Vivek Agnihotri comments on new OTT guidelines, says 'demands finally being met'

Reacting to the new rules for digital news organisations, social media portals, and OTT platforms announced on Thursday, Bollywood director Vivek Agnihotri said that he believes "guidelines should be there and this is a good move."

As the Union Ministers Prakash Javadekar and Ravi Shankar Prasad addressed a press conference to finalise the new rules, there were some new changes included to enhance strict oversight mechanisms involving several ministries.

With regards to the new guidelines, Vivek Agnihotri said, "There has been a demand since a long time especially from teachers, parents, activist to have a control on the perversion on OTT platforms. And it is in a way good, to know that the new guidelines address it. And they also will be considering the women who are objectified or any kind of disrespect shown towards women, which is a very good move."

He further said, "Secondly the most important one, is that they have also made sure that if anyone has an issue, they can sort it out within 15days after being registered within 24 hours, this also allows the public to be involved and feel heard. Now we would also have an idea who we will be talking to especially with regards to social media, which I think is a good thing! I believe guidelines should be there and this is a good move."

The all-new code of ethics which was announced on Thursday mandated intermediaries to ensure and exercise "due caution and discretion" in relation to the general principles around online curated content.

The main goal of these new guidelines is that the all-new document by the government would definitely caution online content platforms, perhaps not to impact India's sovereignty and integrity.

Content on OTT platforms had recently fuelled controversy, leading to public outcry and the booking of makers of some programs.

Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar had on January 31 announced that the Ministry will soon release guidelines on OTT platforms as it had been receiving a lot of complaints against some serials available online.

(ANI)

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