MeitY asks ISPs to prevent the distribution online child sexual abuse material

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has recently asked Internet Service Provider( ISP) to adopt and implement Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) resources on or before July 31, 2017, to prevent the distribution and transmission of online child sexual abuse material.

The ministry said that all ISPs shall continue to observe the existing due diligence requirements prescribed by the central Government under the information technology 2000 and rules and regulations thereunder including the obligation to expeditiously remove or disable access to any unlawful content brought to its notice by relevant authorities.

The ministry has also constituted an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) to recommend specific solutions to address the issue of such material online last year in December.

"The IMC observed that most of such online CSAM is being hosted outside India and the websites/URLs containing such content are dynamic in nature and frequently changing, making it difficult to identify and block such content. No centralized mechanism exists in India to monitor online CSAM," the ministry said.

Globally, there are only a few major resources that provide a dynamic list of websites/URLs identifying online CSAM, it added.

The committee recommended that till such time a centralized mechanism is built in India to dynamically monitor websites/URLs containing such online materials, the relevant ISP's in India should adopt and disable/remove the online CSAM dynamically based on the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) list.

IWF has been adopted by many countries and is already being implemented by leading online service providers in other jurisdictions.