The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) and the DPDP Rules, 2025 (DPDP Rules) raise compliance questions that demand sector-specific answers. For online curated content publishers (OCCs), meeting these obligations requires a substantive reworking of product architecture, content moderation practices, third-party relationships, and customer data governance. This article examines the DPDP regime’s impact on streaming platforms and offers a practical compliance checklist for OCCs to benchmark their preparedness.
The DPDP regime mandates clear user consent for each use of data, limits data to specified purposes,[1] and requires security safeguards,[2] breach notification[3], and enforcement of user rights.[4] Platforms, under extant sectoral laws, are already required to implement age restrictions, access controls, parental controls, and a three-tier grievance redressal system.[5] In practice, as the primary law governing personal data, the DPDP Act’s requirements may overlap with sectoral laws, necessitating cross-functional policies for platforms. For instance, if a user’s comment is removed in compliance with an order under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act)[6], the platform remains obligated to remove the offending comment and, upon the user’s request, to erase any associated personal data. This regulatory overlap may necessitate active engagement with both MeitY and the Data Protection Board, and a coordinated approach to reconciling divergent compliance requirements.
Impact on business models and operations
With behaviour tracking requiring explicit consent, and purpose and storage limitations on data collection, a platform’s advertising endeavours, among other things, will inevitably be affected.[7] Platforms may opt for contextual ads based on content category to avoid the higher compliance burden of tracking.[8] If individual targeting is used, identifiers should be pseudonymized and stored separately, and ad vendors would require strict contracts prohibiting re-identification.[9] In the event that a platform is identified as a significant data fiduciary, additional layers of compliance, such as appointment of a local Data Protection Officer and conduct of regular Data Protection Impact Assessments, will apply. [10]
Platforms routinely engage external analytics providers and Content Delivery Networks, each of which ordinarily qualify as a data processor under the DPDP framework. Since the regime imposes no direct obligations on processors, the burden falls on the data fiduciary to enforce compliance contractually, necessitating revisions to existing SLAs to incorporate processor-side obligations, minimum security standards, and data deletion requirements upon contract termination. Cross-border data flows implicated by external analytics arrangements must additionally conform to prescribed transfer mechanisms or fall within an express statutory permission. Platform workflows and user-facing interfaces will require corresponding reconfiguration to meaningfully affect data principal rights.[11]
A subscriber should be able to see and download their profile data, correct errors, or even withdraw consent. The DPDP requires breach notification to the Data Protection Board and affected individuals when personal data is compromised, necessitating updates to incident response plans. A personal data breach can extend beyond just payment hacks (e.g., exposure of metadata, user logs, etc.), and penalties under the DPDP Act amount to INR 250 crores.
Notably, the DPDP Act’s reporting obligations sit alongside those already prescribed under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the directions issued thereunder in 2022,[12], which independently require platforms to report cybersecurity incidents to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team within six hours. Failure to do so exposes platform management to imprisonment of up to one year and/or a fine of up to INR 1 lakh, in addition to penalties under the IT Act.[13] While not every instance of non-compliance under the DPDP regime necessarily constitutes a cybersecurity incident, platforms must nonetheless maintain parallel compliance with both frameworks.
The consequences of non-compliance extend well beyond statutory penalties. Users apprehensive about the misuse of their viewing habits or personal data may withdraw their subscriptions, while advertisers and content licensors may seek to impose heightened privacy obligations through contracts. In this context, demonstrable compliance functions as a competitive differentiator; platforms that credibly embed privacy-by-design principles into their operations are better positioned to attract privacy-conscious consumers and prospective global partners alike.
Compliance Checklist
To convert these principles into action, platforms must broadly follow the following checklist:
1. Catalogue all personal data flows, from account signup and profiling to moderation logs and payment information.[14] Tag each data type with purpose, consent status, retention period, and risk level.[15] Personal data collected at all levels must be logged in a machine-readable, tamper-proof, and verifiable format.
2. Rework the platform interface and policies so that all obtained consent is granular and user-friendly.[16] Remove pre-ticked boxes, notices and reminders creating a false sense of urgency, and any practice that may be dubbed a “dark pattern.”[17] Give separate toggles and receive separate consent for core service and optional uses. Every consent screen should plainly describe the data collected and its use.
3. Regularly purge old data, use encryption at rest for all logs, store identifying keys separately from profile data, and pseudonymize analytics where possible.[18]
4. Ensure third-party vendors (CDNs, ad networks, analytics, payment gateways) have DPDP-compliant terms with specific security standards and breach notification requirements, and require processors to retain personal data only to the extent permitted by the DPDP Act.[19]
5. Align your incident response with DPDP timelines by preparing pre-approved templates for notifications to the Board and users. Practice drills with IT and legal teams to avoid panic during a real breach.
6. If user data is sent to servers abroad, put in place contractual clauses that reflect DPDP’s rules (for now, this is good practice, though explicit mechanisms may be prescribed later). Document your risk assessments of each transfer location, especially if an exchange server is in a country that might end up on India’s negative list.[20]
7. For any new feature involving data, do a quick privacy impact assesment: state the purpose, data needed, retention, and safeguards. Retention of these logs is integral, as they may constitute evidence of compliance.
8. Even if not a “significant” fiduciary, designate a privacy lead or DPO (as needed). This person oversees the privacy program and liaisons with authorities.[21]
9. Educate product, engineering and content moderation staff on DPDP basics. For example, content reviewers should know that logging IP addresses is personal data too and must be protected, even if it seems minor.
For OCC platforms, DPDP compliance is a question of both product design and paperwork. Platforms that collect only necessary personal data, separate identifiers from viewing behaviour, and build airtight privacy compliance into their third-party and employee contracts will face lower regulatory risk while simultaneously attracting a more privacy-conscious audience. The DPDP Act provides that the Data Protection Board shall assess breaches based on their nature, scale, and duration; the personal data impacted; the entity’s mitigation efforts; the timeliness and effectiveness of those actions; and the overall impact of any monetary penalty.[22] Platforms that embed privacy as a structural design principle, rather than a residual compliance obligation, are better placed to navigate both regulatory regimes while sustaining credibility within an increasingly exacting governance environment.
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