-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 United Nations   Television should be made more accessible to persons with disabilities, argues a new United Nations report released today, which identifies different accessibility options that would enable users to fully access audiovisual content. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies, more than 1.4 billion households worldwide have a TV, representing 98 per cent of homes in developed countries and almost...

-The Indian Express Kapil Sibal, Union minister for communications and information technology, caused great consternation when he declared his intention to scour the Web of “objectionable content”. He showed reporters choice examples of material that maligned Islam, the PM and Sonia Gandhi, among others, and insisted that companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc, make sure they conform to India’s “community standards” and weed this stuff out themselves. He also reportedly added...

Indian politicians appear too sensitive on how they're portrayed online. Why else would government agencies inundate Google - with an estimated 100 million users in India - with requests to remove content, especially those showing political leaders in bad light. Kapil Sibal's suggestion for pre-screening online content may have sparked controversy today, but when it comes to post-screening law enforcement agencies in India have been active. They regularly approach Internet service...

-The Times of India   Tension is brewing once again between the government and internet and social media companies over the telecom and IT ministry's demands to screen user content and remove offensive material before it is uploaded. Sources said over the last three months the government has been in talks with these firms to put in place a monitoring mechanism. On Monday, telecom & IT minister Kapil Sibal met executives from the...