India Is Cracking Down on Ecommerce and Free Speech
WiredWhen it comes to cracking down on tech giants, India is on a roll. Since December, Indian policymakers have taken a page from China’s playbook, enacting sweeping restrictions in an attempt to curtail the power of ecommerce behemoths like Amazon, and pushing proposals that would require internet companies to censor “unlawful” content, break user encryption, and forbid Indian data from being stored on foreign soil. For all its good intentions, India’s tech backlash could backfire, with potentially dire consequences for all tech companies—big and small—operating in India, not to mention free speech online. In the case of India, Gupta added, “it wants to do a lot, but it all seems a bit clumsy.” Thursday marks the end of the counter-comment period for new proposed rules that could have a chilling effect on free expression and privacy online. The proposed changes would drastically weaken protections for internet “intermediaries” by amending Section 79 of the IT Act—the Indian equivalent of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the US—effectively forcing platforms to censor user content deemed “unlawful” by the government, or be held liable for the postings.