Censorship in India takes a New Twist

India has urged social media sites, which include Facebook, Twitter and even Goggle to remove offensive material and self censor user generated content, unleashing a storm of criticism from internet users complaining of censorship in the worlds largest democracy. 


This rules requires companies like Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter that provide the platform for users to comment and create their own content to respond quickly to complaints from individual users. If the complainants claim is valid, this company must take down the offensive information within 36 hours.

Government official are upset about web pages that are insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Party congress leader Sonia Ghandi and major religious figures. Some illustrations have shown Singh and Ghandi in compromising position and running around through Mecca, Islam's holly city.


Indian IT minister Kapil Sibal spoke repeatedly with officials from major Internet companies over the past 3 months and asked them to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the net.


Indian is more sensitive than other countries, some amount of check and balance is required but the pre screen every material is an uphill task and may not be practically applicable.It is not clear how far the government will go to monitor the web but it certainly seem like the internet experience in India set to change  for both users and service provider.  

Reference

1. Guardian.co.uk website, internet censorship India democracy [Online ], Retrieved 8th March 2012

     URL : :http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/07/internet-censorship-india-democracy