In the ongoing issue about an Indian Trial court trying to book Google, Facebook, Microsoft and 18 other social networking firms over the alleged ‘Objectionable Content’ being hosted on their sites, Google India seems to have given in to the trial courts demands. They told the court yesterday that they have managed to remove certain offending web-pages from their search results.
Facebook and Google were among the ones that filed a compliance report earlier in accordance with the court’s directive to remove texts, photos and videos which depicted Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in a negative light. This complaint filed by an activist has been blown up and religion is also being used as an excuse for such an action. Companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft have filed for deletion of their names from the list of defendants due to the fact that there was no allegation against them for web-casting any hurtful material.
While Google India has given in to this absurd request which is highly questionable in terms of objectivity and freedom of speech, Facebook India has told the court after filing its compliance report that it does not control nor operate the servers that host www.facebook.com which are based in the USA. According to Facebook, it is neither a necessary nor a proper party to be added into the defendant list. They have also asked the court to change the name in the suit from ‘Facebook’ to ‘Facebook India Online Services Pvt. Ltd’, which is the proper name of the social networking company in India.
We would like you to ponder on these developments. We are becoming more and more like China in terms of ‘banning’ or ‘censoring’ content. So what if Sonia Gandhi was made fun of? Isn’t it covered in our right to free speech? Does the web have a different set of rights? Hypocrisy has always been a part of our Government since some time now. This is a perfect example of a political party flexing its muscles to make needless and unnecessary changes to how the free web works. What are your thoughts on this issue? Share them with us.
