Centre for Internet and Society

India Dismisses Charges of Internet Censorship

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T05:29:15Z

Read, listen and learn English with this story. Double-click on any word to find the definition in the Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary.

This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government in India is defending itself against charges of Internet censorship. The move comes after the government last week asked companies like Facebook and Twitter to block more than three hundred websites.

Officials accused the websites of posting edited images and videos of earthquake victims. They said the websites falsely claimed that the images were Muslim victims caught in recent ethnic conflict in India’s northeastern Assam state and Burma. A number of the images were reportedly uploaded from Pakistan.

Officials said the panic that resulted caused thousands of Hindu immigrants to flee the area. They feared that Muslims would answer the false reports with attacks of their own. Cyber law expert, lawyer Pawan Duggal says this is the first time the Internet and mobile-phone technology have been used to create fear in a community.

PAWAN DUGGAL: “India has to wake up to the need for putting cyber security as the number-one priority for the nation. Unfortunately, India does not even have a national cyber-security policy. The nation does not have any plan of action, should this kind of emergency happen again. India needs to have its own cyber army of cyber warriors.”

On Friday, India’s Communication and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal dismissed charges that the government is trying to censor social media. But he said the misuse of social media has to be prevented.

Pranesh Prakash is program manager at the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society. He says some of the web pages that have been blocked included official news websites.

PRANESH PRAKASH: “I am not questioning the motivations of the government which in this current case seemed to be above board. We found that most of the material that they have complained about is actually stuff that is communal. But I do feel that the government went overboard in doing so, that it has also curbed legitimate reportage.”

He says some of the websites were uploaded by people trying to let others know that the images were false.

The government in India has called on social media companies to come up with a plan to keep offensive material off the web. Last year, it passed a law that requires companies to remove so-called “objectionable content” when requested to do so.

A Google Transparency report says that last year India topped the list of countries that make such requests. Supporters of online freedom have expressed concern that India may be restricting web freedom.

About one hundred million people in India use the Internet - the third-largest number of net users in the world. About seven hundred million people have mobile phones.

And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. I'm Steve Ember.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/learning-english-voanews-com-india-dismisses-charges-of-internet-censorship

India’s Internet Curbs Under Legal Cloud

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T05:48:12Z

India’s crackdown on the Internet has caused much debate. But was it legal?

This article by Rumman Ahmed and R Jai Krishna was published in Wall Street Journal on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

India’s government says its moves this week to block websites, Twitter accounts and news portals was necessary to reduce simmering tensions over ethnic violence in the northeast of the country.

Authorities have far-reaching powers to do just that, laid down in rules framed in April 2011 under the country’s controversial new IT law.

But those rules state authorities must give companies 48 hours notice before blocking Web pages. In cases of emergency, New Delhi can block first and inform a special government committee within 48 hours. That committee must notify the blocked sites.

Many of the sites that India blocked or sought to block, including Twitter accounts of anti-government commentators and mainstream news organizations, say they were given no forewarning of the actions and weren’t contacted afterwards, either.

Indian news website Firstpost.com and Kanchan Gupta, a newspaper columnist who is critical of the government, were among those who faced blocks. Mr. Gupta and First Post Editor-in-Chief R. Jagannathan both said they were not contacted by the government either before or after the blocks.

The Home Ministry this week provided lists of around 300 web pages, including Twitter accounts and news stories, to the Ministry of Communications and IT, which then ordered Internet Service Providers to block them.

Kuldeep Dhatwalia, a Home Ministry spokesman, confirmed the lists. The government, he said, was not bound to give notice in an emergency situation.

The government’s reading of the IT law is unlikely to win it any friends among those who say the government is curtailing Internet freedoms.

“It seems the government is yet to have a well planned strategy in place to counter threats to public security and law and order events arising out of viral distribution of malicious content via social media networks,” said Anirban Banerjee, an associate vice president at CyberMedia Research, a New Delhi-based information technology research firm.

India’s government has defended its conduct by saying the blocked Web pages and Twitter handles were inciting communal hatred amid recent violence between Muslims and northeasterners in the state of Assam that has cost almost 80 lives.

The government says some off the sites hosted fake pictures purporting to show violence against Muslims in Assam. In fact, many of these pictures showed Muslim refugees from Myanmar, authorities say.

“We are only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumors. We are not taking action against other accounts, be it on Facebook, Twitter or even SMSes. There is no censorship at all,” the Home Ministry said in a statement Friday.

“We decided on taking action because there were pictures of Myanmar etc. online, which were disturbing the atmosphere here in India.”

Critics, though, say the government also targeted Twitter accounts that were critical of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, giving a political tinge to the censorship.

Some commentators said the government asked Internet Service Providers to block sites without invoking any laws.

“The four orders that were sent to the ISPs don’t say under which section or under what power these orders are being sent,” said Pranesh Prakash, a lawyer and program manager at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

“They were sent without invoking any statute or without invoking any law. The orders just say that those on the list would have to be blocked immediately. It doesn’t say these have be decided by whom, under what provision or what law,” Mr. Prakash added.

One telecom operator said on condition of anonymity that the government has not sent any new lists since Aug. 21. Google Inc and Facebook Inc. say they are working with the government to take down offensive content. Twitter Inc. has not commented.

The latest clampdown comes as public-interest groups are pressing the government to scrap the latest Web censorship laws. Critics say the rules not only limit free speech but also expose Internet companies to unfair liability for material posted by Web users.

“In the 21st century, you cannot censor your way to public tranquility,” said Mishi Choudhary, lawyer and director of international practice at New York-based Software Freedom Law Center.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wsj-com-aug-25-2012-rumman-ahmed-r-jai-krishna-indias-internet-curbs-under-legal-cloud

When #GOIBlocks, twitterati fly off their ‘handles’

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T05:56:19Z

Ever since the news broke mid-week that some genuine Twitter accounts and six spoof accounts were blocked, the social networking platform has been in a tizzy.

Published in the Hindustan Times on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Hashtags like #GOIblocks and variations on the same theme began “trending” and the twitterati, functioning like a virtual democracy, have been bombarding the world in real time with posts about the issue. 16 accounts of the 15 million twitter users in India, among them those of a few journalists, spoof accounts like @PM0India, a right-wing parody of @PMOIndia, the official twitter account of the Prime Minister’s office, and a few anonymous accounts like Barbarian Indian (@barbarindian) and Dosabandit (@dosabandit) were blocked.

While Narendra Modi turned his twitter display picture black in solidarity with the idea of freedom of speech (and was promptly termed a hypocrite with many like @JagPaws, who has 641 followers, tweeting, “Whoa!! Is he supporting Jihadi sites?”), Pankaj Pachauri, (49,827 followers) Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister’s office, has put up twitter rules and the National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s ominously pro-surveillance keynote address at the release of the IDSA report on “India’s Cyber Security Challenge”.

Many like Nitin Pai @acorn, with 16,988 followers, founder of Takshashila Institute, a public policy think tank, tweeted that “under extraordinary circumstances, the govt must do whatever it can under the constitution to prevent loss of life” and added that targeted and temporary blocks of sites, facebook pages and twitter handles that spewed hate were acceptable. Others like film maker Harini Calamur (@calamur) (11,277 followers) who says she is against censorship tweeted that “Blocking internet handles & sites is silly” and “the Govt’s job is to uphold the constitution & protect our fundamental rights. Not make value judgements.” Much of the debate has led to a genuine exchange, sometimes making comrades of people from opposing camps. Kanchan Gupta, a journalist known for his pro-Hindutva views, whose twitter handle @KanchanGupta (26,424 followers) was among those blocked, accepted on TV that scores of “people from all communities” many of whom “disagreed violently” with him had extended their support on twitter.

Others like writer Shivam Vij (@Dilidurast), who has 3,296 followers, whom Hindutvawadis has often branded ‘pseudo sickular’, surprised baiters by speaking against the ban.

Many were strident in their criticism of the arbitrary nature of the blocks and tweeted that it was indicative of authoritarianism. “Internet blocks in India have been increasing in frequency&intensity. I wouldn't put this down to knee-jerk/foolishness.There is *intent*,” tweeted Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin), founder and editor of @medianama. Others like business journalist Samidha Sharma @samidhas worried that the government’s frequent attacks on freedom of expression shows that it is “following china in all the wrong things”.

While Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) of the Centre for Internet and Society tweeted, “They've blocked sites from all parts of the spectrum: Muslim right-wing, Hindu right-wing, neutral news sites, etc. No politics”, many others saw the move as a “self-serving” one. “Dear GoI: why not be honest enough to say that this web censorship has NOTHING to do with security+ all to do with your own arrogance” tweeted Sunny Singh (@sunnysingh_nw3).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-hindustan-times-aug-26-2012-when-goi-blocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles

To regulate Net intermediaries or not is the question

sunil — 2012-08-26T06:12:48Z

Given the disruption to public order caused by the mass exodus of North-Eastern Indians from several cities, the government has had for the first time in many years, a legitimate case to crackdown on Internet intermediaries and their users.

Sunil's column was published in the Deccan Herald on August 26, 2012.

There was, of course, much room for improvement in the manner in which the government conducted the censorship. But the policy question that becomes most pertinent now is: do we need to regulate Internet intermediaries further? The answer is yes and no.

There are areas where these intermediaries need to be regulated in order to protect citizen and consumer interest. But to deal with rumour-mongering and hate speech, there is sufficient provisions in Indian law to deal with the current disruption in public order and any similar disruptions in the future.

It is a common misunderstanding to assume that all civil society organisations that advocate civil liberties on networked technologies are regulatory doves that wish to dismantle regulation of the private sector and allow them complete free hand for innovation and, perhaps, causing harm to public interest.

The opposite is also not necessarily true. We are not hawks, those that believe in maximal regulation of the private sector. The state should regulate the private sector in areas where the citizens are unable to protect their own interest and self-regulation is inadequate. But there are many other areas where regulation needs to be dismantled in the interests of citizen and public interest.

Dr Rohan Samarajiva, founder of a Colombo-based regional policy think tank LIRNEasia, explains this best using the ‘law of soft toys’. When his daughter was young he told her that in Sri Lanka there was a law which mandated that every time she got a new soft toy, she would have to necessarily give away another one.

The regulatory lesson here is: the mandate for regulation cannot keep endlessly expanding. As the government moves into new areas of regulation, it should also exit other older areas where regulatory rupee is providing limited returns. These decisions should be based on evidence of harm caused to citizens and consumers. The following are a list of areas where regulation is required for Internet intermediaries:

Privacy: India needs the office of the privacy commissioner established and an articulation of national privacy principles through the enactment of the long awaited Privacy Act. This privacy commissioner should be able to investigate complaints against intermediaries, proactively investigate companies, order remedial action and fine companies that violate the principles and other policies in force. Remedial action could require change in policies, features, data retention policies and services etc.

Competition: Many of these intermediaries have been taken to court on anti-trust complaints, fined and subjected to remedial action by regulators in America and Europe.

Earlier this year, BharatMatrimony.com has filed a complaint against Google at the Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging anti-competitive practices in its Adwords program. In addition, based on a report submitted by Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS), a civil society organisation, CCI has initiated an investigation into Google's search engine for anti-competitive practices. If they are found guilty of breaking competition law they could be fined up to 10 per cent of their turnover.

Speech: Article 19(2) of the Constitution permits Parliament to enact laws that place eight categories of reasonable restrictions on speech. Unfortunately, the Information Technology Act and its associated rules attempts to expand these restrictions and in addition does not comply with the principles of natural justice. Ideally, all those impacted by the censorship should be informed and should be able to seek redress and reinstatement for the censured speech.

The policy sting operation conducted by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) last year demonstrated that intermediaries are risk-averse and tend to over-comply with takedown notices. There is a clear chilling effect on speech online and it is important that the Act and rules be amended at the earliest.

Intellectual Property: Policies that fall under this inappropriate umbrella term for many differently configured laws make the yet unproven fundamental assumption that granting limited monopolies to rights holders, usually corporations, will result in greater innovation. However, citizen and consumer interest is protected through provisions for exceptions and limitations in laws such as copyright, patent, trademarks etc. Some examples of these safeguards that guarantee access to knowledge in Indian law include compulsory licences, patent opposition, fair-dealing etc.

There are many other areas where special treatment may be required for intermediaries. For example tax law needs to handle evasion techniques like the Double Irish and the Dutch Sandwich. Given my lengthy wish-list of regulation of Internet intermediaries, why then has CIS become an NGO member of the Global Network Initiative?

This is because I believe that technological development happen too quickly for us to purely depend on government regulation. Self-regulation has an important role to play in keeping up with these rapid changes. As self-regulatory norms mature they could be formalised into policy by the government.

Therefore, I consider it a privilege that CIS has been accepted as a member of this self-regulatory initiative and we influence GNI norms using our Indian perspective. However, when self-regulation fails to protect public interest, then the government must step in to regulate Internet intermediaries.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-deccan-herald-aug-26-2012-to-regulate-net-intermediaries-or-not-is-the-question

Blocked websites: Where India flawed

praskrishna — 2012-08-27T03:00:16Z

Apart from not giving 48 hours response time, the Indian government has blocked some websites which don't exist or don't have web addresses, says an analyst.

Published in CIOL on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.

India is threatening to block Twitter as the latter has allegedly failed to respond to the government's order to remove some inflammatory posts.

That has come to light as it is being widely covered in media, but there are hundreds of websites which have already been shut, apparently without due notice to the owners.

Apart from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts, the blocked websites include which are sympathetic to Hindu and Muslim radical groups.

In an analysis of 309 websites blocked in the wake of exodus of North eastern people from Bangalore, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), says the government has blocked these sites under the Information Technology Act, but it failed to provide the mandatory 48 hours to respond (under Rule 8 of the Information Technology Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public, Rules 2009).

He writes in his post: "The persons and intermediaries hosting the content should have been notified. Even if the emergency provision (Rule 9) was used, the block issued on August 18, 2012, should have been introduced before the "Committee for Examination of Request" by August 20, 2012 (within 48 hours), and that committee should have notified the persons and intermediaries hosting the content.

Internet censorship is acceptable as long as it is in the purview of the law and doesn't encroach one's freedom. In this case, some people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, says Pranesh.

He points to some discrepancies in the way the websites are blocked:

Some of the items are not even web addresses (e.g., a few HTML img tags were included). Some of the items they have tried to block do not even exist (e.g., one of the Wikipedia URLs).
An entire domain was blocked on Sunday, and a single post on that domain was blocked on Monday.
For some YouTube videos, the 'base' URL of YouTube videos is blocked, but for other the URL with various parameters (like the "&related=" parameter) is blocked. That means that even nominally 'blocked' videos will be freely accessible.

He concludes: "All in all, it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ciol-com-aug-23-2012-blocked-websites

Indian government defends Internet blocking

praskrishna — 2012-08-28T10:07:50Z

India on Friday defended itself against accusations of heavy-handed online censorship, saying it had been successful in blocking content blamed for fuelling ethnic tensions.

Published by AFP on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The government over the past week has ordered Internet service providers to block 309 webpages, images and links on sites including Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, news channel ABC of Australia and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera.

The orders were an effort to halt the spread of "hateful" material and rumours that Muslims planned to attack students and workers who have migrated from the northeast region to live in Bangalore and other southern cities.

"We have met with success. These pages were a threat to India's national security and we demanded their immediate deletion," Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia, a spokesman for India's home ministry, told AFP.

"Spreading rumours to encourage violence or cause tension will not be tolerated. The idea is not to restrict communication."

The government has blamed Internet activity for fanning fears that resulted in tens of thousands of migrants fleeing back to the northeast last week from Bangalore and elsewhere.

But Twitter users, legal experts and analysts criticised the government's approach, which appeared to have resulted in only partial blocking of material, much of which was still accessible.

"The officials who are trusted with this don't know the law or modern technology well enough," Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society research group, told AFP.

"I hope that this fiasco shows the folly of excessive censorship and encourages the government to make better use of social networks and technology to reach out to people."

Among the blocked content were photographs by AFP and other news agencies from Myanmar in the British Daily Telegraph, a parody Twitter account pretending to be from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and dozens of YouTube videos.

ABC issued a statement saying it was "surprised by the action" after content on its website about unrest in Myanmar between Muslims and Buddhists was included on the blocking list.

India's Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde insisted in a statement the government was "only taking strict action against those accounts or people which are causing damage or spreading rumours."

Shinde added that the government sought to block the Myanmar online photos because they were "disturbing the atmosphere here in India."

The government said photographs of clashes in Myanmar were circulating on the Internet with fake captions claiming the scenes were from the northeastern Indian state of Assam, where 80 people have died in recent ethnic violence.

Vivek Sood, senior Supreme Court lawyer and an author on Internet legalisation, called the government's step "a gross abuse of power."

"It's completely illegal under the Indian IT Act," he told The Economic Times.

Indian journalist Kanchan Gupta, who is often critical of the government, had his Twitter account targeted by a government blocking order in a move he called a "political vendetta".

Al Jazeera webpages on the blocking list, including a report on the exodus from Bangalore, appeared unaffected by the government orders, the channel's Delhi bureau chief Anmol Saxena told AFP.

Ministers earlier complained they had not received cooperation from websites and social network groups.

The government on Thursday said Twitter had agreed to remove six fake accounts parodying Prime Minister Singh.

The prime minister's office issued a statement on Friday quoting Twitter that they have "removed the reported profiles from circulation due to violation of our Terms of Service regarding impersonation".

United States State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said as India "seeks to preserve security, we are urging them also to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world".

The above was carried in the following places as well:

The National (August 25, 2012)
MSN News (August 24, 2012)
StarAfrica.com (August 24, 2012)
Jakarta Globe (August 24, 2012)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/afp-com-aug-23-2012-indian-govt-defends-internet-blocking

India Blocks Facebook, Twitter, Mass Texts in Response to Unrest

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T02:46:42Z

The Indian government has gone on the offensive against Internet giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, demanding hundreds of pages be removed or blocked after political unrest erupted in various parts of the country.

This post by Simon Roughneen was posted in Media Shift on August 28, 2012. Nishant Shah is quoted.

On August 15, India's independence day, Indian northeasterners began fleeing Bangalore, the country's southern IT hub and 5th largest city, after text messages said to threaten Assamese people and other northeasterners were sent around.

Authorities restricted text messages so they could be sent to only five recipients to stop bulk sending, which was followed by a government backlash against social media and news sites; more than 300 pages have been blocked in recent days.

Exodus

The scene during the exodus was reminiscent of an old newsreel from World War II Europe, or, more aptly, from the separation of India and Pakistan in the late 1940s when around 25 million people took flight amid chaos and bloodshed as the contours of the new states were drawn up after British withdrawal.

On the platform at a Bangalore train station were hundreds of people from Assam state and other areas of India's northeast, a remote part of the country almost 2,000 miles away. The region is mostly surrounded by Bangladesh, Bhutan, China and Burma and is linked to the rest of India only by a narrow strip of land nicknamed the chicken-neck.

In July, fighting in the northeast's Assam state between local ethnic groups and Muslims -- which some Indians say are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh -- killed 80 people and forced 400,000 more from their homes, most of them Muslims. On August 11, a march in Mumbai , India's financial capital, ended up in a riot, with two killed and dozens injured, when Muslims there protested attacks on Muslims in the northeast and on Muslim Rohingya in Burma.

The SMS scare in Bangalore came next, but who sent what and why has never been clearly established, though three men were subsequently arrested in Bangalore on suspicion of mass-forwarding threatening text messages.

Nonetheless, the scare, real or hyped, was enough to prompt panic among the 300,000 or so northeasterners who study and work in Bangalore. Interviewees at the city's rail station, waiting for a train to Guwahati in Assam state, a two-and-a-half-day journey, said they hadn't received or even seen any messages, but the rumor mill went into overdrive and their parents in the northeast urged them to come home, temporarily at least.

A lack of confidence in police, perceived racism against northeasterners -- some of whom appear east or southeast Asian and are sometimes called "chinki" by other Indians -- as well as political discord ahead of elections next year all contributed to the exodus.

Government Reacts

The Indian government urged the northeasterners to stay put, as the exodus spread to Pune, Chennai and other large cities in the south and west where northeasterners work. Text messages were limited to five recipients to stop bulk messages spreading fear, a bar later raised to 20 recipients. India has around 750 million cell phone subscribers, the world's second biggest market after China, and the government's nationwide restriction seemed an over-reaction given that the exodus was confined to a few cities.

In a country of 1.2 billion people -- the world's fourth biggest economy measured in purchasing power parity terms -- the government is worried about a recent economic slowdown. Growth is at its lowest since 2003, and foreign investors are complaining out loud about hazy rules and red tape. India feels it needs to nip any political unrest in the bud with foreign investment dropping by 78 percent year-on-year, according to June figures.

Apparently with public order in mind, the Indian government began blocking websites and pages said to contain inflammatory content, even as the exodus slowed.

Nishant Shah of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society said that the government is trying to figure out how best to react to the transition from an era when news and information was carried via broadcast and print.

"In the older forms of governance, which were imagined through a broadcast model, the government was at the center of the information wheel, managing and mediating what information reached different parts of the country. In the [peer-to-peer] world, where the government no longer has that control, it is now trying different ways by which it can reinforce its authority and centrality to the information ecosystem. Which means that there is going to be a series of failures and models that don't work," Shah told PBS MediaShift in an email.

Overdoing It?

However, for a country that has long styled itself as the world's biggest democracy, and is home to some of the world's biggest selling English language newspapers, the last few days have seen the government take a forceful line against Internet giants such as Google and Facebook that some feel threatens freedom of speech.

The text messages were said to be from some of India's 170 million or so Muslim population, the world's third largest after Indonesia and Pakistan -- and the Indian government at first sought to blame Pakistan for fomenting the exodus by whipping up anger among India's Muslims.

Following the text restrictions, Indian authorities blocked what they describe as "incendiary" and "hate-mongering" content on websites in Pakistan and Bangladesh that they say spurred the northeast fighting -- including images of the 2010 Tibet earthquake passed off as images of Burmese Buddhists after attacking Burmese Muslims -- and asked Google and Facebook to remove the content.

However, news reports on the exodus, as well as other coverage of Muslim-Buddhist clashes in Burma, were blocked. Among those affected were Doha-based news agency Al-Jazeera and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). And stories on sectarian fighting in Arakan in western Burma -- where Buddhist Arakanese have clashed with Muslim Rohingya, with the flare-up catching the attention of Islamist groups elsewhere, including India -- were blocked in India.

ABC said on Friday content that "in relation to the particular blocked ABC, we are surprised by the action and we stand by the reporting."

An April 2011 law says that the government must give 48 hours before blocking pages, as well as an explanation for the block in each individual case, though this can be sidestepped in an emergency. "Every company, whether it's an entertainment company, or a construction company, or a social media company, has to operate within the laws of the given country," said Sachin Pilot, minister of state in the Ministry of Communications, speaking about the recent restrictions.

There's more to the back-story than just the 2011 IT law, however. Prior to the recent exodus from Bangalore and the government reaction, Google and Facebook were facing charges for allegedly hosting offensive material.

A Google spokesman, speaking by telephone from Singapore about the Indian government's recent blocks, said that the company abides by the law of the land, in India and elsewhere. "We also comply with valid legal requests from authorities wherever possible, consistent with our longstanding policy," he said.

All told, 80 million to 100 million Indians are online, and India has the world's third biggest number of Facebook users, at 53 million. But, that just makes up just 4.5 percent of the country's population.

Some commentators see the government as oversensitive. For example, using the pushback to put a block on an account parodying the country's prime minister.

Twitter has 16 million accounts in the country. By Friday, a stand-off between New Delhi and Twitter saw around 20 Twitter handles blocked by Indian ISPs, on the orders of the government, with threats that the government could block Twitter completely.

The hashtag #GOIblocks gets about 10-12 tweets per minute -- going by a quick scroll-through -- from users protesting the government's measures. However, caught up in the dragnet so far are accounts with little apparently to do with the Bangalore exodus. The Indian opposition said the blacklist is partisan, while other commentators see the government as oversensitive, using the pushback to put a block on an account (@PM0India) parodying the country's prime minister, for example.

Adding to the irony, though it is not clear whether this was by accident or design -- the Twitter account of Milind Deora, the country's minister of state for communications and IT, and a vocal proponent of the recent blocks, was taken down by Twitter for 12 hours before being restored -- along with an apology by Twitter on Saturday.

This story has been altered to correct the date of India's independence day.

Simon Roughneen is an Irish journalist usually based in southeast Asia. He writes for the The Irrawaddy, Christian Science Monitor and others. He is on twitter @simonroughneen and you can Circle him on Google+.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-pbs-org-aug-28-2012-simon-roughneen-india-blocks-facebook-twitter-mass-texts-in-response-to-unrest

Women Arrested in Mumbai for Complaining on Facebook

praskrishna — 2012-11-21T11:32:04Z

For over 30 hours following the death of the Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray on Saturday, stores throughout Mumbai closed their shutters and taxis and autorickshaws stayed off the streets.

This article by Neha Thirani and Hari Kumar was published in New York Times on November 19, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

While analysts throughout Mumbai debated whether the citywide shutdown following the death of Mr. Thackeray was inspired by fear or respect, one 21-year-old woman and her friend were arrested for raising a similar question.

On Sunday, the police in Palghar, in Thane district, on the outskirts of Mumbai, arrested Shaheen Dhadha after she posted a status update on Facebook that questioned the shutdown, also known as a bandh. A local daily, the Mumbai Mirror, reported that Ms. Dhadha, 21, had written, "People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that." The police also arrested her friend who "liked" the post, whom NDTV identified by her first name, Renu.

The women were arrested under Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code for “statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes.” Srikant Pingle, station house in charge of the Palghar police, told India Ink that the local Shiv Sena chief, whom he identified as “Mr. Bhushan,” filed the complaint against Ms. Dhadha because her comment on Facebook hurt Shiv Sena’s sentiments. Mr. Pingle declined to comment further on the details of the arrests.

Sudhir Gupta, the defense counsel for the two women, told NDTV, “Their posts don’t incite violence. It can’t be said they have made any derogatory remarks. They don’t belong to any political ideology.”

In a phone conversation with India Ink, a police officer of the Palghar station, who identified himself only as Gavali, said that the arrest took place on Sunday night and that the pair had been taken to court on Monday.

The two women, who were sentenced to 14 days in jail by the court, received bail after a bond of 15,000 rupees ($270) was paid, reported NDTV.

The Times of India reported that a mob of 2,000 Shiv Sena workers vandalized her uncle’s orthopedic clinic in Palghar. Repeated calls made to the Dhada orthopedic hospital in Thane went unanswered, while Harshal Pradhan, a Shiv Sena spokesman, said that he was unaware of the incident.

A police officer at the Palghar Police Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that no one has been arrested in the attack on the clinic.

Pranesh Prakash, program manager with the Center for Internet and Society, said the arrests of the two women were a violation of free speech and the misapplication of the law. “There were thousands of people on Facebook, Twitter and in person who were saying the exact same kinds of things that this girl is alleged to have said,” said Mr. Prakash. “And the fact that only she and one other person who liked that comment have been arrested shows a clear arbitrariness in the application of the law.”

In an open letter addressed to the chief minister of Maharashtra, the former Supreme Court Judge Markandey Katju defended the two women, saying, “To my mind it is absurd to say that protesting against a bandh hurts religious sentiments.” He further said that the arrest appears to be a criminal act as it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime.

On social networking sites, people came out in support of Ms. Dhadha and her friend. The Facebook group “Ban Shiv Sena” had about 36,400 "likes" as of Monday afternoon, while the party’s official Facebook page had just under 2,700. On Twitter, several commenters expressed solidarity with the two women, including Milind Deora, the government minister of state, communications and information technology, who said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize ~ Voltaire."

In Maharashtra, Shiv Sena has a history of banning books, movies and other popular culture that are critical of the political party. In 2010, Rohinton Mistry’s book, "Such a Long Journey," was withdrawn from the syllabus of Mumbai University after Shiv Sena officials complained that the book insulted Bal Thackeray. Ironically, in a January 2007 interview with Shekhar Gupta, the editor in chief of The Indian Express, Mr. Thackeray said that what differentiated him from the mafia is that journalists and others were free to disagree with him and criticize him.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-blogs-nytimes-nov-19-2012-neha-thirani-hari-kumar-women-arrested-in-mumbai-for-complaining-on-facebook

Thousands go online against 66A

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T06:40:38Z

An online petition aimed at amending section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act and re-examining internet laws has garnered 3,000 signatures since it began on Tuesday — two days before Kapil Sibal, telecom and IT minister, chairs a meeting with the cyber regulation advisory committee.

This article by Apoorva Dutt was published in DNA on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The petition, anchored on Change.org, a platform for social initiatives, was started by Bangalore-based advocate Gautam John after two girls were arrested for their Facebook post on imposing a bandh in the city on the day Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was cremated. Following their arrests, Shaheen Dhada has deleted her Facebook account while her friend Rini Srinivasan who merely liked the post has opened a new account on the social networking site. However, she has vowed to refrain from making political statements.

John is blunt about the legislative effect an online petition can have. l Turn to p8.

“Honestly, I don’t believe that a petition can change laws, but it gives concerned citizens a platform for documenting their concern in such troubling scenarios. To some extent, this sort of petition can represent a civil society’s point of view. No more can a government authority say ‘only NGOs care about an issue’. Now they know – thousands of ordinary people care,” John said.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre For Internet and Society in Bangalore, points out the flaws in section 66A that have been exploited in cases like the Palghar incident. “Section 66A is very broadly-worded and the punishment (three years imprisonment) is excessive,” he said. “The law was borrowed – that too badly – from a British law. There are many a things greatly flawed in this unconstitutional provision, from the disproportionality of the punishment to the non-existence of the crime. The 2008 amendment to the IT Act was one of eight laws passed in 15 minutes without any debate in the winter session of Parliament.”

The petition also aims to organise a meeting of the civil society stakeholders to look into these concerns. A similar meeting was scheduled to be held in August, but it did not take place.

Sudarshan Balachandran of Change.org is the lead campaigner and organiser of the petition. He hopes to hand over a copy of the petition to Sibal during the meeting on Thursday. “Sibal has gone on record to say that they will examine the law, and if they feel it doesn’t work, it will be junked. So I am hopeful,” said Balachandran.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dnaindia-nov-29-2012-apoorva-dutt-thousands-go-online-against-66a

Haphazard censorship? Leaked list of blocked websites in India

praskrishna — 2012-08-23T06:18:45Z

An analysis of a leaked list of the websites blocked by Indian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on directions from the Department of Telecom bring to light the inconsistencies in India's online censorship efforts.

Published in IBNLive on August 23, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), analysed the 309 specific items that were asked to be censored from August 18, till August 21, 2012 by the Indian government following the recent incidents of communal violence and the mass exodus of North East Indians from Bangalore.

"It is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care," Prakash writes in a post on the CIS website that reveals several egregious errors in the censorship process.

While the government put on its censor gear to apparently stop rumours from spreading, Prakash discovered that "people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked." Also there are some items on the list that do not even exist online.

The 309 items that were ordered to be blocked include URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs, and a few websites.

Prakash, a graduate of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, also raises the questions on the legal standing of the government's actions. "The blocking of many of the items on that list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a some of the items ought, in my estimation, to be removed," he says.

Indian ISPs are also known to go overboard in their efforts to comply with any government order. There have been numerous incidents in the past when ISPs were asked to block a specific URL and they ended up blocking entire domains. The latest round of censorship is also no different. There have been reports of Airtel blocking the entire YouTube short URL youtu.be in some cities.

CIS hasn't published the complete list of the blocked items given "the sensitivity of the issue" but has posted a list of domains from which specific items have been asked to be blocked. The list follows:

ABC.net.au
AlJazeera.com
AllVoices.com
WN.com
AtjehCyber.net
BDCBurma.org
Bhaskar.com
Blogspot.com
Blogspot.in
Catholic.org
CentreRight.in
ColumnPK.com
Defence.pk
EthioMuslimsMedia.com
Facebook.com
Farazahmed.com
Firstpost.com
HaindavaKerelam.com
HiddenHarmonies.org
HinduJagruti.org
Hotklix.com
HumanRights-Iran.ir
Intichat.com
Irrawady.org
IslamabadTimesOnline.com
Issuu.com
JafriaNews.com
JihadWatch.org
KavkazCenter
MwmJawan.com
My.Opera.com
Njuice.com
OnIslam.net
PakAlertPress.com
Plus.Google.com
Reddit.com
Rina.in
SandeepWeb.com
SEAYouthSaySo.com
Sheikyermami.com
StormFront.org
Telegraph.co.uk
TheDailyNewsEgypt.com
TheFaultLines.com
ThePetitionSite.com
TheUnity.org
TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com
TimesOfUmmah.com
Tribune.com.pk
Twitter.com
TwoCircles.net
Typepad.com
Vidiov.info
Wikipedia.org
Wordpress.com
YouTube.com
YouTu.be

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-ibnlive-in-com-haphazard-censorship-leaked-list-of-blocked-sites

Open Letter to the Vatican: Request for Holy See to Comment on IPR

samantha — 2014-01-31T07:14:07Z

Due to the Holy See’s demonstrated pro-access position to medicines and published materials for persons with disabilities, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) requested for His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, to also consider copyrights, patents or IPR more generally, as the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at WIPO. We strongly encourage other organizations and civil society groups to modify this letter, as needed, and to contact the Holy See Mission to the United Nations (and WIPO) in Geneva in order to help us prompt His Excellency to contribute to the international dialogue on IPR.

You may view the original letter sent by CIS here.

His Excellency, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio
Holy See Mission to the United Nations in Geneva
P.O. Box 28
1292 Chambésy
Geneva, Switzerland
mission.holy-see@ties.itu.int
+41 22 758 98 20

Friday, January 24, 2014

Your Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi,

Subject: Call for the Holy See’s comment on Intellectual Property Rights

On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, India, I, Samantha Cassar, write to Your Excellency’s opinion on copyrights, patents and intellectual property rights.

We are a not-for-profit, non-governmental research organization that works on addressing policy issues related to access to knowledge and intellectual property law reform (http://cis-india.org/a2k), and accessibility for persons with disabilities (http://cis-india.org/accessibility) among other areas related to internet and information and communication technologies.

CIS is an accredited organization with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and a regular participant at the meetings of the Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights (SCCR), the Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP), as well as the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property.

At the outset, we commend Your Excellency for signing the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled. As one of the contributors to this treaty, we appreciate the concern of the Holy See for those who are marginalised within our information society by their disabilities.

As Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director from CIS noted at Marrakesh during the adoption of this treaty, “When copyright doesn't serve public welfare, states must intervene, and the law must change to promote human rights, the freedom of expression and to receive and impart information, and to protect authors and consumers.” We are happy to see this being done through a treaty as such.

Also said by Your Excellency, within the Holy See’s statement at the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO), “Among the most damaging concessions developing countries make in regional and bilateral agreements are those enhancing the monopolies on life-saving medicines, which reduce access and affordability and those that provide excessive legal rights to foreign investors, limiting the policy space for nations to promote sustainable and inclusive development.”

Given the Holy See’s demonstrated standpoint on the accessing of medicines and published works, we at the Centre for Internet and Society would like to request Your Excellency to also consider copyrights, patents or more generally, intellectual property rights (IPR), as Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva.

On behalf of CIS, I am honoured to be writing to Your Excellency and for this request to be considered. Due to the ability of copyright and other forms of IPR to obstruct the access of one’s own human rights and even the sustainable development of one’s country, we feel this area must be crucially considered within an international dialogue—not only from a place of political strategy but also from principles of mercy and compassion.

With meetings approaching for both WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (January 27-31, 2014) and WIPO’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (May 19-23, 2014), we are very excited at the possibility of the Holy See enriching this discussion, and hope for such a contribution to take place when the international community is listening—at these meetings, or in any other form.

With Every Best Wish,
Sincerely Yours,

Samantha Cassar

Programme Associate
The Centre for Internet & Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/open-letter-to-the-vatican-request-for-holy-see-to-comment-on-ipr

India internet: clean-up or censorship?

praskrishna — 2012-01-16T11:17:11Z

Is India going the way of China? Not when it comes to development indicators. Or enhanced infrastructure. Or economic power. But in another category at which Beijing excels: web censorship.

That was the implication of a ruling on Thursday from Justice Suresh Kait, of the Delhi High Court, who told lawyers for Facebook India and Google India that unless they develop mechanisms to regulate “offensive and objectionable” material on their web sites, India is prepared to take drastic measures, according to the Hindustan Times. “Like China, we will block all such websites,” Kalit declared.

According to the IBN news channel, the government seems to be moving to make good on those threats:

Government sources said on Friday that the Delhi High Court was likely to issue sanctions to prosecute social networking sites Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo India in the ongoing spat between the companies and the Government of India over content regulation.

“Prosecution for some of the non-bailable offences requires prior sanction of the government, which has been sought and it is likely to be granted,” the sources said.

[…]

Summons are to be sent to the companies through the Ministry of External Affairs directing their heads to appear before court on March 13, which is when the next hearing will take place. The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology will file its affidavit by this evening.

Clearly there’s trouble in “the world’s largest democracy”.

Kalit’s pronouncement is the latest turn in a story that broke last month, when the New York Times reported that telecoms minister Kapil Sibal had met with executives from Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft to discuss the pre-emptive removal of “offensive material” – including, it seems, web pages that had criticized the leader of his party, Sonia Gandhi.

As beyondbrics reported, Sibal then gave a combative press conference where he said: “I believe that no reasonable person aware of the sensibilities of large sections of communities in this country and aware of community standards as they are applicable in India would wish to see this content in the public domain,” referring to “offensive material” he had shown some reporters prior to the conference.

He added, repeatedly, that the government did not believe in censorship.

Apparently, Kalit didn’t get the memo.

Lawyers for the internet giants appeared before the judge to request the dismissal of a criminal complaint filed by a private citizen in a lower court under sections of the Indian law that cover “sale of obscene books etc”, “sale of obscene objects to young person etc” and “criminal conspiracy”. The judge declined.

“The magistrate of the trial court had observed that the material submitted by the complainant contained obscene pictures and derogatory articles pertaining to various Hindu gods, Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ”, IBN reported.

According to the Hindustan Times:

On behalf of Google India, senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi said it was humanly not possible to filter or monitor the postings of obscene, objectionable and defamatory material. “Billions of people across the globe, post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene but cannot be checked,” he said.

A Google spokesperson issued a statement last night, saying, “We did file a petition before the Delhi High Court. The Court has now issued a notice to the petitioner. We can’t comment at this stage.”

Today, the company issued a clarification:

Today the Court has merely directed the petitioner to serve the Court order to the overseas entities at their respective addresses and has adjourned the matter to March 13th.

Last month, a lower court had ordered the sites to remove all “anti-social” or “anti-relgious” content by February 6.

As Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, told beyondbrics last month, it’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

A lower court had directed the central government to take “immediate appropriate steps” and file a report by January 13.

It has not been released yet, but later on Friday you can Google it. Take the opportunity – if India goes the way of China, it might prove more difficult in future.

This blog post by Neil Munshi was published in beyondbrics on 13 January 2012

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/clean-up-or-censorship

Janhit Manch & Ors. v. The Union of India

praskrishna — 2012-01-18T11:57:04Z

The petition sought a blanket ban on pornographic websites. The NGO had argued that websites displaying sexually explicit content had an adverse influence, leading youth on a delinquent path.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT MUMBAI

CIVIL APPELLATE SIDE

PIL NO. 155 OF 2009

Janhit Manch and Ors. ... Petitioners
Versus
The Union of India ... Respondents
Mr. Sandeep Jalan for Petitioner in person.
Mr. A.M. Sethna for R. No. 1.

CORAM : F.I. REBELLO &
J.H. BHATIA, JJ.
DATED : MARCH 03, 2010

P.C.

Petitioner by the present petition has approached this court, seeking relief to direct the respondents to make coordinated and sustained efforts, to have a blanket ban on websites which according to Petitioners are displaying material pertaining to sex and which in their opinion is harmful to the youth of this country in their formative years.

Mr. Jalan, Petitioner No. 2 appearing in person draws our attention to amongst others to Section 67 and 67A of the Information & Technology Act, 2000. Under Section 67 if any person publishes or transmits or causes to be published or transmitted in the electronic form any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regarding to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and fine which may extend to five lakh rupees. Section 67A pertains to publishing or transmitting or causing to be published or transmitted in the electronic form any material which contains sexually explicit act or conduct can be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to ten lakh rupees.

The Act therefore, makes provision for punishment of a person against whom a complaint is filed, if such person commits the offence which falls within the purview of section 67 or 67A as the case may be. Such person can be tried and convicted. For that prosecution will have to establish that an offence has been committed.

By the present petition what the petitioner seeks is that this court which is a protector of free speech to the citizens of this country, should interfere and direct the respondents to make a coordinated and sustained efforts to close down the websites as aforestated. Once Parliament in its wisdom has enacted a law and has provided for the punishment for breach of that law any citizen of this country including the Petitioner who is aggrieved against any action on the part of any other person which may amount to an offence has a right to approach the appropriate forum and lodge a complaint upon which the action can be taken if an offence is disclosed. Courts in such matters, the guardian of the freedom of free speech, and more so a constitutional court should not embark on an exercise to direct State Authorities to monitor websites. If such an exercise is done, then a party aggrieved depending on the sensibilities of persons whose views may differ on what is morally degrading or prurient will be sitting in judgment, even before the aggrieved person can lead his evidence and a competent court decides the issue. The Legislature having enacted the law a person aggrieved may file a complaint.

In the light of that we are not inclined to interfere in the exercise of our extra ordinary jurisdiction. If the petitioner comes across any website/s which according to him publishes or transmits any act which amounts to offence under section 67 or 67A of the Information & Technology Act, 2000, it is upto him to file a a complaint.

With the above observations, Petition disposed of.

(J.H. BHATIA,J.) (F.I. REBELLO,J.)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/janhit-manch-ors.-v-union-of-india

Spy in the Web

nishant — 2012-03-26T06:38:51Z

The government’s proposed pre-censorship rules undermine the intelligence of an online user and endanger democracy.

Kapil Sibal’s recent remarks demanding that private social media companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook remove "objectionable" content from their social networks has created a lot of furore. It should not come as a surprise to us that just like any other platform of publication and content creation, several rules and regulations already regulate online content while still respecting our constitutional right for freedom of speech and expression in India.

From terms of services of the different web 2.0 products that seek to moderate "offensive" or "harmful" material to strictly defined punishable offences as defined in the Information Technologies Act, framed by the Government of India, there are various ways by which material that might incite violence, hatred or pain is systemically removed from the digital space.

Largely, this happens silently. Unless you are particularly keen on certain spurious websites, you wouldn’t even realise that there is a list of blacklisted websites that remain inaccessible to us in India. Once in a while, we realise the regulatory nature of state censorship when certain actions come to light. In 2006, the Indian government blocked Blogspot, the popular blogging platform, because they had detected "anti-national" activities by certain groups using the blog.

More recently, India’s first home-grown erotic comic series Savita Bhabhi was banned and taken off its Indian servers, without realising that in the era of cloud-computing, the comic still remains available through different containers and spaces. In both these cases, while one might be able to provide a critique of the Indian government’s attempts at censoring and regulating information, there is reasonable sympathy to the idea that some control on information is possibly a good thing.

It is in the very nature of information to be filtered. I am sure everybody will agree that censoring, controlling and regulating information of certain kinds — involving child pornography, calls for violence and vandalism aimed at insulting and offending vulnerable sections of the society — is probably in the interest of a healthier information society. And hence, one nods one’s head, rather grudgingly at some of the censorship laws (print, TV, internet, et al) and accepts that we need them, at least in principle, if not in execution.

However, what Sibal is asking for is not in the same vein. Censorship laws have always been very cautious of what constitutes "offensive" content and have relied both on the larger opinions of the community as well as the informed expertise of legal bodies to censor information. More often than not, an act of censorship is implemented when certain sections of the society, in their interaction with certain information, find it offensive or insulting and ask for a block. Pre-emptive censorship, the kinds performed by the Central Board of Film Certification, is in service of existing legal infrastructure around production and distribution of information.

Protective guidelines for censoring information, as was recently seen in the Broadcast Editors’ Association’s mandate around not intruding into the privacy of the Bachchan baby and the mother, during the birth of the child, are demonstrably for the protection of a person’s private life.

Sibal’s new calls for censorship against material “that would offend any human being” is separate from all these instances in three ways. First, while Sibal is an important political figure in this country, he is not the lord of information production. Using the power of his office to call for taking down of content that he found offensive (fortunately it did not incite him to violence and moral decrepitude) is undemocratic and possibly extra-legal (as in not within the boundaries of law, but who will bell the cat?).

To ask private companies and use his influence to bully them into curtailing the constitutionally provided freedom of speech and expression is in bad taste. There is enough regulation that could be invoked to seek arbitration between Sibal’s opinion and somebody else’s about how Sonia Gandhi should be represented online.

Second, Sibal might pretend that he is only asking for censorship of online content the way in which we have for other media, but that is a fallacy. What he is advocating is an ethos of pre-censorship, where, even before the material becomes public, it is screened through human agents who, through some divine right would know the right from wrong — read as what the powers to be want and don’t. To override existing regulation and ask for this extra layer of human scrutiny of all information being produced online is the equivalent of certain unnamed people in Mumbai, who, when Mani Ratnam was about to release his film Bombay, asked for a private screening of the film and then recommended some friendly cuts in it.

Third, is perhaps, and I write this with regret, Sibal has undermined the critical intelligence and engagement of the social media’s ardent users. He has fallen into the trap of suggesting that impressionable minds will be easily corrupted if they are introduced to "undesirable" information online, the same information that will apparently not drive human pre-screeners to prurient activities because they will be protected by the mantle of government sanction. Instead of drawing upon the wisdom of crowds, which invites communities and people to flag information that they find offensive and asks for independent arbitration, he has asked for an undemocratic and unconstitutional call for censorship which threatens the very structures of political protest, resistance and dialogue in the country.

If such draconian measures are going to be carried through, we might soon regress to a dystopia where all information is censored, filtered and reshaped only to suit the interests of those in power.

Nishant Shah, Director-Research wrote this article for the Indian Express. It was published on December 18, 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/spy-in-web

India's Techies Angered Over Internet Censorship Plan

praskrishna — 2011-12-22T05:30:09Z

India has the world's largest democracy, and one of the most rambunctious. Millions of its young people are cutting edge when it comes to high-tech. Yet the country is still very conservative by Western standards, and a government minister recently said that offensive material on the web should be removed.

The way it was reported in India, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal started the whole row by assembling the heads of social networking sites at a meeting in his office in New Delhi.

At the time, he was reported to have asked companies, like Google and Facebook, to devise a system to filter through and edit out objectionable material before it could make its way online.

In an interview with the Indian cable channel CNN-IBN, Sibal pointed to offensive religious content that could cause ethnic or inter-communal conflict.

"We will defend any citizens' right to freedom of speech until our last breath. But we don't want this kind of content to be on the social media," Sibal said in the interview.

India's civil society, and more particularly its very active blogosphere, was outraged.

Pranesh Prakash from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore says even the suggestion of censorship is a dangerous idea. Particularly if it's done before the content is posted online.

Indian Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal has said that Internet giants such as Facebook and Google have ignored his demands screen derogatory material from their sites, so the government would have to take action on its own.

"Pre-censorship is a very dangerous idea and is also something that actually doesn't happen in countries that are known for censoring the internet," Prakash says. "It will be charting a new path in Internet censorship."

Prakash says the proposal would be impractical, as well as undemocratic. Even with an army of censors, it would impossible to filter through content before it's uploaded, he says.

Stung by the criticism, Kapil Sibal now says he was misunderstood and that it "would be madness" to ask for pre-screening of content on electronic media and social media.

But in that fateful meeting, the Communications Minister also reportedly objected to unflattering portrayals of India's political leaders on the Internet and in Twitter messages. And that idea reinforced concerns that the government was overreaching and muffling dissent.

Censoring hate speech is one thing, but leaving it to the likes of Google to monitor political speech is problematic, says Apar Gupta, an Internet lawyer in New Delhi.

"It may offend you today, it may not cater to your taste, but at the end of the day: is it legal?" says Gupta. "The new proposals are quite a dramatic change, not only in terms of enforcement, but also in terms of what kind of speech it will prohibit."

Up till now, there has been some legal room for the government to censor inflammatory speech. For example, movies in India are subjected to a government censor board that monitors their content before they can be released to the general public. This year, a controversial movie about India's social caste system, was banned in some parts of the country.

But the Internet is less restrictive, says Apar Gupta.

"You can voice your opinion without any social sanctions for your opinions," he says. "So it's been a pressure valve which has allowed a lot of people to let off steam."

But even so, when debate online boils over in India it's the website or search engine that's held responsible. So critics of the proposed restrictions don't see the need for further action.

All this has left Communications Minister Kapil Sibal as something of a hate figure among Internet-savvy Indians. Although he says he's going to be pressing for tighter controls, he has agreed to meet with the Internet companies again.

This article by Elliot Hannon was published in NPR on 20 December 2011. Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/techies-angered-over-censorship