Recently Kapil Sibal the telecom minister of India talked of censoring the content over internet as it had criticisms against the Empress of the India(Sonia Gandhi because even though constitutionally nation is a democratic and republic country but basically it is under the rule of just 1 family from independence) and their protege and stooges(which inculdes many congress barkers like rahul gandhi, digvijay singh, kapil sibal, abhishek manu singhvi, manish tiwary, chidambaram etc...) and this censorship style and finishing of the critcisers and others is not something new for the congress party as it is one such thing which is followed from ages since the britishman A.O Hume formed congress in 1885 to divert the real support people like Birsa munda, Vasudev Balwant phadke etc.. were getting while fighting against the british and it remained the same till tilak hijacked congress from british control and this same congress party has many feather of caps which goes to the extent of even finishing of its criticisers sometimes in the past and it used to go unnoticed due to no medium for the message to be spread out freely.
Thanks to the evolution of internet people can talk freely and express their views in forums, social networking sites and so on freely which in other words is the purest form of democracy for the people as people can express their views freely and openly and now the indian govt plan to curb that freedom shows the mentallity of these people as they are afraid to be criticised for misgovernance, loot of the nation(which alone has more than 400 lakh crores of black money stashed in tax heavens), rowdism by its goons and many more.
Here is the Newyork times report which is reporting the same on december 5th and it took around 24 hrs to get reported well in indian media now.
India Asks Google, Facebook to Screen User Content
The Indian government has asked Internet companies and social media sites like Facebook to prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online, three executives in the information technology industry say.
Top officials from the Indian units of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook are meeting with Kapil Sibal, India’s acting telecommunications minister, on Monday afternoon to discuss the issue, say two executives of Internet companies. The executives asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the media on the issue.
Mr. Sibal’s office confirmed that he would meet with Internet service providers Monday but did not provide more information about the content of the meeting.
About six weeks ago, Mr. Sibal called legal representatives from the top Internet service providers and Facebook into his New Delhi office, said one of the executives who was briefed on the meeting.
At the meeting, Mr. Sibal showed attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi. “This is unacceptable,” he told attendees, the executive said, and he asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites.
In the second meeting with the same executives in late November, Mr. Sibal told them that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology, the executive said.
The three executives said Mr. Sibal has told these companies that he expects them to set up a proactive prescreening system, with staffers looking for objectionable content and deleting it before it is posted.
The executives said representatives from these companies will tell Mr. Sibal at the meeting on Monday that his demand is impossible, given the volume of user-generated content coming from India, and that they cannot be responsible for determining what is and isn’t defamatory or disparaging.
“If there’s a law and there’s a court order, we can follow up on it,” said an executive from one of the companies attending the meeting. But these companies can’t be in the business of deciding what is and isn’t legal to post, he said.
Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft did not respond immediately to calls for comment, and a Google spokeswoman said the company had no comment on the issue. Facebook said earlier this year it has more than 25 million users in India. Google has over 100 million Internet users in India.
The demand is the Indian government's latest attempt to monitor and control electronic information. In April, the ministry issued rules demanding internet service providers delete information posted on websites that officials or private citizens deemed disparaging or harassing. Last year, the government battled with BlackBerry's manufacturer, Research In Motion, threatening to shut the company's service off in India if it did not allow government officials greater access to users' messages.
The Indian government also plans to set up its own unit to monitor information posted on websites and social media sites, executives said, which will report to Gulshan Rai, the director general of India's cyber-security monitor.
A man who answered the phone in Mr. Rai's office said he did not talk to the press and hung up when a reporter asked for a press contact.
Some Indian cities like Mumbai have already set up special units to monitor internet sites like Facebook and Orkut, the social networking site operated by Google, for content considered disparaging or obscene. India has made nearly 70 requests to Google to remove content between January and June of this year, one of the highest request rates of any country though less than the United States's 92 and Brazil's 224, according to Google's transparency report.
Source :
newyorktimes
The blog's opinion :
It seems to look like congress party is in tremendous amount of fear seeing the support it got for movements like janlokpal bill recently in the internet social networking sites.
As a human i can sense the pain of people like kapil sibal experiencing due to seeing criticism against their goddess because we had seen people like M.F hussian drawing crap in name of art getting the support of the same "intellectuals" like sibal before in name of art and they never cared for sentiments of hindus to take action against hussian for his pervertness in name of art in which he wrote hindu gods and goddesses nude but never dared to do the same for his own religion or other religions as he knew what its result would have been.
on a quick glance of history we can see some movements by the 1 family and its controllers suppressing criticism and difference of opinion with many people and at that time it never made big issue or news because there was no proper medium for mass communication at that point of time and the evolution of internet has made it possible now.
1) Gandhi having Difference of opinion with tilak in 1910's and leading to split of party on issue of asking home rule and full support to british in WW1 where tilak demanded swaraj(home rule) for support to british in WW1 and gandhi supporting british unconditionally and issue got solved with mysterious death of Balagangadhar tilak with congress getting back to single fold.
2) Subhash Chandra Bose was forced to resign from president of congress post and then expelled from congress as he defeated gandhis candidate pattabhi sitaramayya in election and was elected congress president and tried to militarize the congress to fight the britishers for independence.
3) Revolutionists like Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Chandrashekar Azad etc... are called as terrorists in history books now and only gandhi and nehru are portrayed as lone freedom fighters.
4) Freedom fighters like Rash Bihari Bose, Aurobindo, HSRA group are not even mentioned once as they had called then top congress leaders and muslim league leaders as british agents.
5) Nathuram Godse killing of Mohandas Gandhi caused death of nothing less than 5k brahmins then in maharastra and other parts of india because godse was brahmin by caste and killed congress leader gandhi who was epitome of "ahimsa".
6) In 1942 a press name new delhi herald published nude pics of gandhi with other mens wives and girls in bed only to for the press to be burnt down and even today some copies of those paper are available across many libraries in US, while the issue got closed with the name of experimentation of brahmacharya.
7) Sikh Bodyguard of Indira Gandhi killed her so around 7k sikhs were butchered by then congressmen in 1984 with then PM rajeev gandhi supporting the killing of sikhs saying "when a big tree falls the earth around it shakes".
8) Bhopal gas tragedy killed 25k people in bhopal with it and then union carbide owner anderson was allowed to escape to USA as per rajeev gandhi's direction. The famous criminal lawyer Ramjethmalani says that rajeev got billions of dollars for allowing anderson to escape and closing down the case with no rehab for vicitm of survivors and mini compensation for death victim relatives and this was reported in only vernacular media like vijaya karnataka a year odd back.
9) Now the censorship of internet is on cards as it has criticism against the govt and its policies wow.
10) in 1961 jan 11th after the haridwar kumbhmela naga sadhus were protesting against ban on cow slaughter in front of then PM nehru's house which irked nehru only to order fire against naga sadhus killing many(god knows how many actually died and really what happened as the news was suppressed like that) in the aurangzeb road.
and many more stories which are gone in the books of history unnoticed.
If people post false/propoganda content law is there to take care of its own course with time but how can the flatterers understand this as they only know flattering of their respective leaders(gods) and can't even digest criticism :D
