An Indian court has threatened to block sites such as Facebook and Google unless they take steps to eliminate “offensive and objectionable” content.<\/p>\n
“You must have a stringent check. Otherwise, like in China, we may pass orders banning all such websites,” the Delhi High Court said during a hearing Thursday with legal representatives for Facebook and Google India.<\/p>\n
Both companies should “develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages”, Justice Suresh Kait was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India.<\/p>\n
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal last month pledged a crackdown on “unacceptable” online content, saying Internet service providers had ignored India’s demands to screen images and data before they are uploaded.<\/p>\n
He provided examples of faked naked pictures of Indian political leaders and religiously sensitive images.<\/p>\n
Sibal’s comments provoked anger and derision among Indian Internet users, with experts arguing that such demands could not be enforced and smacked of state censorship.<\/p>\n
“No human interference is possible and, moreover, it can’t be feasible to check such incidents,” Mukul Rohatgi, a lawyer for Google India, told the High Court hearing.<\/p>\n
India, the world’s largest democracy, has more than 110 million Internet users out of a population of 1.2 billion, with predictions that 600 million people will be online in the next five years.<\/p>\n
Facebook and Google had moved the High Court to stay a summons issued last month by a lower court that is hearing a private criminal complaint against them.<\/p>\n
Facebook is officially blocked in China, while Google pulled its search engine out of the country two years ago after a confrontation with Chinese authorities over censorship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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