Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

            } else {
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

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    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
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		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;,
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&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;
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Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
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Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
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Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.
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He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;
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Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.
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Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
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Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.
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Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.
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On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.
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&lt;br /&gt;
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Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
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&lt;br /&gt;
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Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
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&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. 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&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;
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$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | “I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;





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                <strong>“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar</strong></h1>
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                <div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em><br /></em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Editing by Karuna John</em></div>               </font>
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    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f5253c5a05c-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
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		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;,
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&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13066,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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$articleid = (int) 13066
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | “I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not..."/>
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                <strong>“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar</strong></h1>
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                <div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em><br /></em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Editing by Karuna John</em></div>               </font>
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&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;
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Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
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Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
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Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.
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He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;
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Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.
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Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
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Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.
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Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.
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On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.
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Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
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Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
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&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;
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	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | “I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;,
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;,
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&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
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Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.
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&lt;br /&gt;
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He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.
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Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.
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&lt;br /&gt;
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Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
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Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
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&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
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Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
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&lt;br /&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;
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&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;
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$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | “I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar&#039;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &amp;lsquo;activist&amp;rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&amp;ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&amp;rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &amp;ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&amp;rdquo;, some of which includes &amp;lsquo;highly objectionable&amp;rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &amp;ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&amp;rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &amp;ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&amp;rdquo; he says. &amp;ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &amp;ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&amp;rdquo; he said, adding, &amp;ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&amp;rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Based on Rai&amp;rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &amp;ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&amp;rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &amp;ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&amp;rdquo; he argued.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &amp;lsquo;properly&amp;rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &amp;lsquo;objectionable content&amp;rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &amp;ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&amp;rsquo;&amp;rsquo; He, however, insisted that &amp;ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&amp;rdquo;.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &amp;ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&amp;rsquo;t,&amp;rdquo; he alleges.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&amp;rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &amp;ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&amp;rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&amp;rsquo;s counsel told the court. &amp;ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&amp;rdquo; Sharma added.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &amp;ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&amp;rdquo; Google&amp;rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;arpit.parashar@tehelka.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Editing by Karuna John&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;





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                <strong>“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar</strong></h1>
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                <div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em><br /></em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Editing by Karuna John</em></div>               </font>
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<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.
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<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
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&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
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<br />
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Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
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<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify">
Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
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<em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em>
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<em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em>
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<em>Editing by Karuna John</em>
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...',
	'disp' => '<div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em><br /></em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Editing by Karuna John</em></div>',
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	'title' => '“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar',
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	'description' => '<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em><br />
</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>Editing by Karuna John</em>
</div>',
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Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;





Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not...'
$disp = '<div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one &lsquo;activist&rsquo; whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">&ldquo;The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,&rdquo; Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the &ldquo;blasphemous content on the internet&rdquo;, some of which includes &lsquo;highly objectionable&rsquo; images of gods and goddesses of various religions. &ldquo;Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,&rdquo; he defended his decision to file the case against the websites.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. &ldquo;All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. &ldquo;It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,&rdquo; he said, adding, &ldquo;Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven&rsquo;t become part of the online world yet.&rdquo;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Based on Rai&rsquo;s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. &ldquo;They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,&rdquo; he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. &ldquo;They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,&rdquo; he argued.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites &lsquo;properly&rsquo;. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have &lsquo;objectionable content&rsquo; removed, on Tuesday said: &ldquo;we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.&rsquo;&rsquo; He, however, insisted that &ldquo;no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media&rdquo;.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. &ldquo;If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he alleges.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai&rsquo;s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. &ldquo;The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,&rdquo; Naveen Sharma, Delhi government&rsquo;s counsel told the court. &ldquo;On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,&rdquo; Sharma added.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. &ldquo;It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,&rdquo; Google&rsquo;s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.&nbsp;</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>arpit.parashar@tehelka.com</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em><br /></em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>Editing by Karuna John</em></div>'
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“I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law” by Arpit Parashar

Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting ‘objectionable content’ Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one ‘activist’ whose name comes up every time there is a court hearing in the case against 22 social networking websites for posting ‘objectionable content’. “The decision to file the petition happened purely by chance, after a discussion with a lawyer friend,” Rai said referring to the criminal case he filed in a court in Delhi. Rai has worked at a leading Hindi news channel for 12 years and now edits a Noida-based Hindi and Urdu weekly newspaper Akbari. According to Rai it was the readers of Akbari who drew his attention to the “blasphemous content on the internet”, some of which includes ‘highly objectionable’ images of gods and goddesses of various religions. “Readers posted information about such content on our website and wrote letters,” he defended his decision to file the case against the websites. Rai then started calling on various religious leaders seeking their comments on such material. “All of them had strong views on such objectionable content and were aware that a lot of such content was floating around on the web. They said that it should be removed but none of them was willing to file a case against the websites posting the content,” he says. “I just wanted the issue to be heard by a court of law since [my] readers constantly posted queries on such content”. He then discussed the issue with his lawyer friend Shashi Tripathi, who helped file the petition. Originally from Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh, Rai moved to Lucknow to study law before moving to Delhi to work as a journalist. Rai went ahead with his decision to file the case himself because he felt religious communities can be very sensitive in India. “It takes a small incident or statement by a leader to cause a riot,” he said, adding, “Some of the content on the internet can cause unrest in the country. Thankfully, uncultured people haven’t become part of the online world yet.” Based on Rai’s petition, filed on 23 December, the court directed the Ministry of External Affairs to issue summons to the executives of the 22 websites whose top brass are based outside India and asked that they be present in person at the court on 13 March for the hearing in the case. This was challenged by Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court. The court had earlier commented during one of the hearings that India can also censor online content like China if the social networking websites refuse to remove ‘objectionable content’. Google has argued in the court that it was only a search engine and only helped facilitate the viewers to view content they wish to, but Rai challenges that. “They post sponsored links and advertisements and earn revenue through that,” he said. Rai also points out that websites like Google have a Transparency Report posted online in which they list the content that they deleted or removed because of various reasons. “They just need to spruce up this system that is already in place,” he argued. Rai claims the Government of India has not taken up the matter with the websites ‘properly’. The government had submitted in the trial court that there was sufficient ‘objectionable content’ posted online to initiate criminal proceedings against the social networking websites, but Rai feels it has skirted the issue by not enforcing laws that already exist. Union Minister for Communication and Technology Kapil Sibal, who had held meetings last year with the social networking websites to have ‘objectionable content’ removed, on Tuesday said: “we need to make sure that everybody obeys the laws of the country. If the print media and visual media obey the laws, the social media can also obey the laws.’’ He, however, insisted that “no government in India wants to ever sensor the social media”. Rai disagrees; he alleged the ministers manage to get objectionable content related to their parties removed. “If government decides to have anti-religious and anti-social content removed it can do so; but it hasn’t,” he alleges. On Tuesday 14 February, during the hearing in the matter in the Delhi High Court, Government of India became a party to Rai’s case against Google, Facebook and other websites. The Delhi Police, which is investigating the matter, submitted before the court that it wants to become a party to the case since the companies had refused to comply with their guidelines. “The government called the representatives of these internet companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) in October 2011, and asked them to remove the content. But they did not comply,” Naveen Sharma, Delhi government’s counsel told the court. “On December 12, 2011, Google and Facebook not only had the knowledge of the content questioned by Government of India, but their representatives were present in person in meetings and informed of the content,” Sharma added. Google and Facebook, meanwhile, questioned the intention of Government of India. “It might be a case of malafide intention, which we leave to the judgment of the Honourable Court,” Google’s counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul submitted before Justice Suresh Cait. Additional Solicitor General Amarjit Singh Chandhok is expected to respond to arguments of Google and Facebook on 16 February in the next hearing of the case as well as present the stand of the Government of India on the issue. Rai, meanwhile, concluded his arguments in the HC on Tuesday. Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.  arpit.parashar@tehelka.com Editing by Karuna John