The federal government’s draft regulation for digital, social media and OTT platforms can be a menace to freedom of speech and curb individuals’s primary rights, specialists mentioned as we speak.
Addressing a webinar organised by Moulik Odhikar Surokkha Committee, they mentioned the draft regulation contradicts the nation’s structure and authorities’s imaginative and prescient of Digital Bangladesh, stressing for redrafting it.
For all newest information, comply with The Each day Star’s Google Information channel.The occasion was held to share the committee’s “major commentary” on the draft “Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Fee (BTRC) Regulation for Digital, Social Media and OTT Platforms-2021”.
The federal government printed the primary draft of the regulation in February for feedback on it from totally different stakeholders.
In his remarks, eminent jurist Shahdeen Malik mentioned concern stays that the brand new regulation can be a software to curb individuals’s rights at a time when the federal government has its denial over prevalence of enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings within the nation.
There may be an try to create concern amongst individuals in every little thing concerning hurting spiritual sentiment, he mentioned, including there may be room to be frightened whether or not the brand new regulation can be utilized for this.
“These days, legal guidelines are being formulated and utilized extra to do hurt as an alternative of guaranteeing individuals’s wellbeing,” the jurist added.
He mentioned totally different provisions of the Digital Safety Act that curb freedom of speech or create concern have been used to file lots of of circumstances whereas the proposed anti-discrimination legislation seems to be a “hole”.
Though the federal government says legal guidelines are formulated with the most effective intention however the extra days are passing, with out few exceptions, legal guidelines aren’t facilitating the flourish of democracy however stopping it, he added.
Quazi Mahfujul Hoque Supan, a trainer of legislation division at Dhaka College, mentioned the second and third chapters of the draft BTRC regulation are “whim” and have been drafted to “management freedom of speech”.
Beneath Chapter two, the intermediaries offering OTT (over-the-top) providers can be made to take away information encryption which is utilized to guard consumer’s privateness, he mentioned.
Will probably be completed in order that the state can simply know “who’s telling what”. This can be a violation of worldwide recognised web coverage, he added.
Chapter three of the draft regulation includes summaries of assorted “authoritarian” legal guidelines already in place just like the DSA, he additional mentioned.
Supreme Courtroom lawyer Barrister Sara Hossain mentioned if carried out, each the BTRC regulation and the draft OTT content-based service offering and operation coverage ready by the ICT division will widen the scope for curbing individuals’s rights.
She mentioned the draft coverage and regulation had been positioned for public session for a bit over a month which is a short while, including that most individuals aren’t privy to these.
She steered submitting a proposal to the authority involved to make public stakeholders’ opinions and proposals on the proposed draft coverage and regulation and ask them whether or not the 2 authorized devices can be redrafted.
Nuran Choudhury, a trainer of legislation division at Impartial College, Bangladesh, and Zakir Hossain, chief government of Nagorik Uddyog, additionally spoke on the occasion.
