The Union government on Saturday directed messaging application Telegram to take down pirated films and other copyrighted material on its platform, reported PTI.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has sought an action-taken report from the application within 15 days, according to the newspaper.

Continued non-compliance could attract legal action under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology Rules, the ministry added.

In March, the platform was directed to take down more than 3,000 channels linked to pirated content, Hindustan Times reported.

The notice on Saturday came a day after the Union government sought details from Telegram and Signal of the safeguards they have put in place to prevent fraud and impersonation through username-based communication features.

On Wednesday, the Centre had asked WhatsApp to pause the rollout of a similar feature.

In Saturday’s notice, the ministry told Telegram to strengthen systems to detect, report, disable access to and remove pirated content, according to the Hindustan Times.

The platform was also directed to act against repeat channels, groups, bots, accounts and administrators that repeatedly share such material.

The notice is aimed at creating a “clear shift from piecemeal takedown to platform accountability”, The Hindu quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Copyright infringement is not only a civil violation but also a criminal offence under the 1957 Copyright Act and the 1952 Cinematograph Act, PTI quoted the Union government as saying.

“The ministry has made it clear that Telegram cannot merely wait for the government to identify each piracy channel one by one,” unidentified officials told the news agency. “A purely reactive, channel-by-channel takedown approach may not be enough to demonstrate due diligence by the platform.”

In June, the platform was blocked for a week due to concerns of paper leak ahead of the re-examination for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

‘Notice has no clear basis in law’

Stating that the notice issued to Telegram on piracy has no “clear basis in law’, the digital rights organisation Internet Freedom Foundation asked the Union government to state the provision of law under which it was issued.

“Telegram is neither a digitial news publisher nor a OTT service provider,” stated the organisation. “Beyond the this, no provision of the IT Act lets the executive order an intermediary to build filtering systems.”

It pointed out that Telegram’s architecture, where files are forwarded, re-encoded, renamed and rebuilt, “is a poor fit for fingerprinting, and encrypted secret chats (enabled by the platform) cannot be scanned without breaking encryption”.

“What can be built in fifteen days is a blunt filter that removes lawful speech to avoid risk,” stated the Internet Freedom Foundation.

It added that this was the third regulatory action against Telegram within 15 days.

“IFF is sounding the alarm on the rapid acceleration of digital authoritarianism in India under the guise of moral panics and social issues,” said the organisation. “We demand regulatory governance than the control of platforms by the Union government.”

Edited by Sneha.