Angry rebuff to India’s ‘voluntary’ internet censorship

Posted by Prashant on Dec 8, 2011 in Social Media News | 1 comment

You couldn’t probably fault him for lacking in ambition. But for a forward-looking telecommunications minister that he claims to be, India’s Kapil Sibal seems to be lacking in a fair understanding of it. What he is intending to do is to impose what might be the ‘most comprehensive’ internet censorship reign of the world and that too in the world’s largest democracy.

He has made rather ingenious interpretative effort to win the argument for this by trying to explain that he is not really interested in censorship, but in the prior screening of certain potentially offensive sites. He wishes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook to check user generated content and also delete it if it’s too rude or offensive. And he doesn’t want them to have in place automated processes to achieve the task. It doesn’t take a sophisticated understanding of modern technology to realize the fallacy of this.

Here are some reactions to his plan from the media and experts:

Archie Bland – The Independent, UK

“There are 100 million internet users in India, and more every day; besides that, anyone in the world is presumably able to create a web-page that offends “community standards as they are applicable in India”. That is an awful lot of internet to censor. Sorry, to screen. Indeed, when one technical expert was asked about the feasibility of such a scheme by the FT, he responded with a peal of derisive laughter. Even if this were not the case, Mr Sibal’s rationale would be questionable. Now, since the policy is so utterly unworkable, there’s no great need for any clarion calls to defend the freedom of speech. But at such a moment it’s worth wondering whether the likes of Mr Sibal will consider what effect such policies actually have.”

CJNews India

“Surveillance of Internet traffic in India has become a nuisance for internet intermediaries of India. In fact, Internet intermediaries like Yahoo has already dragged Indian government to court to resist illegal and unconstitutional e-surveillance demands of Indian government. In its petition, Yahoo has raised questions on the right to privacy of a company that stores such sensitive data and to what extent authorities can coerce it to part with the information considered necessary to either track terror perpetrators or thwart future attacks. It is high time for constitutional courts of India to take notice of these unconstitutional developments and stop the initiatives of Indian government and its agencies before it is too late.”

The ToI News report

“Noted personalities like member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Shobhaa De and Shekhar Kapur joined others in expressing their displeasure over Sibal’s statement yesterday on moves to eliminate offensive content from Internet platforms.  They said the government cannot be a censor of thought and freedom of expression cannot be curbed. Hashtags #Kapilsibal and #Censorship were the hot trending topics on Twitter.”