[governance] Sibal demands pre-censorship of user-uploaded content

[parminder]

On Tuesday 06 December 2011 10:32 AM, Pranesh Prakash wrote:
> In a moment of divine inspiration, the Indian Minister for
> Communications and Information Technology asks Facebook, Google, Yahoo
> and Microsoft to pre-censor user-uploaded content.
>    

Appears indeed to be a sudden strike from the 'unexplainable realm', but 
for the fact that the Minister reaffirmed and further 'clarified' the 
demand in a press conference. It is not clear what exactly does he and 
his ministry mean by it and want to do about it, because I credit the 
minister with enough intelligence to know that it is simply impossible 
for these companies to do what he is asking them to.

parminder




> // Pranesh
>
>  From the New York Times, which broke the story:
>
> <http://goo.gl/BXQHY>
>
> DECEMBER 5, 2011, 6:33 AM
> India Asks Google, Facebook to Screen User Content
>
> By HEATHER TIMMONS
>
> The Indian government has asked Internet companies and social media
> sites like Facebook to prescreen user content from India and to remove
> disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online,
> three executives in the information technology industry say.
>
> Top officials from the Indian units of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and
> Facebook are meeting with Kapil Sibal, India’s acting telecommunications
> minister, on Monday afternoon to discuss the issue, say two executives
> of Internet companies. The executives asked not to be identified because
> they are not authorized to speak to the media on the issue.
>
> Mr. Sibal’s office confirmed that he would meet with Internet service
> providers Monday but did not provide more information about the content
> of the meeting.
>
> About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top
> Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said
> one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.
>
> At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned
> the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi.  “This is unacceptable,”
> he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way
> to monitor what is posted on their sites.
>
> In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr.
> Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen
> content, not technology, the executive said.
>
> The three executives said Mr. Sibal has told these companies that he
> expects them to set up a proactive prescreening system, with staffers
> looking for objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted.
>
> The executives said representatives from these companies will tell Mr.
> Sibal at the meeting on Monday that his demand is impossible, given the
> volume of user-generated content coming from India, and that they cannot
> be responsible for determining what is and isn’t defamatory or disparaging.
>
> “If there’s a law and there’s a court order, we can follow up on it,”
> said an executive from one of the companies attending the meeting. But
> these companies can’t be in the business of deciding what is and isn’t
> legal to post, he said.
>
> Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft did not respond immediately to calls for
> comment, and a Google spokeswoman said the company had no comment on the
> issue. Facebook said earlier this year it has more than 25 million users
> in India. Google has over 100 million Internet users in India.
>
> The demand is the Indian government’s latest attempt to monitor and
> control electronic information. In April, the ministry issued rules
> demanding Internet service providers delete information posted on Web
> sites that officials or private citizens deemed disparaging or
> harassing. Last year, the government battled with Blackberry’s
> manufacturer, Research In Motion, threatening to shut the company’s
> service off in India if it did not allow government officials greater
> access to users’ messages.
>
> The Indian government also plans to set up its own unit to monitor
> information posted on Web sites and social media sites, executives said,
> which will report to Gulshan Rai, the director general of India’s
> cyber-security monitor.
>
> A man who answered the phone in Mr. Rai’s office said he did not talk to
> the press and hung up when a reporter asked for a press contact.
>
> Some Indian cities like Mumbai have already set up special units to
> monitor Internet sites like Facebook and Orkut, the social networking
> site operated by Google, for content considered disparaging or obscene.
> India has made nearly 70 requests to Google to remove content between
> January and June of this year, one of the highest request rates of any
> country though less than the United States’s 92 and Brazil’s 224,
> according to Google’s transparency report.
>
> Vikas Bajaj contributed reporting from Mumbai.
>
>
>    
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