Download A Delhi High Court judge has told lawyers for the Indian offices of Facebook and Google that they must regulate "offensive and objectionable" material on their sites.
The judge said that if they failed to do so by the 6th of February, the Indian government should block their websites like China does.
In recent months the Indian government has also made similar comments about the need for greater controls over the internet.
As Bismillah Geelani reports the case has put the spotlight on free speech in the world’s largest democracy.
Vinay Roy, the editor of a New Delhi-based Hindi weekly news magazine, filed the complaint.
He accused 21 Internet companies of violating Indian law saying that material on their website has the potential to incite religious conflict.
“Freedom of speech and democracy doesn’t mean that we intrude other people’s rights. We have seen what happened with Prophet Muhammad’s cartoons. We saw riots not just in India but across the world. Now if you continue to have offensive content against him and you have extremely objectionable material against Hindu gods and goddesses, where will it lead us? Attacks on any religion cannot be tolerated.”
A Delhi High Court judge after hearing evidence from two dozen websites agreed with Vinay Roy.
The court has set a deadline on February 6 for 22 social media sites to remove “anti-religious” or “anti-social” content from their websites.
Google and Facebook have filed an appeal before the Delhi High Court following the courts decision saying that it’s unrealistic.
Nikesh Arora is Chief Business Officer at Google India.
“What we are trying to explain is to understand the enormity of what is being asked. You are asking not just to censor the web in India, you are asking to censor the entire World Wide Web. You are saying that one needs to look at every piece of content and decide what’s right what’s wrong? And while it’s an interesting concept, who is going to decide that? I think the idea of censoring everything is going to fundamentally dent the growth of internet economy in India versus the rest of the world.”
The court’s decision comes weeks after the government also raised a similar demand.
Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal told Internet company representatives to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the net.
Minister Sibal pointed to offensive religious content that could cause ethnic or inter-communal conflict.
“This is a matter of great concern to us. We have to take care of the sensibilities of our people; we have to protect their sensibilities. Our cultural ethos is very important to us and we will not allow the religious sentiments of the large sections of the community to be hurt in this fashion and we will not allow and we will not allow intermediaries to say that “we throw up our hands and we can’t do anything about it”
India's civil society, and more particularly its very active blogosphere, was outraged by the minister’s comments.
The court’s verdict in support of the government is seen by the net community as a further gagging of free speech.
Tawlenn Singh is a columnist with the daily newspaper Indian Express.
I’m pretty ashamed of what the judge said. He said “if they can do it in China we can do it in India”. Well, maybe he should go to China because this is India and we are a democracy and there will be things that are offensive and there’s nothing, thank God, we can do to stop the internet.”
India is the world's largest democracy, and one of the most vibrant.
Millions of its young people are cutting edge when it comes to high-technology. But the country is still very conservative.
In 2009, India banned a popular and graphic online comic strip about a housewife with an active sex life.
The internet in the country is governed by the Information Technology Rules Act brought in a few years ago.
Cyber law expert Pawan Duggal says it’s unrealistic.
“It uses lofty words like ‘blasphemous’ or something which is ‘ invasive of one’s privacy’ or ‘libelous’ or ‘defamatory’ or ‘obscene’, in fact the law uses words like ‘ anything which is lascivious’ or ‘which appeals to the prurient interest’ now these huge parameters have been incorporated under the rules without any definition, without any illustration. So it’s all left to the subjective discretion of the government.”
While concerns are growing that the government may crack down on social media and India may move towards China style censorship, governing Congress party parliamentarian and keen tweeter Shashi Throor says the fears are exaggerated.
“I think we should be able to find a viable medium. Certainly there’s so much out there and so much being generated all the time that for any democracy to seriously think that they can police every expression on the internet is frankly ridiculous. It’s not doable. What the government wants is not to infringe in any way with the democratic rights of Indian citizens what it wants to do is ensure that we don’t have inflammatory and inciteful stuff happening that could actually incite violence in our community. Beyond that the internet is free and I hope it will remain free and we will all enjoy it in India.”
