{"id":43750,"date":"2013-01-18T11:03:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T11:03:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=43750"},"modified":"2017-03-28T12:26:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T11:26:28","slug":"india-conference-index","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=43750","title":{"rendered":"Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week Index held a<\/strong>\u00a0high level panel<\/strong>\u00a0debate in partnership with the Editors Guild of India and the India International Centre to discuss the question “Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?”\u00a0Mahima\u00a0Kaul reports\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Index on Censorship, in partnership with The Editors Guild of India, hosted a debate in New Delhi on Tuesday (15 January) asking, “Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?” \u00a0Discussing the topic were Ajit Balakrishnan (founder and Chief Executive of\u00a0rediff.com<\/a>), Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes, Sunil Abraham (Executive Director of the centre for Internet and Society), and Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Director of the Free Speech Debate \u00a0project.<\/p>\n

Sunil Abraham \u00a0questioned the idea of technology specific \u201cinternet freedom\u201d that has been advocated by many\u00a0not least the US\u00a0Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said there was for instance much greater freedom and diversity on Indian TV than in the US. \u00a0He\u00a0also argued\u00a0that that this freedom does not seem to extend to a right of access to knowledge, as demonstrated by the charges brought against open access activist and developer Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this month. Swartz was\u00a0facing charges<\/a>\u00a0for allegedly downloading 4.8 million academic articles from subscription-only digital library JSTOR.<\/p>\n

Abraham said\u00a0one\u00a0unintentional effect of censorship by governments is that it teaches citizens how to protect themselves online. Finally, he questioned the Indian government’s draconian laws and arbitrary actions\u00a0in the digital realm<\/a>, wondering whether this is the authorities’ way of warning future netizens about \u201cacceptable online behaviour\u201d, to condition the public not to criticise the government\u00a0and to create a chilling effect.<\/p>\n

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Freedom of expression is always under threat\u00a0and in need of defending, argued Timothy Garton Ash. However, he didn’t think\u00a0the threat was particularly high today\u00a0\u00a0in the digital realm — rather the threats to privacy were what were particularly concerning online. With 76.8 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion population connected by mobile phone, there is an extraordinary opportunity for the prevalence of freedom of expression brought about by new technologies.\u00a0But he said there are also a lot of challenges to free expression in India — and that “swing states” such as Brazil and India will be very important in determining where the global conversation goes on freedom of expression<\/p>\n

Ajit Balakrishnan, founder of web portal Rediff.com, explained that many of the problems that have occurred in the digital realm in India have to do with poor drafting of legislation.\u00a0He was particularly concerned about intermediary liability and explained why and how intermediaries roles needed protecting.\u00a0He\u00a0also\u00a0explained that government officials have genuine problems with phrasing, and that when it comes to the application of these laws, understanding them and when they should be applied will take another 25 years. He added that the country is challenged by a legal system ill-equipped for coping with new technologies.<\/p>\n

Kirsty Hughes said that\u00a0freedom of expression is a universal right, meant to be applied across borders not just within countries.\u00a0 She said that while the digital domain allowed a big expansion in freedom of expression there were risks we are heading towards a more controlled net, a partially censored net, and a fragmented net (for instance with Iran attempting to build its own internet disconnected from the rest of the world). She said that some of the negative reactions by government to social media in India were seen to in the UK where there had been a trend towards criminalising supposedly offensive comment — although the new interim guidelines on social media prosecutions were a step in the right direction. \u00a0Hughes emphasised three main concerns — state censorship, privatisation of censorship and the role of big companies, and mass surveillance. She pointed out that the British government had pushed for extensive surveillance with the Communications Data Bill, but this has now been shelved after a critical report from MPs.<\/p>\n

Ramanjit Singh Chima, policy adviser for Google,\u00a0said that\u00a0\u00a0the question is not about absolute freedom, but about what is appropriate and lawful.\u00a0He emphasised that in the US, judges had strongly defended free expression online as they saw the digital world as a powerful space for free exprssion.\u00a0\u00a0He pointed out how effective social media tools, including Google\u2019s own products, have become in helping during emergency situations like natural disasters and terrorist attacks. He also pointed out that the internet is not only about free expression but business as well. The internet contributes to 1.6 per cent of India\u2019s GDP. Singh Chima said positive judgements by US \u00a0and EU courts protect the users, adding that regulation for the net should be appropriate for its engineering.<\/p>\n

Mahima Kaul is a New Delhi based journalist. She tweets from\u00a0@misskaul<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This event was kindly sponsored by SAGE India.\u00a0You can watch the debate in full\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want to be able to attend events like this? Check out our events page<\/a> to see what we have planned for 2013<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Index held a debate on 15 January in partnership with the Editors Guild of India and the India International Centre to discuss the question “Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?” Mahima Kaul<\/strong> reports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":44331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883],"tags":[4892,571,5163,100,5162],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43750"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43750"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88474,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43750\/revisions\/88474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}