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Govt faceoff brewing with Facebook, others

-The Times of India

 

Tension is brewing once again between the government and internet and social media companies over the telecom and IT ministry's demands to screen user content and remove offensive material before it is uploaded.

Sources said over the last three months the government has been in talks with these firms to put in place a monitoring mechanism. On Monday, telecom & IT minister Kapil Sibal met executives from the Indian units of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook to discuss the issue, but no solution was in sight.

"The Indian government doesn't believe in censorship," Sibal said in response to a query from TOI and ruled out any coercion. "It believes in self-regulation," he added. Officials, however, said the issue was proving difficult to be sorted out. The executives were shown content which could hurt religious sensibilities and obscene images of Indian political leaders.

The executives told the government that the material was in line with US laws and community standards, a senior official said. "So far, they have refused to cooperate with us. We have not decided what action we can take although the law empowers us," the source added.

Government sources, however, insisted that the interaction was in no way similar to steps that were taken in other countries such as China. "We are engaging with them to evolve a mechanism so that no one is offended and we do not have to resort to censorship," another source said.

The New York Times reported that about six weeks ago Sibal called legal representatives from the top internet service providers and Facebook into his office and showed them a Facebook page that maligned Congress president Sonia Gandhi. "This is unacceptable," he said, reported an executive. The minister 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, Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said. Three executives said 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.

On Monday, the executives met the minister where they were expected to tell him that his demand was impossible to be met, given the huge volume of user-generated content coming from India, and that they cannot be responsible for determining what is or 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. But these companies can't be in the business of deciding what is and isn't legal to post, he said.

NYT reported that Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft did not respond immediately to calls for comment, and a Google spokesperson said the company had no comment on the issue. Facebook said earlier this year it had more than 25 million users in India. Google has over 100 million users in the country.

The demand of the government comes after rules were issued by the ministry in April asking internet service providers to delete information posted on websites 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 BlackBerry messenger messages.

The government also plans to set up its own unit to monitor information posted on websites and social media sites, the executives said, which will report to Gulshan Rai, the director general of India's cyber-security monitor.

Times View
 
There is no doubt there's a lot on the internet and on social networking sites that's offensive, even defamatory. But to suggest that all content, therefore, must be pre-screened by human beings before being uploaded is to ask for the impossible. With millions of users even in a country with relatively low internet penetration like India, that amounts to asking all social networking media to shut down. Anybody offended by content on these sites is free to complain. The laws stipulating what the site's administrators have to do in such cases need to balance an individual or institution's right to protection against defamation with the right to freedom of expression, but pre-censorship by anybody of social networking sites is not a workable proposition.