-CNN-IBN The Delhi High Court will hear final arguments in the objectionable online content case. Several social networking websites, including Google and Facebook, had approached the court requesting it to quash the trial court's order, which summoned them earlier. The trial court had warned the websites that the websites could face a ban if they didn't remove objectionable content. Google and Facebook, along with 16 other websites are facing criminal proceedings. Google and...

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...

The government’s recent actions in notifying the Intermediary Guidelines for the internet with minimal public debate have resulted in the creation of a legal system that raises as many problems as it solves. The regulations as presently notified are arguably unconstitutional, arbitrary and vague and could pose a serious problem to the business of various intermediaries in the country (not to mention hampering internet penetration in the country) and also...

-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...

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...