India denies web censorship bid

Michael Carroll & Dylan Bushell-Embling | December 06, 2011 | 1 comments

telecomseurope.net

Thumbnail:

India’s government denies trying to censor leading websites including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Acting telecom minister Kapil Sibal today told the Times of India the government is seeking greater screening of the content displayed on the sites, rather than actually censoring the information provided.

However, Sibal says the government must step in to encourage firms to remove damaging content after a string of meetings with representatives of web firms yielded little more than verbal agreement to self regulate.

The acting minister spoke out after a New York Times article suggested the government is trying to censor content . That story revealed Sibal is seeking human, rather than automated, screening of content – a move web firms claim is impossible to carry out due to the sheer scale of content they carry.

Last year, the government threatened to impose restrictions , or even ban companies including RIM and Skype unless they took steps to enable security forces to monitor messages.

Source:

telecomseurope.net

Michael Carroll & Dylan Bushell-Embling

Similar

Related Articles

Comments

Submitted by Casey Morgan on 8 December 2011 - 4:02pm.

This policy seems to be unwanted by the majority. I never thought that screening before you post on social network sites could be demanded. Could you imagine that? Our modern time gives us the will to discover more things with discipline. However, I've also heard that the Indian government is meeting Monday with associates from social networks and Internet corporations. The meeting is to request the companies to screen information generated by Indian consumers. It is part of a continuous attempt by the nation to limit Internet content. This brand new policy could impact anything on the internet such as smartphone and webpage apps.