Child Sexual Abuse Material online is as much a technological challenge as a legal one. Comment with reference to recent developments.

Q. Child Sexual Abuse Material online is as much a technological challenge as a legal one. Comment with reference to recent developments. (15 marks, 250-350 words)

Section 67B of the IT Act, 2000 criminalises publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts [1], yet CSAM persists online — because statutes punish after the fact while algorithms distribute in real time. The challenge is therefore genuinely twofold: legal design and technological enforcement.

The technological dimension

• Ad-review gaps distinct from content moderation: the BBC's test found Instagram serving paid ads promoting CSAM, some linking to Telegram channels selling material for as little as ₹99 [4]. Ads are curated and approved products, not organic posts — the failure is in the ad-vetting pipeline.
• Scale defeats manual review: Meta cites AI-based proactive detection across 3.5 billion users [4]; detection recall gaps at that scale translate into large absolute volumes.
• Cross-platform migration: discovery on one platform, transaction on an encrypted messenger, splits the evidence trail across jurisdictions and services.

The legal dimension

• Multiple overlapping statutes: Section 67B, IT Act [1] and the POCSO Act, 2012, whose Sections 19 and 20 impose mandatory reporting duties, including on media entities [2].
• Conditional safe harbour: Section 79, IT Act immunity survives only if due diligence under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 is observed [3] — a lever that is powerful in theory but rarely tested against paid content.
• Enforcement, not adjudication: MeitY's summons to Meta following the exposé [4] is a pre-enforcement fact-finding step, revealing reliance on persuasion over penalty.

Recent developments as evidence

The July 2026 episode shows both arms failing together: an algorithm monetised the harm, and no provision expressly holds platforms to a stricter standard for advertisements than for user posts [4].

The two challenges are inseparable — law without technical auditability is unenforceable, and technology without statutory duty is unaccountable. India should mandate independent audits of ad-approval systems, an explicit higher due-diligence standard for monetised content under the 2021 Rules, and time-bound takedown-and-report protocols aligned with POCSO. Anchoring platform accountability in the child's right to dignity under Article 21 would make protection preventive rather than reactive.

(~330 words)

Sources: 1. The Information Technology Act, 2000 (updated) — Section 67B (CSAM offence); Section 79 (conditional intermediary safe harbour) 2. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 — Sections 19 and 20 mandatory reporting duties 3. The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, MeitY — due-diligence obligations conditioning safe harbour 4. "Centre set to summon Meta over child sexual abuse advertisements", The Hindu, 4 July 2026 (link not verifiable — domain blocks retrieval) — BBC test findings, ₹99 Telegram listings, Meta's 3.5 billion users and AI detection claim, MeitY summons