-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...

-The Hindustan Times   With great power comes great freedom. Which, in turn, calls for being responsible. The act to do things freely is one of the fundamental joys of being part of a liberal democracy. With powerful technological platforms and social networking sites such as Facebook, even repressed societies get to savour unfettered expression. But there is a flip side to such a freedom. And this involves the need to respect the...

-The Hindu   The BJP is not averse to the idea of a mechanism to curb “offensive and objectionable” material on the social networking websites with the approval of Parliament. In response to a specific question here, party Deputy Leader in the Rajya Sabha S.S. Ahluwalia said his party would support any “concrete measures” contemplated by the government to contain material on the internet which could hurt religious sentiments or were defamatory in...

-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...