The new IT rules framed by the government, which will help it exercise control over independent digital news sites, OTT platforms and social media platforms, amounts to curbing freedom of expression. Some news sites (including The Wire) have challenged these rules.Various state governments and the Union government have also arbitrarily blocked the internet in a number of places.Mishi Chowdhary, founder of the Software Freedom Law Center and a lawyer who practices in Delhi and New York, calls it “political theatre”. Curbing digital access is a “distraction from the failures of the government”. At the same time, the government wants to control the free flow of information, she says in this podcast interview.“There is a lot of China envy in India, in the government and also within the business community.”Chowdhary, whose organisation has fought many legal battles against such infringement and also petitioned social media platforms to introduced measures against hate speech, says the big companies definitely need to be regulated, but not in this manner. “Their entire business model is built on targeted advertising.”In the process, she says, it is the user who is “stuck between the rock and a hard place”.
