Bombay High Court notice to Orkut
Indiatimes reports Google’s social networking site in trouble
The Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to issue notice to Google for the alleged spread of hatred about India by its social network service Orkut.
The order was issued by Justice A P Deshpande and Justice R M Borde Monday in response to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by local Advocate Yugant R Marlapalle.
A picture of burning the national tricolour, bearing anti-India message, has been put on www.orkut.com and a community “We Hate India” has been created on the site, the petition said.
The petition has also appealed to the government to appoint a ‘controller’ under the Information Technology Act-2000 to regulate all such communities being in operation on the internet.
Now what do they expect Google/Orkut to do? Moderate every single community? Maybe moderate every single post and scrap as well…
Or better still maybe a “controller” to control every single line of text or image on the net. wow!!!
Did the litigant and the court seriously think that people are complete idiots and will believe whatever they see, and so need to be protected from such content… Why can’t you trust people to make their choices without any interference from the government and judiciary?
Seriously makes me wonder when will we have courts and governments that do not try to censor information or curtail expression of opinion?
Posted under: Thoughts/Censorship
Tagged with: Bombay High Court, censor, expression, Google, Information Technology Act, opinion, Orkut
October 11th, 2006 at 15:05:57
hey Sajith, didn’t know you have your own nice blog here. looks good!
About this PIL, the social networking sites have to be careful about hosting content like this. All of them mention ‘no preaching hatred’ in that “terms of use” page where you and I click “I accept” during sign-up. But it is probably tough for them to track whats happening inside each and every public group.
October 11th, 2006 at 15:28:25
Thats the point silkboard, it is
toughimpossible for the sites to keep track of what the users say.But serioulsy why can’t we just accept the fact that most people don’t believe whatever they see and there is no need to protect them from hatred preaching content.
October 11th, 2006 at 20:15:26
Its more like - Legal System does not quite understand how the sites are run and hosted.
Some time back Baazi.com India CEO was arrested - what a shame. Just goes on to show total lack of common sense. Why arrest, when CEO did not put up the content, and removed it right away - when they came to know of it !!