Online journalists have expressed concern over Information and Broadcasting (I&B) ministry’s bid to extend age-old broadcasting rules and restrictions to the internet. Over 100 journalists and online professionals wrote a petition to I&B minister Smriti Irani, who has recently constituted a committee to introduce licensing and content regulation for the web.

In an order dated April 4, the I&B ministry stated that the guidelines shall be sourced primarily from two sources – The Programming & Advertising Code for TV channels put in place by the government, and the norms circulated by traditional media organisations such as Press Council of India, News Broadcasters Association and Indian Broadcasting Foundation for their members.

The petition has been simultaneously forwarded to Prime Minister’s Office, as also to the Ministry of Information and Technology as well as the Minister of Law and Justice. The petition makes a case for existing norms and guidelines for regulating content on the internet.

“Even a cursory reading of the Information and Technology (IT) Act would reveal that all content is covered under its scope. The Act, in fact, goes beyond laying down guidelines, and incorporates stiff punishments for those who violate the content norms laid down in it. Similarly, several other laws, such as the Indian Penal Code, also contain clear dos and don’ts for sharing of content, including over the Internet. Therefore, to say that there are no norms and guidelines for content online is contrary to facts,” the petition says.

The committee formed to ‘regulate’ online media mostly comprises government officials. One of the terms of this committee is to examine international standards while India is hailed for taking a strong and unequivocal stand on net neutrality.

Seema Mustafa, founder editor of The Citizen, a news and current affairs website, warned that chances of ‘online content regulation’ being used for suppression of opinions critical of the government remain very high. “The attempt to control the internet comes from classic insecurity associated with governments fearful of dissent,” she said.

“The essentially bureaucratic composition of the committee set up by the Central government is an indication of the direction the so-called regulation mechanism can be expected to take. People all over the world have opposed and stopped such attempts by governments to control space that has become increasingly valuable for individuals and increasingly for independent media,” she added.

The petition says that this could have a drastic impact on online news.

“Internet-based media, by its very nature, promotes broader democratic values globally and cannot be dealt with in the way national governments try to regulate or control traditional media,” said MK Venu, founding editor of The Wire. “Global media aggregators like Facebook, Google and others have changed the content and distribution landscape in ways that national governments cannot easily control. Nor should they try to. It is a free, democratic space and must remain as such,” he added.

Geeta Seshu, a journalist and a media analyst,  said, “Today, digital media in India is evolving into a space which allows for access to information, untrammelled by traditional gatekeeping structures and despite infrastructural limitations like low broadband speeds or poor internet penetration.”

Madhu Trehan, the co-founder of Newslaundry stated that the proposal to regulate (and its need at all) must be a consultative process in the most open and transparent way. Trehan drew an analogy saying that regulating the internet is akin to regulating a printing press and that its effects will be far-reaching and enormous.

“The internet is the most important invention since the printing press, with a bigger impact than the press. To regulate the printing press would mean strangling thousands and millions of books down the ages that have transformed the world. That is the impact we are looking at. The internet is the printing press of the digital age. A proposal for its regulation must be debated threadbare before any action,” she said.

Raghav Bahl, founder of Network18 and Quintillion Media, urged the government to look at the approach taken by other democracies in dealing with issues of online content. “Any hasty action by the government will likely result in overreach,” he said. “Therefore, we believe that the starting point for the government should be to study the global best practices for online content regulation. Many advanced democracies have already debated this and come up with good frameworks that ensure free speech and transparent regulation. No need to reinvent the wheel,” he added.

The journalists, who signed the petition, include veterans of the industry like Raghav Bahl, MK Venu, Madhu Trehan, Nalini Singh, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Shivam Vij, Sanjay Pugalia and Aniruddha Bahal, as well as younger generation media entrepreneurs like Dhanya Rajendran (The News Minute), Seema Mustafa (The Citizen), Ritu Kapur (The Quint), Tanmay Bhat (All India Bakchod) and Bharat Nayak (The Logical Indian).

A website, onlinefreedomfoundation.org, has also been set up to allow ordinary citizens to oppose the move to regulate online content.