The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has directed Telegram to build systems that detect and remove pirated content within 15 days, according to a four-page notice issued on July 4 under Rule 3(1)(d) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules), shared by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF).
Rule 3(1)(d) requires an intermediary to remove content once it has “actual knowledge” through a court order or government notification. IFF has challenged the notice, saying it “has no clear basis in law, and may not even lie with this ministry,” and that the government has not published it.
What does the notice direct? It accuses the platform of letting pirated films, web series and over-the-top (OTT) content circulate through mirror channels, successor groups and bots, and directs it to:
- Detect, report, disable and remove infringing material, and prevent repeat uploads.
- Act against repeat infringers, including channels, groups, bots, administrators, and “associated entities.”
- Share details of its grievance-redressal system for producers, OTT platforms and law-enforcement agencies.
- File an Action Taken Report within 15 days.
MIB has directed Telegram before, issuing a March notice against 3,142 piracy channels. IFF had first asked the ministry to authenticate the July notice before responding to it.
MediaNama’s take: Piracy on Telegram is real, but the notice asks for what the law does not allow MIB to demand. Under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology (IT) Act, read with Rule 3(1)(d) of the IT Rules, a platform must remove content when a court or the government orders it to. Neither provision requires the platform to proactively search for infringing content on its own. This notice asks Telegram to do exactly that: build proactive detection and filtering systems before anyone flags the content. That demand runs into three problems:
- It contradicts the Supreme Court. In Shreya Singhal (2015), the Court held that a platform loses safe harbour, its immunity from liability for user content, only when it ignores a court or government order. Forcing platforms to proactively scan everything, the Court said, defeats the purpose of that immunity.
- The one exception is not copyright. The only rule that requires platforms to proactively hunt for content, Rule 4(4), applies to child sexual abuse material alone. There is no equivalent duty for pirated films.
- It comes from the wrong ministry. Telegram is a messaging service regulated by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) under the intermediary rules. MIB oversees news publishers and OTT platforms, and Telegram is neither. The notice, therefore, comes from a ministry with no authority over it.
The government’s argument, that the Rule 3(1)(b) duty to make “reasonable efforts” against unlawful content requires platforms to proactively…
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