13 Jan 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
The Delhi High Court has threatened Facebook and Google with web blackouts, unless they agree to censor objectionable content. Following last month’s meetings between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook and the Indian government to discuss content management on their sites, Justice Suresh Kait warned that if the internet giants refuse to filter content, their websites will be blocked “like China“. Mukul Rohatgi who testified on behalf of Google India said that the search giant cannot filter “obscene, objectionable and defamatory” content.
4 Jan 2012 | Asia and Pacific, Digital Freedom, Index Index, minipost
Cartoons Against Corruption, the website of Indian cartoonist Aseem Trivedi has been suspended by its internet host after complaints that it illegally showcased content mocking India’s constitution. The complaint by a Mumbai-based lawyer described the cartoons as “defamatory and derogatory”. One of the disputed works replaced the lions on India’s national emblem with wolves and changed the emblem’s inscription from “Bhrashtamev Jayate” [Long Live Corruption] to “Satyamev Jayate” [Long Live Truth]. Trivedi told the Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time his intention was to “depict the ailing truth of the nation and send across a strong message to the masses.”
6 Dec 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The Indian Government have asked internet companies and social media organisations to censor internet content before it goes online. India’s acting telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal met with top officials from the Indian units of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook on Monday to discuss implementing the removal of disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before being published online.
Three un-named executives of Internet companies were told in a previous meeting that Sibal expected them to set up a proactive pre-screening system using people, not technology.
14 Nov 2011 | Asia and Pacific, China
The long arm of Chinese soft power has reached Bollywood.
Indian censors have ordered the makers of Rockstar to cut or blur scenes showing images of the Tibetan national flag, which features in one of the film’s song and dance numbers. The movie opened last Friday with the required cuts.
The controversial sequence was a crowd scene filmed at Mcleod Ganj, a hill station town in northern India and home of the Dalai Lama since he fled Lhasa in exile in 1959.
Tibetans in exile naturally are incensed and have been staging rallies. It is not clear why the flag has been banned from the romantic musical, but Indian media speculated that India is bowing to pressure from China.
Kunsang Kelden, New-York based Tibetan activist and former board member of Students for a Free Tibet, told us: “It is outrageous that a vibrant democracy such as India, with an equally vibrant film industry, should bow down to Chinese pressure, violate free speech and censor the Tibetan flag.”
Rockstar’s director Imtiaz Ali may have the last laugh though.
According to Indian media his next film will be about the Tibetan independence movement.
“Reliable sources say that the movie will have political turmoil as one of the aspects along with love brewing between a Tibetan and a multi-millionaire Indian boy,” reports The Times of India.
It will be interesting to see how the censors deal with that.
