out of place and obscene; but that's what parental controls are for. The conservative attitudes, if fleshed out critically, at worst translate into this: Indians cannot be trusted to take informed decisions about what they watch, and what their family watches. As such, it is necessary for the government to make sure some content is completely shut off from the public's reach. The new IT rules 2021 effectively extend this power of the state to the online world, and amounts to al all-out attack on creative freedom if there ever was one. The mainstream media, on its part, completely missed this. Instead, it has afforded space and legitimacy to dubious political outfits in recent…
