Ridiculous - "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."<p>I'm not allowed to criticize my government in a public forum? Pardon my language, but this is fucking ridiculous.
Not an unusual request considering the utter cluelessness and Sycophantic bootlicking of the people involved.
Consider that the perceived slight is to the defacto head of India - Sonia Gandhi (a person with terrifying power but Zero accountability, completely outside the Govt.) this is being held up as the reason to institute an Orwellian nightmare of Censorship. A reasonable response is FU in nice terms.<p>[EDIT - minor spelling]
Just. Wow. Mind boggling amounts of stupidity.<p>"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.<p>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."
This seems to be a fairly reoccurring theme - countries requesting internet sites to mass censor user content. Rarely though do they understand the scale of what that means. In the article, it stated that they wanted each item to be screened by a human. In the same way that I'll quote a client a much larger price if they want IE6 support, I often don't see why these companies don't just quote the country a price for the manpower required to do this. Kind of a, "Listen, pay us X per year to hire people to do this. Otherwise, it's simply impossible for us to do, and we'll fight your request in court til the end of time."
While I doubt any country would actually pay, I think it would serve to at least educate the politicians as to how much work censoring the internet actually requires.
This is what you get when you seriously consider making SOPA into law: "If you can get companies to strangle funds and kidnap domains of people saying <i>that</i>, can't you not also make <i>this</i> disappear?"
Freedom of speech was the one advantage we had over other developing countries. I guess the Indian Gov was scared by the support the anti corruption movement got online.
I'd like it if the companies asked to do this just pulled out of the country altogether. "Can't deal with the fundamental nature of the internet? No internet, then." It's needlessly vindictive on my part, but we've seen this story play out again and again. That's not how it works!
Ok, I will play the devil's advocate here because someone has to. This has been going on since the pre-internet era. India unlike the US and like the UK doesn't have unlimited free speech and have fairly strong defamation and libel laws. This was a rich man's problem because how would you defame someone unless you have access to printing press or can go on radio and television. The internet changed all that. The government doesn't want it to change (for obvious reasons), hence all this hoopla.<p>Of course the free speech will win because it's almost impossible to censor the internet but the people in power will not go down without a fight.
Have the Indian politicians learnt nothing from the events unfolding in the Middle-East this entire year? Or could it be that they _have_ seen the power of the 'net, and are scared? This (defamatory pages) could just be a ruse to assert control over the 'net, to prevent an Indian Jasmine Revolution.
What is this? Watch your speech, because Big Sib has installed the Netpolice; that which does not ingratiate itself to the fancies of the power-mongers shall be expunged.<p>No service provider should bear, or provide any means to further, this idiocy.