Congress Party’s Plan to control the Internet in India : Silence Dissent

Congress Party’s Plan to control the Internet in India : Silence Dissent

Read the report Below..

How The Indian Government Plans To Regulate Online Content & Blogs

http://www.medianama.com/2011/02/223-indias-draft-blogger-guidelines/

As a part of the rules being finalized to supplement India’s Information Technology Amendment Act 2008, rules are being included that will indirectly allow the Indian government to control content being published on the Internet. This is hardly surprising: last week, at the CII Content Summit, three government functionaries – Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Ambika Soni, TRAI Chief JS Sarma and I&B Secretary Raghu Menon, had all mentioned concerns about content on the Internet, even as they tried to downplay content regulation:

- Sarma said that “How do you control the Internet? That is baffling and challenging, and it is fraught with issues of freedom and security. Security in terms of physical security and others. This will have to be studied over the course of next few months or the next year or so.”

- Menon pointed towards the UK and issues of pornography, saying that the IPTV Association in the UK is in contact with the ISPs to ensure that the ISPs provide regulated content. People who are concerned about this, they’re approaching the ISPs for what is appropriate or not. This is a subject which is outside the purview of the ministry I work in.”

Menon works in the I&B Ministry, and this modus operandi of dealing with ISPs would be the mandate of the Ministry of Information Technology, which is putting into place these rules for regulating content through ISPs. A few things to note from the rules (download) that have been drafted:

1. Definition of Blogs, Bloggers & Users: This is tricky: blogs do two things – they publish content, and have user generated content in the form of comments. at one level, they are a publisher, and at another, an intermediary. The guidelines however, clearly define a blogger only as a user, and that a blog is  ”a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.” This is generic, and could mean any online publication, including ours, and online publishers would also come under the ambit of the definition of the term ‘users’. What is odd, is that the rules specifically define blogs and bloggers, when there is no apparent reason for doing so.

2. What can they block you for? There’s a problem with how wide the offenses under which you can be blocked, are defined. ISP’s and other intermediaries have to notify users (including online publishers and bloggers) not to use, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update, share or store any information that:

- (a) belongs to another person; (d) infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;
Our Take: this should be covered under the Copyright Act, not IT Act.

- (b) is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, blasphemous, objectionable, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever; (g) causes annoyance or inconvenience or deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of such messages or communicates any information which is grossly offensive or menacing in nature;
Our Take: There goes most of the Internet. Using phrases like ‘objectionable’, ‘disparaging’, annoyance and inconvenience, which are highly subjective, the government has given itself the power to block anything they want. Remember that if someone publishes a libelous comment, or a hateful comment, for which an online publisher should be an intermediary, the Government has the power to block the publisher. This post might annoy the government, so there goes MediaNama.

- (j) threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation.
Our Take: Clearly, a move that seeks to ensure that gives the Indian government has the same powers as a Hosni Mubarak had in Egypt, and was in a position to block access to any site that might be used to organize demonstrations. Again, remember that telecom operators are also intermediaries, so it impacts all mobile connections.

 

http://www.medianama.com/2011/02/223-indias-draft-blogger-guidelines/

 

Read the Full Story in the Above Link

http://www.medianama.com/2011/02/223-indias-draft-blogger-guidelines/