Social networking websites asked to screen content by February 6 in India | Hacker News Reader

Social networking websites asked to screen content by February 6 in India

ibnlive.in.com

38 pointssrijan424 comments

The temptation here to go on a tirade against a party or the government is way too overwhelming (it is a private criminal case), but I would urge everyone to take a different view of this. The laws and the legal system in India are ill-equipped and not adequately trained to understand the nuances of the digital world. I had a first-hand experience of this a few years ago at my last job when we were dragged into an investigation that was looking into defamatory comments posted against a particular individual.

We had to work with the cyber crime cell to help them find what they were looking for and found the officers to be well-meaning and nice people. The only downside was the training given to them, which was next to non-existent. We eventually wound up helping them out a lot and also worked with them to help them get a better understanding of the issue at hand. I actually felt quite bad for them. The office we went to had a handful of ancient PCs of which only one was connected to the internet - a far cry from anything that you'd expect.

The same thing applies to courts, judgements are often handed out without a good understanding of the digital world. A judge when shown awful content will almost every time order its removal, there is hardly anything surprising about it.

This certainly won't be the last word on this, but we have a long road ahead increasing awareness and training of both the legal system and enforcement. By the time we finally get there, there will be a lot of mistakes arising from totally unintended consequences, but I am confident that we'll eventually get it right.

This is coming from the very highest levels of government. So your logic about ill-equipped offices or inadequate training does not apply to them. They are billionaires many time over. The minister who is the brain behind this legislation is one of highest paid lawyers in India so you can't assume that he is not able to comprehend the digital laws and their consequences. They are taking these measures to stifle the voice of middle class which is most vociferous against corruption. So your attempt to generate needless sympathy for them is unfortunately not grounded in reality.

Sorry, but you are completely mistaken. India does not have any legislation about posts in social network. The news is about a court order to remove derogatory posts about religion. It is not about any individual. I guess you mixed up this news and an older report.

I think you are mixing up the cases here. The Sibal affair was the one from the government. If you read the linked story you'll find two cases - one civil and another criminal - which are behind the directives by the courts. The government is not a party to either case.

I don't have any sympathies for people who try to stifle the ability to express freely, but I also don't have any sympathies for misinformation and needless rabble rousing either.

As part of my work, I do interact and advise members/organizations of the legal framework and, trust me, there are a lot of good intentions there, but sadly that alone is not good enough and we wind up with lousy outcomes. This is the reason why I look unfavourably on a purely black and white view of these things.

OPs headline is misleading. The court is just ordering the websites to remove a particular instance of "derogatory" material. Is it that bad? Users can do this themselves on many of these sites by marking the material offensive. I read the article twice and it doesn't seem as if the court has asked all 21 websites to screen all content by February 6, but only remove the particular cases submitted by the petitioner.

Sites like Facebook, Google, and even my own photography community Fotoblur were developed in the US, where freedom of speech is tolerated. Remember, freedom of speech is in place not to protect nice language, its there to protect the derogatory kind. We don't need rights to protect nice language. Think about it. So it follows then that technology developed under that platform of thinking doesn't always translate well to ones which have different customs, religions, and laws. Unfortunately, we can not assume or expect that free and expressive ways of thinking are acceptable in other parts of the world.

For instance, Fotoblur publishes a magazine in which an Iranian photographer was published. Unfortunately we couldn't send him a copy because American companies can not ship to Iran. We worked out a deal where we'd ship him the issues to a friend in Canada, then he would deliver them on a trip he was making to Iran. It worried me a bit because I found out that the possession of material containing nudity was a jail-able offense in Iran (that magazine issue had a few artistic nudes in it). Lesson learned: Our publication did not translate well within Iranian cultural laws.

The question for me is where is the line drawn when it comes to objectionable material. Most sites have TOSs that restrict such material that is considered objectionable or offensive anyway. I'd also imagine that this type of content constitutes less than 0.01% of the material and is being blown out of proportion and shouldn't even be part of the public debate.

Regardless, rather than having each nation determine its own laws governing Internet Services I propose a global consortium be developed. Here is why: http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/cens3.html Try navigating through this mess is you wish to abide by international law when it comes to control over your content. Just not possible.

"The contents are certainly disrespectful to the religious sentiments and faith and seem to be intended to outrage the feelings of religious people whether Hindu, Muslim or Christian."

I say: So what? As long as it does not promote hurting people, or people are forced to watch it, it shouldn't matter. There are tons of things said on the Internet, attacking which companies people like, for example. This can hurt a lot as well, I know that first-hand.

The important thing is, I still chose to consume the hater-content. Removing something just because it risks offending someone would harm free speech, no matter how much it hurts me personally.

"I say: So what? As long as it does not promote hurting people, or people are forced to watch it, it shouldn't matter."

It matters a lot in India. To understand the real problem, you have to understand the social problems in India (and Asia to some extent). Even though literacy rate is increasing, religious fanaticism is not decreasing. It is very common to find highly educated people talking bad about religions they don't believe in. A small post derogating some religion is sufficient for silly extremist groups and crappy media (the news website ibnlive is a good example) to make a big issue. Extremist groups bash these posts to give themselves publicity. For media, it is all about ratings and advertisement so they keep broadcasting news about such posts all day. Both these groups conveniently shut their eyes on the religious polarization caused by their actions. This hurts the society and it hurts the country economically.

I also don't believe in hindering free speech. But when I see the social problems around me, I feel we will be better of with some regulations.

Thats true, the media focuses too much on the infrequent cases. I'd assume that these posts constitute less than 0.01% of the posts on any of the aforementioned social networks, probably less, but then receive the most media attention. This kind of media behavior is a global problem however, and not particular to India.

Its always hard to protect free speech. But this requires creative solutions, and censorship is not one of them.

Too many old farts in charge of too many important things.

Let's all celebrate ageism. Yay!

Please don't trot out the "-ism" card. Yes, the OP's words were a bit flippant and perhaps insulting, but older generations are, on average, more conservative and less tech-savvy than younger generations. That's just how it is; it's not insulting to the older crowd, it's just what one would naturally expect. But, all this tends to present a real problem when the law clashes with technology.

The problem I have with it is that there are undoubtably young people working in the same systems, upholding the same values. It's easy to write it off as "old farts", when, in reality, it is entrenched power that is problematic. But that isn't a one-sentence comment that writes off a lot of work by older people (fwiw, I'm not yet 40) to make the world a better place for the youngen's.

The government doesn't like derogatory pictures or comments about its puppet master Sonia Gandhi and Muhammad and Jesus.. apparently..

(some perspective from an Indian living in India). This will be challenged in higher courts and almost certainly get overturned. I wouldn't worry too much. It is actually better that the Supreme Court rules on this (if it goes that far). Lower courts sometimes have dumb judges but the Supreme Court has judges of a relatively high calibre.

Also, from a purely pragmatic perspective, settling the legality of this will take years, and Google et al can afford some seriously good lawyers.

From an entirely US perspective, this is good. If the court order followed through, there'd be fallout, and perhaps some of the 21 social networking sites will decide they don't want to play ball and they shut down in India instead. Then there exists a clear-cut example where overreaching regulation interferes with the Internet, another minor blow to SOPA discussions in the US.

They won't shut down the sites for India, is cheaper to just hire a small team that will shut down some content based on objections. I don't think India has the concept of universal free speech which US does.

You are right. One can go to jail here for speech that offends certain sections of society (like religious groups)

Most likely this will be appealed in a higher court.

Just as i suspected : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3372821

I'd love to see those URLs to "derogatory content"!

You'll be embarrassed by their banality.

We're talking of things like photographs of Sonia Gandhi with a moustache drawn on her to photographs of nude women with Sonia's face superimposed.

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