Centre to Revamp IT Act to Regulate OTT, Online Gaming

India’s Central government is said to have been in internal discussions for restructuring the Information Technology (IT) Act, which was promulgated in 2000. The last time the IT Act was amended was 13 years ago in ✤2008 and its sole purpose was to cover video streaming, artificial intelligence, online ♌gaming and machine learning.

The government feels that this revamping of the IT ACT is necessary given the ubiquitous nature of smartphones and the invention of artificia🥀🔜l intelligence, ML and VR-based products and services.

“There are certain areas where there is a legal vacuum such as online games or video-on-demand content. Other areas of technologies such as AI and ML also have to be lookeౠd into,” a source told ET, as reported by Inc42.

India has been waiting to pass the Personal Data Protection Bill 2019, which is supposed to be tabled in Parliament during February’s budget session. Therefore the changes in the IT ACT is all the more necessary so that both can work as regulatory guidelines for the n🅺ation’s i♔nternet economy, which has over 1 billion smartphones and 700 million internet users.

Controversies do not seem to leave the backs of India’s online real-money gaming startups as they continue to face legal challenges every now and then. Several state governments across the nation have called for a ban on these gaming platforms. Recently, Andhra Pradesh was the statꩲe who put down their axe on online gambling, which required users to play with real money. Karnataka are also in line to pull off the same decision but as of now no call has been initiated.

PILs have been filed in several high courts across the countries on the basis of youths committing suicides because of the debt created aft🦄er the use of these online gaming platforms.