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Since December, I was following the ups and downs of the relationship between the 21 websites including Google, Facebook and our government through the court notices and judgements. The whole issue begun when Vinay Rai, a journalist had notified the court about defamatory and obscene depictions of Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohammed and various other Hindu deities through a petition in December. the legal provisions that have been used to tie the bells on the cats are sections 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc ) and section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) ...all from the Indian penal Code which has been used since long to prevent any kind of damage to the image of the rich heritage and culture of a united India along with many other social crimes. The trial court had issued summons to the websites ; in return, these web giants through their legal representatives in India preferred a stay petition in the Delhi High court on the summons issued by the trial court. They replied that it is simply not possible to filter and monitor the web posts. “Angered” by such reply the Delhi high court warned these web giants that if they fail to monitor, they may face the same fate as had happened in China (see http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/delhi-high-court-to-hear-google-facebooks-petition-today-167302?slider). By the time this blog reaches you my readers, the Delhi High court would have probably created a landmark judgment in the field of Information technology law in India. Without going into the critical analysis of the hypothesis that the court may or may not prefer a judgement on the responsibility of the ISPs, let me tell you that what Rai had noticed is not totally false. I being a member of Orkut and Facebook for more than 3/4 years, have also noticed the tooth and nail fights over religious issues in these websites by individual users. Also note that Rai has so minutely watched this issue from a holistic perspective and he has not stopped with the abuse of Hinduism only. True, many have taken sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo etc to express inner frustration and anger over various issues, including religion. Many times such verbal duets do not lay as written posts in the Google/ Facebook/Yahoo communities or even blogs or walls. They may create huge rift between individuals including religious communities. How many of us could forget one of the Orkut-community generated rift over Shivaji Maharaj in Maharastra? True ... enmity, hatred etc can be temporarily gagged in a human mind, but such feelings tend to get back to life at the slightest spark and internet can play havoc in this case. But again, note that I have used the word “many have taken sites....”... leave the political colours while preparing the argument for and against the core reason behind such highlights on this issue (see http://www.firstpost.com/india/social-media-screening-sibals-target-was-political-blasphemy-182117.html), but this is the hard truth that people take internet to express themselves FREELY and with help of technical tic tacs ..many may do this under anonymous cloak. And this is the core reason that the representation made by Mukul Rohtagi on behalf of Goolge India, cannot be ignored either. When billions of people throughout the world are crossing boundaries in the cyber space to use US hosted platforms for good as well as bad usage, with or without camouflaged identities, it becomes impossible for any authority to check the legality and illegality of each post. Each of these websites have their own policy guidelines to check the decency of communication and protect themselves from any liability, which are primarily based on section 230(c)(1) of the Communication Decency Act.... a prominent US law. But truly, who cares?........ in this world of busy people having these websites as “hangouts”, every one tends run over the emotions and feelings of others without noticing what damage is being done.
A ban(if imposed) may make the web giants aware of their duties. But would it really create any difference with the people who are the actual actors? Probably the forthcoming judgment may make a fraction of people aware of the red line of freedom of speech.. and if it does, it would be huge success for the court, for I expect that these fractions of people may spread the awareness about how to control one self when in the web world.
Please Note: Do not violate copyright of this blog. If you would like to use informations provided in this blog for your own assignment/writeup/project/blog/article, please cite it as “Halder D. (2012), “Is India’s national integrity really in danger”, 16th January,2012, published in http://cybervictims.blogspot.com/”
