TRAI gets lobbied even when OTT players voluntarily adhere to MIB norms.

Despite the absence of any stringent norms for the OTT players of the Indian media industry, most of them have claimed to be voluntarily accepting and adhering to the tobacco and alcohol advisories mandatory for the broadcast agencies in India. However, the Government of India has earlier asked the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and other broadcast agencies to assimilate OTT platforms to adhere to the norm. This has been a welcoming change for the Government, coming in from the media players’ end. The directives are however, primarily meant for TV shows.

Commenting on the commitment for the Government advisory, Manav Sethi, ALTBalaji CMO said, “It is not mandatory though”, but “we belong to the traditional medium of TV, it comes from within to carry Indian Government advised disclaimer.” Justifying the adoption of the practive even in the absence of norms for the OTT players, Arre Co-founder and CEO Ajay Chacko quipped that, “OTT players are regulated under the Information Technology Act, but carrying a disclaimer related to use of tobacco and alcohol consumption in shows depends upon the online content creators.” He believes that just like films, the disclaimers are put on the content showcased online by the OTT players.

Why make a huge fuss about the issue when the OTT players are adhering themselves?

A few years ago, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had directed all the TV shows and films to carry a disclaimer under the smoking and alcohol scenes. This was controversially dubbed as a killer move for creative freedom by the industry critics.  

In a recent move reported by the Millennium Report, the Health Ministry has yet again asked the OTT players including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, Reliance Jio and Voot to adhere to the directives as they felt that the industry was not following the directed norm.

This step of the Health Ministry has been criticised as an unnecessary lobbying with TRAI when the institution does not even govern the content related issues. The ministry had taken this step in order to counter the errant OTT players and ensure to enforce the rule on them.

As a part of net neutrality, TRAI has been debating the issue of OTT regulations but the process is still under the finalising the recommendations. The pertinent point here is to see that TRAI’s jurisdiction does not extend to content regulation considering there are no official content regulatory bodies like the Ofcom or the FCC. What the Indian TV channels follow are the industry formulated self-regulatory norms and also accept the directives as under the Cable TV Networks Regulation Act laid by the Ministry of I&B.   

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