Indian Parliamentary Committee Tells The Government To Protect Intermediary Liability

from the good-for-them dept

Intermediary liability may sound like a boring legal concept but it's both pretty straightforward and important. It's the basic concept of whether or not the maker of a tool or service should be held liable for what someone else does with their product. That is, do we blame Ford for bad drivers? Most people, if they think honestly about this, will recognize that increased secondary liability can create a massive chill on innovation, because as people misuse your product, you get blamed for it. That doesn't seem right, but it means some new technologies don't get developed just because some people might misuse them. But if we look at all of the incredible useful technologies out there that can also be misused at times (cars, phones, the internet, computers, VCRs, etc. etc. etc.) I think most people will admit that we're better off letting these things exist, and dealing with any misuse directly.

Unfortunately, those threatened by such misuses often ramp up the moral panics to crazy levels and it leads to politicians putting liability burdens on intermediaries, meaning that less innovation happens. The Indian government, not too long ago, pushed out some "IT Rules" that seemed to increase intermediary liability and, like clockwork, we saw Indian courts holding service providers liable for actions done by their users. That's pretty dangerous.

Thankfully, however, it looks like there are some reasonable people who are leading India towards a rethinking on this one. A Parliamentary Committee has been studying the matter and "lambasted the government" for these rules and recommended massive changes. The report points to numerous problems with the existing rules, including "ambiguous and over-reaching language" as well as general confusion (even within the government) as to whether or not the rules are mandatory, or merely advisory. Oh, and some of the rules inevitably violate users privacy, because if you're expecting intermediaries to be online cops, you have to expect that some will take advantage of that. Finally, they point out that a big part of the problem is the near total "lack of representation" by the public as this policy was formed.

It's nice to see some significant push-back on bad, short-sighted rules that create chilling effects on innovation.

Filed Under: copyright, india, intermediate liability, secondary liability