Govt Gives Telegram 15 Days to Strengthen Anti-Piracy Measures
The ministry has sought details of Telegram's grievance redressal mechanism for producers, broadcasters, OTT platforms, and law enforcement agencies as part of its compliance review.
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The Center has directed Telegram to strengthen its systems to tackle the circulation of pirated films, OTT content, and other copyrighted audio-visual material on its platform, giving the messaging service 15 days to submit an Action Taken Report (ATR).
According to officials, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has asked the messaging app to move beyond channel-specific takedowns and deploy mechanisms to proactively detect, report, disable access to, and remove infringing content.
The company has been directed to take action against repeat offenders, including channels, groups, bots, user accounts, administrators, and associated entities. Additionally, the ministry has sought details of Telegram’s grievance redressal mechanism for producers, broadcasters, OTT platforms, and law enforcement agencies as part of its compliance review.
The notice follows previous measures implemented earlier this year, wherein the government instructed the application to disable access to 3,142 channels hosting pirated content and to block 800 piracy websites.
Separately, last week, the government issued notices to Telegram and Signal seeking details of safeguards around username-based features that allow users to communicate without revealing their phone numbers.
Officials said such features could be misused for impersonation, phishing, online fraud, and digital arrest scams if adequate safeguards are not in place.
The recent action comes after the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology asked WhatsApp to halt the rollout of its proposed username feature and to clarify the safety measures incorporated into it. Officials said the government’s approach aims to ensure platforms adopt preventive measures rather than rely solely on reactive compliance after unlawful content or activity is identified.
Telegram and Signal had not responded to the notices at the time of publication.
