-The Hindu   Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, has set off a firestorm of protest by demanding that ‘internet intermediaries' — specifically in this round, four social networking giants, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft, which enable hundreds of millions of individual users to publish and share on the worldwide web — remove inflammatory content as well as other text and images that might “offend Indian sensibilities.” As in...

The Union minister for communications and information technology, Kapil Sibal, is a knowledgeable lawyer, and someone who is reportedly committed to the freedom of speech. He would not lightly propose regulations that contravene Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression) of our Constitution. So how is one to explain his recent proposals on controlling online speech? Or even the immoderate IT Rules that have been in force since April? This controversy...

-The Economic Times   Information technology minister Kapil Sibal's demand that Facebook and Google screen user-generated content manually before they put it up is impractical and, therefore, unacceptable. But this does not mean that everything he has said should be rejected alongside.  Nor is there any merit in the outcries of outrage over imperilled freedom of expression. Free speech is not unbridled, anywhere. Even the internet companies in question accept this. They say...

-BBC   India has vowed to crack down on offensive internet content, accusing web firms of failing to cooperate. Communications Minister Kapil Sibal met officials from Google, Facebook and other websites on Monday. On Tuesday he said the firms had told him they were unable to take action. He said the government would introduce guidelines to ensure "blasphemous material" did not appear on internet. Doctored photos of the PM and Sonia Gandhi have angered the...

In an interview to The Hindu, he says internet companies left him with no choice Kapil Sibal, the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, has defended his demand that global internet companies block some content from sites they operate, saying he had been left with no choice after the companies refused to delete incendiary hate-speech published on their social-networking websites. In an exclusive interview to The Hindu, Mr. Sibal said Facebook,...