In the Times of India on the 17th:
There is a clear and present danger to internet in India. If the recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee were to go through, you might as well pull the shutters down on the net in the country, because the committee seeks to raise the liability of internet service providers for any third party content in a manner that it will become difficult to run the service and stay away from jail.
This isn’t an exaggeration. Over 85% of internet deals with third party content. This includes search engines, mail services, messengers, blogs, communication and community sites. If they were to be held responsible for the sites searched, mails sent, blogs filed or scraps on community sites then service providers would be hauled up by the police for acts they are not even faintly responsible for.”
I agree with the author of the article that this is one more sign of the Indian Government’s complete lack of understanding of the internet, and that they are tending to liken it to other media like TV, where content creation is in the hands of a few, and hence can be ‘controlled’.
This proposal must not be allowed to go through. I wonder what the younger members of parliament feel about all of this?
[link via Amit Agarwal]
Tags: censorship india, India, indian government, internet censorship
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