Can Information Technology Act deal with the dynamics of the Net? THIS is one series of court cases the nation is following keenly. Within one week, in December last year, a criminal and a civil complaint were filed against 20-odd online giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo for hosting anti-religious and anti-social content on their websites. While the judge hearing the civil case ordered immediate removal and blockade of all...

For the Government of India the first phase of the national solar mission has been a grand success. It not only managed to attract industry to invest in the generation of an energy considered costly, but also dramatically drove down the cost of producing this energy. In its celebration, little did the government realise that a major conglomerate had subverted rules to acquire a stake in the solar mission much...

Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services —making it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed Without getting into questions of what should and should not be unlawful speech, let's take a look at how Indian law promotes arbitrary removal and blocking of websites, website content, and online services, and how it makes it much easier than getting offline printed speech removed. --Pranesh Prakash...

Twitter, a hugely popular social networking site for microblogging, has said that "if required by the law" it can block tweets in a particular country. In a post titled 'Tweets Must Still Flow', Twitter, which has around 300 million users, wrote on its official blog, "Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country, while keeping it available in the rest of...

-The New York Times   It started five years ago after a young engineer in San Francisco sketched out a quirky little Web tool for telling your friends what you were up to. It became a bullhorn for millions of people worldwide, especially vital in nations that tend to muzzle their own people. But this week, in a sort of coming-of-age moment, Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages...