BANGALORE: Protests against government's alleged attempt to govern the internet is gathering steam, with a public interest litigation in Kerala, a signature campaign and mass protests in Karnataka besides the political left throwing its weight behinds demand to withdraw the recently amended laws. The new rules, adopted last year, regulates reader's comments on online articles, user-posted videos, blogs, photos and posts on online social networks such as Facebook or Orkut. Opponents...

Judicial gag orders are as abhorrent as executive restraints on the media   Some interim orders issued by the courts have restrained publication or comment on certain matters of public importance. Orders imposing judicial censorship on the media have been extremely rare. Except in the rarest of rare cases, judicial “gag orders” are as abhorrent as executive restraints on the media. The changed situation calls for a comment on these judicial orders and...

How an image-fixated chief minister has bent the state’s media to his will If you haven’t heard of an income tax raid on the residential premises of Nitish Kumar’s close aide and treasurer of the ruling Janata Dal-United (JD-U), Vinay Kumar Sinha, you are not alone. Thanks to the local media, it took a while even in Patna—where the house is located—for people to get to know. This, incidentally, is the...

India is coming under increasing pressure from the U.S. and the European Union for the strict patentability criteria it applies for medicines. AS was only to be expected, the two landmark decisions made by the Indian patent office in recent times concerning pharmaceutical patent cases have not gone down well with the multinational drug industry. First, there was the rejection in 2006 of the patent application by the Swiss multinational...

-Kafila.org When the Parliament’s budget session re-opens on April 24, the Rajya Sabha will vote on an annulment motion against the IT Rules promulgated in April 2011 that provide for “intermediaries” to remove the online content they are asked to by anyone. The motion has been moved by P Rajeeve, Rajya Sabha member from the Communist Party of India-Marxist. Speaking on the phone from Thrissur, Rajeeve said, “The IT Rules go against...