Ashwini SharmaOn the heels of Friday the 13th, breaks a very pleasant story on several news websites regarding a very technologically comprehensive order of the Delhi High Court. The legal sanction against certain online websites enrolled in that order comes strongly on them for containing “obscene, derogatory and defamatory” materials on their sites.
"Free Facebook" has taken an altogether different meaning.
This follows closely in the aftermath of Kapil Sibal’s protest against web 2.0 websites for harbouring content that was doctored and wholly derogatory to the “ruling government’s icons.” Among those websites, Facebook especially to a more greater extent contains several of such kind of material that is “vulgar, obscene, derogatory and blasphemous” and which can effectively scar the weak-hearted. For the protection of those, has emerged, this new wave in India’s politico-legal circles to rein in these websites that do not pre-screen user content at all, before users post anything that they like on their servers.
s.3(2) of the Intermediaries Guidelines, which was brought in by way of an amendment to the I.T Act in 2008 as these web 2.0 sites were becoming increasingly popular and were getting utilised more for posting “vulgar, obscene, derogatory and blasphemous” material, places an obligation on these websites to inform users to not upload material that is “grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever.”
This new initiative of the “powers that be”, of course understands the workings of web 2.0 extremely well. These websites are nothing but similar to any other analogue newspaper or magazine where the owner/editor pre-screens content before publishing them and is therefore solely responsible for its publication. This is so because the big internet giants in question, have the necessary resources and the technological werewithal to similarly and even more effectively monitor and pre-screen user content and thus allow
users to only post content that is NOT “grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever.”
While this Order may be implemented by Facebook and Google what happens to the smaller guy? Smaller entrepreneurs and enterprising websites will now have to install mechanisms after licensing costly softwares to monitor and pre-screen user content. I think, such mechanisms can be fed in with algorithms that work perfectly to match with concepts of obscenity, decency, vulgarity, defamation and “blasphemy”. Such softwares will prove too costly for small entrepreneurial efforts and they might even stutter at the altar of the “break-even” point. This will cause an unintended benefit to Google, Facebook and other internet giants who will come to enjoy complete competitive advantage over the world wide web.
And you fellow user, remember that it means you cannot criticise Sachin Tendulkar tomorrow since Sachin is my god and cricket is my religion. Try as you may, Facebook and Google will not let you update anything “blasphemous” like that. Yay!!
Our inherent desire to match our aspirations with those of China in every field understandably has spilled over to this arena as well and blocking websites will be just a few clicks away…….just like in China.
(p.s – please read this post with “that” which is in less quantity among our countrymen these days and also please do not drag me to court. Thank you. I thought a disclaimer is in order since I have to be in mortal fear of someone somewhere who might find anything objectionable in this.)