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Intermediary Liability
The conditions of the safe harbour for intermediaries, the due diligence required by the IT Rules, grievance redressal, takedown and the obligations of significant social media intermediaries.
We advise platforms, telecom operators, publishers and technology companies across the digital regulatory landscape, the intermediary protection that shields a platform from liability, the diligence the law requires to keep it, the licence a telecom service needs, and the content rules that now reach digital media and streaming.
A technology, media and telecom mandate spans the conditional liability of platforms, the licensing of telecom services and the regulation of content. Each is governed by a distinct framework, and each is moving quickly.
The conditions of the safe harbour for intermediaries, the due diligence required by the IT Rules, grievance redressal, takedown and the obligations of significant social media intermediaries.
Compliance for digital platforms with the IT Rules, content classification and the obligations that apply to online curated content and digital news.
Authorisations and licensing under the Telecommunications Act, 2023, the conditions that attach to telecom service, and the regulatory framework administered by the regulator and the department.
Content licensing, broadcasting and the carriage and content arrangements across television, streaming and digital media.
Software, cloud, platform and technology services contracts, and the data, security and liability allocations they require.
Takedown, blocking, content and regulatory disputes, and proceedings before the courts and the regulators in the digital and telecom space.
Each stage fixes a regulatory position the platform or service depends on. The classification decides the obligations, the obligations decide the diligence, and the diligence decides whether the protection holds when it is tested.
Determine what the service is in regulatory terms, intermediary, publisher, telecom service, because the obligations follow from the classification.
Map the due diligence, licensing, grievance and content obligations the classification carries under the IT Act, the IT Rules and the Telecommunications Act.
Build the terms, the privacy and grievance policies and the takedown and escalation processes the obligations require.
Secure the telecom authorisation or other approval the service needs, and the conditions attached to it.
Prepare for takedown, blocking and regulatory demands so the platform can respond within the timelines the law sets.
Every technology, media and telecom matter is read through three lenses at once. The classification and the compliance have to be technically correct, the model has to make commercial sense, and the legal position has to hold when a claim, a takedown or a regulator arrives.
We classify the service and build the due diligence, grievance and licensing framework precisely under the IT Act, 2000, the IT Rules, 2021 and the Telecommunications Act, 2023, because the safe harbour and the authorisation are conditional on getting the detail right.
We align the platform, content and telecom obligations with how the business actually makes money, so compliance supports the model rather than obstructing it as the service scales.
We prepare the platform for takedown, blocking and regulatory demands and defend content and licensing disputes, so the protection the law offers is actually available when it is tested.
A platform does not own its protection from liability. It earns it, continuously, by doing the due diligence the law prescribes. The grievance officer, the takedown process, the records, the response times: these are not formalities. They are the conditions on which the protection rests. We build the compliance so the safe harbour is actually available when a claim arrives.
The vocabulary that decides outcomes, set out precisely, not loosely.
The principal legislation governing electronic records, digital signatures, cyber offences and intermediary obligations.
The Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code Rules that prescribe due diligence, grievance redressal and content obligations for intermediaries and digital media.
The conditional immunity that protects an intermediary from liability for third-party content where it observes the prescribed due diligence.
The statute that replaces the colonial telegraph framework and governs authorisation, spectrum assignment and lawful interception in telecom.
An entity defined in Section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act that receives, stores or transmits electronic records on behalf of another person.
Short, direct, on the record.
An intermediary, broadly, a platform that stores or transmits third party content without initiating or modifying it, is protected from liability for that content under the Information Technology Act, but only if it observes the due diligence prescribed by the IT Rules and does not conspire in or fail to act on the unlawful content once it has the requisite knowledge. The protection is conditional, which means the grievance redressal mechanism, the publication of policies, the takedown process and the response timelines are the price of keeping it. A platform that treats these as optional risks losing the very protection it relies on the day a claim is made.
The IT Rules impose enhanced obligations on significant social media intermediaries, identified by user thresholds, including the appointment of specified officers resident in India, the publication of periodic compliance reports and, for certain services, additional traceability and content requirements. These obligations go beyond the baseline diligence and carry their own compliance and reporting burden. A platform approaching the relevant scale has to plan for the additional obligations in advance, because they change the operating and governance model and not merely the paperwork.
The digital media ethics provisions of the IT Rules extend a regulatory framework to publishers of online curated content, such as streaming services, and to publishers of digital news, including a code of ethics, content classification for streaming and a grievance and oversight mechanism. The framework has been the subject of litigation, and aspects of it continue to be tested in the courts. For a platform in this space the practical task is to build content classification, grievance redressal and disclosure that meet the rules as they currently stand, while staying alert to how the framework is evolving.
The Telecommunications Act, 2023 replaces the older telegraph law and provides a modern framework for authorising telecom services and networks, for the assignment of spectrum and for the powers of the government in relation to telecommunications. It changes the licensing architecture from the earlier regime and recasts a number of provisions on authorisation, on user protection and on the handling of communications in defined circumstances. A telecom service or network has to be authorised under the new framework on the conditions it prescribes, so providers need to map their existing permissions and operations onto the new structure.
A technology contract, for software, cloud or platform services, has to allocate the risks that matter in the digital context: data ownership and processing, security and breach responsibility, service levels and availability, intellectual property in deliverables, and the limits of liability. It also has to account for the data protection obligations that now apply to personal data handled under the contract. Because these contracts often run for years and underpin critical operations, the allocation of data, security and liability risk is as important as the commercial terms, and it has to be drafted to work alongside the regulatory obligations of both parties.
Income tax, transfer pricing, withholding and treaty interpretation
Merger filings, dominance, cartels and CCI proceedings
Economic offences, PMLA, SEBI enforcement and internal investigations
The strongest outcomes are built into the strategy at the start, not recovered from disputes later.