Indian Judge Tells Google And Facebook To 'Check And Remove Objectionable Material' Or Be Blocked
from the do-the-impossible dept
A few weeks back, Techdirt reported on an Indian minister asking Internet companies to do the impossible:
The Indian government has asked Internet companies and social media sites like Facebook to prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online, three executives in the information technology industry say.
At the time, you could dismiss this as just the usual grandstanding by a politician trying to score points with the home audience. It now seems that things are much more serious than that. koolhead17 sends us news that an Indian High Court judge is not only asking for pretty much the same impossible things, but threatening to block sites "like in China" if they don't:
The Delhi high court today warned social networking site Facebook India and search engine Google India that websites can be "blocked" like in China if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove objectionable material from their web pages. "Like China, we will block all such websites," Justice Suresh Kait said while asking counsel for Facebook and Google India to develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove "offensive and objectionable" material from their web pages.
Worryingly, this lack of comprehension about what is technically possible is not confined to India, as the debates around SOPA have revealed only too painfully.
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Filed Under: blocking, india, objectional material
Companies: facebook, google
