The Digital Safety Act (DSA) has been confirmed repeatedly to criminalise the net exercise of residents, utilizing flimsy standards.
However there’s a piece of recent draft laws that goals to do extra. As a substitute of prosecuting residents, this one intends to place social media platforms and tech firms on the docket for the net exercise of their customers.
In essence, which means as an alternative of concentrating on particular person customers, firms and publishers will be held liable, who in flip will then be compelled to censor their very own customers – or so specialists worry.
“The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Fee Regulation for Digital, Social Media and OTT Platforms”, which was launched by the Fee early final month, has since then despatched proper organisations right into a flurry.
The regulation prohibits among the issues which are outlawed beneath the DSA, however this time, as an alternative of finish customers, service suppliers can be held culpable.
Much like the DSA, this regulation prohibits any content material that “creates unrest or dysfunction or deteriorates or advances to deteriorate legislation and order state of affairs” or “is offensive, false or threatening and insulting or humiliating to an individual”.
It additionally forbids content material that threatens the “unity, integrity, defence, safety, or sovereignty of Bangladesh, [and its] pleasant relations with overseas states”, content material that goes towards the Liberation Struggle of Bangladesh, the spirit of the Liberation Struggle, the daddy of the nation, the nationwide anthem or the nationwide flag, or something that “threatens the secrecy of the federal government”.
In accordance with the regulation, all social media intermediaries can be required to have a resident grievance officer, a compliance officer to make sure due diligence, and an agent to liaison with legislation enforcement companies and the BTRC.
The compliance officer can be tasked with ensuring that the circumstances acknowledged within the regulation are upheld. Ought to they fail to adjust to these requirements, service suppliers can be punished based on Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulation Act, 2001 which has fines as much as Tk 300 crore and imprisonment of as much as 5 years.
The draft regulation defines service suppliers as those that present “content material, a service, or an utility to the top consumer over the general public web”. This lumps collectively social media platforms, net publishers, and on-demand, over-the-top providers.
This hanging noose has despatched world tech firms and rights our bodies right into a state of panic. World Community Initiative (GNI), a collective whose members embody Meta, Microsoft, Uber, Zoom, Telenor Group, Yahoo, Google, Nokia, Vodafone, Verizon, Human Rights Watch, Wikimedia, Committee to Defend Journalists and others, despatched a letter to BTRC expressing excessive alarm.
“These vital penalties paired with stringent obligations will put undue strain on intermediaries to limit content material or share consumer information,” stated GNI in a letter.
Transparency Worldwide, Bangladesh (TIB) added, in their very own submission to BTRC, by saying that this “creates disproportionately excessive enforcement dangers towards firms.”
“There is no such thing as a requirement for the authorities to take a graded and proportioned strategy, which, from a legislation enforcement perspective, signifies that the businesses will continuously should run the danger of being subjected to disproportionately excessive penalties,” commented TIB.
Primarily, what they’re saying is – can a platform internet hosting youngster pornography be given the identical harsh penalties as a platform for internet hosting a standing “hurting non secular sentiment” or threatening Bangladesh’s “pleasant relations with overseas states”?
Different rights our bodies have identified that there isn’t a precise manner for anyone to find out what constitutes a violation.
“Most of the phrases relating to prohibited on-line content material are obscure. This creates a threat of being interpreted in a different way by completely different individuals, and uncertainty when it comes to these creating, publishing, or sharing digital or social media content material not understanding whether or not or not they’re chargeable for breaches of the Regulation,” stated Bangladesh Authorized Support and Companies Belief (BLAST) of their submission to the BTRC.
BLAST additional defined, “For instance, social media intermediaries are required to dam content material that’s ‘false or threatening and insulting or humiliating to an individual’. Content material that goes towards ‘decency, morality, social acceptance, social values, towards nationwide tradition’ can be prohibited – however these phrases don’t have any common definitions, every particular person may have a special view.”
Sunamganj youth Jhumon Das was arrested in March final yr, beneath the Digital Safety Act, for posting a standing about Hefajat-e-Islam chief Mamunul Haque. His case acknowledged that he harm non secular sentiment by commenting on the Islamic chief.
Subsequently, nevertheless, Haque was arrested in a broadly publicised raid in a lodge, the place he was discovered together with his second spouse. He was prosecuted in 17 separate circumstances for inciting communal violence.
All types of media, together with social media, had been slathered with protection and critiques of Haque; Jhumon was arrested for exactly this and his act was categorised as “hurting non secular sentiment”.
“We now have seen interpretation of the abovementioned grounds arbitrarily to swimsuit motivated targets over time. There is no such thing as a commonplace of reasonableness that’s ascribed when assessing whether or not an motion tantamount to a extreme and real violation of those grounds,” opined TIB of their letter.
Along with threatening platforms and firms with prosecution, the draft regulation empowers the BTRC with the flexibility to direct service suppliers to take away or block content material – and the suppliers should comply.
GNI stated that this can make it troublesome for intermediaries to respect their customers’ rights to freedom of expression and privateness.
“The penalty for non-compliance with a elimination order is disproportionate and unacceptable,” stated TIB in its letter, including that this takes away the company of the service supplier to be sure that elimination requests are justified.
In the meantime, the Web Society stated in a coverage transient, the scope of content material takedown specified by the draft regulation is overly broad and loosely outlined, which “dangers making a considerable portion of worldwide information inaccessible to web customers in Bangladesh.”
“To police a broad swath of content material on their platform, intermediaries will most probably have to depend on automated methods, that are infamous for his or her incapability to meaningfully distinguish between authorized and unlawful info. For example, filters designed to focus on the phrase ‘breast’ have beforehand blocked content material about breast most cancers,” stated the Society.
Consultants level out that the regulation doesn’t distinguish between differing kinds and sizes of service suppliers and intermediaries, in consequence, placing the identical inflexible trappings on a small vlogging channel as a big tech firm, similar to Meta.
“You will need to recognise that firms similar to web service suppliers, search engines like google and yahoo or net infrastructure firms are much less nicely positioned than social media firms to deal with considerations about specific on-line content material and conduct, and if topic to the identical legal responsibility and authorized necessities, could also be compelled to disable entry to whole internet-based platforms, providers, net pages,” stated GNI.
The trimmings don’t finish. All service suppliers should register and get clearance from the Ministry of Info. TIB referred to as this “unwarranted”.
“The proper of BTRC to cancel, droop or revoke registration certificates creates substantial enterprise continuity dangers for non-resident service suppliers, which is able to function a major deterrent for a lot of firms to enter the Bangladesh market, or provide providers to native shoppers,” stated TIB.
With its sweeping penalties and broad definitions, the regulation achieves what the DSA couldn’t – as an alternative of repressing freedom of expression of particular person customers, it makes use of mass-control methods for highest doable influence.
