[governance] Google to Censor Blogposts

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Norbert Bollow [25/02/15 14:50 +0100]:
>The most serious problem is that you seem to want your customers to
>agree that on their hosted websites nothing would be included that says
>anything critical about anyone or about anything, as your definition
>of "Defamatory content" includes "any website content that ... may give
>an individual, business, product, services, group, government or nation
>a negative image."

They are based in India and so would have to comply with section 66A of the
IT act, where this is quite loosely defined.

You might read this paper I put together with Pranesh Prakash of CIS India.
Section IV (written by Pranesh) has an overview of 66A and its
implications.  

There is very little notion of safe harbor, and defamatory content is in
practice defined as "anything that anyone finds defamatory enough to sue"

http://cybersummit.info/sites/cybersummit.info/files/srs-ewi-paper-final.pdf

So you may want to work with your friends it4change to lobby the Indian
government to remedy this act. 

There's an ongoing challenge to 66A in the indian supreme court, you may
want to track this.  The funny thing is, the government is declaring in the
supreme court that 66A is meant to deter spam and phishing and cybercrime
rather than curb free speech (while most if not all the prosecutions under
this have been against people posting political criticism)

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/XMv1cw3VLrmJZrpLYhIqPL/Section-66A-not-for-curbing-freedom-of-speech-govt-says.html

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/sc-on-it-act-will-examine-section-66a-as-it-stands/

It deals entirely with the transmission of messages (so email and by
extension social media) and on the surface at least has no wording that
deters spam and phishing, let alone other cybercrime like ddos attacks or
malware.  Also note the "or" at the end of each clause, and the punishment
that 66A prescribes.

------

66A. Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication
service, etc.

Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication
device,—

(a) any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; or

(b) any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of
causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury,
criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred or ill will, persistently by making
use of such computer resource or a communication device,

(c) any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of
causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the
addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages,

shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three
years and with fine.

Explanation.— For the purpose of this section, terms “electronic mail” and
“electronic mail message” means a message or information created or
transmitted or received on a computer, computer system, computer resource
or communication device including attachments in text, images, audio, video
and any other electronic record, which may be transmitted with the message.


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