Tuesday, December 6th 2011
Cornered Indian Ruling Party Proposes Internet and Social Media Censorship à-la China
India's United Progressive Alliance government is mulling censorship of the internet à-la China, to filter out any content that speaks against members of the ruling party. India's multi-partisan democracy is increasingly making use of the web as a medium of political discourse and exchange, something that only works to make voters more informed. Union minister of IT and Telecommunications Kapil Sibal kicked off a storm this week when he announced that he is in talks with representatives of search engines and social networking websites, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, and Microsoft to work out a censorship model that filters content that "unfairly maligns" the government. Apart from anti-government content, the government is concerned about hateful or "blasphemous" content, which could disturb communal harmony. "Some of the content which is being carried is blasphemous. This can hurt religious sentiments and it has to be removed," Sibal said.
Google, fresh out of a censorship and GMail espionage tussle with China, stated that it will not remove any content from its search results that are legal, merely on grounds of being "controversial". "We work really hard to both follow the law and also give people as much access to information as we can. So we follow the law when it comes to illegal content. And even where content is legal but breaks our own terms and conditions we take that down too, once we've been notified about it," said Google in a statement. "When content is legal but controversial we don't remove it because people's differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal."Facebook, on the other hand, sounded more cooperative about Sibal's plan. "[Facebook] will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service," it stated. Facebook said it recognises the government's interest in minimising the amount of abusive content that is available online and will continue to engage with the Indian authorities as they debate on the issue. Opposition parties slammed the government. The current United Progressive Alliance government finds itself cornered with allegations of corruption spanning across various ministries.
Source:
New York Times
Google, fresh out of a censorship and GMail espionage tussle with China, stated that it will not remove any content from its search results that are legal, merely on grounds of being "controversial". "We work really hard to both follow the law and also give people as much access to information as we can. So we follow the law when it comes to illegal content. And even where content is legal but breaks our own terms and conditions we take that down too, once we've been notified about it," said Google in a statement. "When content is legal but controversial we don't remove it because people's differing views should be respected, so long as they are legal."Facebook, on the other hand, sounded more cooperative about Sibal's plan. "[Facebook] will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service," it stated. Facebook said it recognises the government's interest in minimising the amount of abusive content that is available online and will continue to engage with the Indian authorities as they debate on the issue. Opposition parties slammed the government. The current United Progressive Alliance government finds itself cornered with allegations of corruption spanning across various ministries.
40 Comments on Cornered Indian Ruling Party Proposes Internet and Social Media Censorship à-la China
Limiting the freedom of thought and speech is wrong, no matter what nation is attempting to do it. Hell, even the Westboro Church has every right to protest military funerals in the US, and what they say is complete and utter bullshit.
I haven't heard anything about this in the American media. Thanks for enlightening me, bta.
Thanks for visiting!
Obviously the objection isn't about censorship of "Mr. Politician you're an arsewhole, I hate your face" content, it's about "Mr. Politician, you squandered away my tax money, I have proof, quit now" content. If Sibal gets his way, he will come up with a law that allows censorship of even genuine and valid democratic dissent.
Just confirmed with several investors that was going to create roughly 22000 jobs and invest US$5B in India to boycott the Indian Gov. by not creating these jobs and not invest there until the Gov. stop their Arizona USA / Apartheid's South Africa behavior. These folks would inform their linked company's and friends to do the same.
Maybe the Indian people could beat some common sense into their Ruling party leaders.
Sorry for the jobless to suffer as a result of this. There is so many good people that now has to suffer because of this Apartheid's behavior by the Indian Gov. .
We will support India once they have a competent level headed government again, same goes for the USA as well.
Will see who else we can get to boycott Indian Gov. as well.
Wonder what Tata, Mahindra and Mital would do about this ?
God damn it this is 2012 almost and we still have to have this primitive Apartheid's behavior in governments on planet earth WTF ?
I would like to apologize to btarunr for overreacting on my first post.
Didn't think at the time that my post was so drama-queen-esque.
I certainly will not read his posts with a grain of salt. :)
will they censor the p0rn??
Thanks for posting this.