Some online adult toys, sex products and adult lifestyle stores have come under the scanner of the Department of Telecom (DoT), which wants to regulate such webstores under section 67, 67A and 67B of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2008 for "selling and promoting alleged objectionable products illegally".
A telecom department note mentions online stores like flipkart, Imbesharam.com, thatspersonal.com and OhMySecret.com, which, it feels, are violating rules under the IT Act.
It also refers the names of the CEOs of these portal including Sachin Bansal (flipkart), Raj Armani (IMbesharam), Samir Saraiya (thatspersonal.com) and Vinodh Reddy (OhMySecrets.com).
There are "few online selling websites, which are openly promoting and selling alleged objectionable products illegally," says the note referring to these websites.
The DoT said this was brought to its notice through a letter from the ministry of information and broadcasting and a complaint by one Harit Kumar to the Delhi police, alleging objectionable content being shown on websites.
IMbesharam.com, which means, 'I am shameless', and claims to be India's number one adult lifestyle webstore and bachelor and bachelorette party superstore, was launched last year with big fanfare. It had Sunny Leone promoting its wares on the website.
The other two portals are also explicitly adult stores but it is not clear why flipkart has been mentioned along with them. None of the CEOs were available for comments.
G Krishna Kumar, an IT professional from Bengaluru, said they could have come to the government's notice as they don't have checks and balances that such sites require for their access.
He said measures such as giving access to only those who register their age as 18 years and above would probably satisfy the regulating agencies.
"For adult content sites, it must be mandatory to have a login (assuming that the individual will provide the correct details). It finally depends on how truthful the individual is," said Krishna Kumar.
Incidentally, Facebook requires a person creating a login ID to be at least 13 years old while Google has age requirements as defined by individual countries. Youtube, for example, displays a warning screen when adult content appears, saying "only users who are 18 or older can watch it".
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