India pursues web giants over obscene content

India: India's government authorised on Friday the prosecution of 21 Internet firms including Facebook, Yahoo! and Google in a case over obscene content posted online, two sources told AFP. The approval could lead to company directors being called to a trial court in New Delhi to answer serious charges such as fomenting religious hatred and spreading social discord, an official and a lawyer said.

A criminal case against the web titans was first filed in a lower court by local journalist Vinay Rai who complained that the sites were responsible for obscene and offensive material posted by users.

He also claimed that they had broken laws designed to maintain religious harmony and “national integration” in India, serious offensives that require government approval to be admitted in court.

“We had applied for the government's sanction and the ministry of communication and IT has filed it directly in the metropolitan magistrate's court,” Rai's lawyer Sashi Prakash Tripathi told AFP.

A source in the ministry, who asked not to be named because he was unauthorised to speak to the media, confirmed to AFP that approval had been given.

The case recalls another in 2004 when police arrested the Indian-born chief of eBay's local site Baazee.com because of material such as pornography that was offered for sale on the online auction hub. The Internet companies targeted have already filed a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to have the lower court's case against them stayed. The hearing of the petition is to resume on Monday.

Earlier Friday, the lower court ordered that summonses be served on the companies, including US giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and YouTube among 10-foreign-based ones.

The government's sanction to prosecute represents an escalation of a recent tussle between social networks and the government, in particular Communications Minister Kapil Sibal. Sibal last month pledged a crackdown on “unacceptable” online content and urged the social networks to exert more control over the photos, videos and users’ comments uploaded on their platforms.

He provided examples of religiously sensitive images and obscene photoshopped pictures of Indian politicians, reportedly including the boss of the ruling Congress party Sonia Gandhi.

Sibal's comments provoked anger and derision among Indian Internet users, with experts arguing that the millions of postings uploaded daily could not possibly be screened.

The minister stressed that the government supported free speech and was against censorship but that some material on the Internet was so offensive that no one would find it acceptable.

AFP