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Chief of eBay's Indian Site Arrested, Released
An anonymous reader writes "As reported, Avinash Bajaj, the CEO of Baazee.com, the Indian subsidiary of eBay, was arrested by the Indian police for distributing pornography. What really seems to have happened is that two high school students from Delhi Public School filmed themselves having oral sex, and this video was distributed through Delhi by email. Some time later, Ravi Raj Singh, a college student from IIT Delhi, offered his VCD of the 157-second clip for sale on Baazee. Avinash Bajaj has now been released on bail, but his U.S. passport is still impounded. AP report here." In reaction to the scandal, SoumyaRay writes, "the Indian government is planning a law based on the DMCA that would establish the responsibility of the corporation when dealing with copyrighted materials. The law 'would deal with four categories of functions by a service provider: transitory communications, system caching, storage of information on systems or networks and information location tools.' Does this differ in any major way with the DMCA? What is being overlooked and what is the potential for abuse? What would you propose?"
Actually, India-GII - a mailing list/group of sorts which is a part of CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility) has been discussing this for quite a while now.
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Check out this month's archive.
Particularly, see the threads MMS saga has unexpected consequences and Mahesh Murthy sends you Release the CEO of eBay India (Baazee) - a travesty of cyber-law and e-commerce Petition
People have been petitioning the release of Bajaj for a while, and this is going to have some very serious repurcussions, too.
1) The Police claim that Baazee.com did not take down the video clip, even after being notified of the complaint. This is why they arrested the CEO
2) This not regular old porno. The girl involved in this did not give her conest to the release of the video - nor did she know she was being filmed
3) Strict moral standards blah blah bullshit. It's just that in this particular case is publicised so the police had to act. The bottom line is, that these people got caught. Otherwise, sale of porno in India is rampant (but yes, it's illegal).
Feel free to post a few comments here
My Favourite Meme
india (and most of asia) is a dichotomy when it comes to sex. if you look at some of the south indian temples you;ll find LOTS of sex on the walls. si much so that the british flat out REFUSED to talk about the wonders you see there (i'm talking about the temples, not the sexual positions on their walls). that is why the northern states have more torist exposure than the southern (well the southern heat may have soemthing to do with it too)
there are tales of temples where women who couldn't have children would spend the night and the god would come down to them and miraculously impregnate them (umm yeah.. god.. right..)
i'm not even going to mention the kama sutra or the japanese and chinese pillow books.
most asian cultures were sexually very liberal. we are talking bastardy, social recognition given to courtesans, the whole works.
it is the western missionaries that brought sexual repression to the east. when the victorian missionaries showed up with their straitlaced attitudes, that was the end of the good times as far as most people were concerned.
since then the cultures have been holding on to this prudery while AT THE SAME TIME screwing around.
the east never had a sexual revolution like america did. its more of a gradual slide. and there are people who, like king canute, try to stem the tide by ordering it not to be.
atb
suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
The entire issue has been blown out of proportions I believe.
What started off as a prank, teenage goofing, moment of madness - name what you like, was not only copied several times over, but also packaged and sold. So far, nothing out of the ordinary honestly. Such things have happened in the past elsewhere as well.
What really got things going was the sale of the content via a website, I guess. The ease of content transmission, coupled with the fact that it was two students from a well-known (and reputed, if i may say so myself) which were on camera, was what fuelled the controversy big time.
As has been the case with administration and police in India in the past, they appear to believe that the best means of solving a crime is to rake the muck and/or shoot in the dark, hoping something would give. Since they did not have the seller (or even his identity) initially, they resorted to the worst interpretation of the law - holding the owner of the website (www.bazee.com) responsible for the content!
It's a travesty that the CEO had to spend time in one of the most notorious jails of India (the Tihar Jail).
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Actully all of India's computer related activities are covered by a single 'IT act'. As you might imagine, it's quite primitive. It doesnt take into account automated sites like auction sites or forums. In a developed country lawmakers think about things like this in advance and make laws, but in a country where computer users form a small minority, laws are modified only after an incident like this. The law needs a serious overhaul. But the phrase "based on DMCA" is scaring me (I'm an Indian). I just hope they only take the non-abusive part of DMCA.
What was done was illegal because it was child porn. They were both underage. The video was captured with an video camera phone and distributed via MMS and later copied onto a computer and distributed online. Although in the video the girl is smiling and stuff... so I dont think she had any problem being filmed...
The arrested student (Ravi Raj) is from IIT-Kharagpur and not IIT-Delhi.
The students (both minors legally) are from a school in Delhi.
-- Raj
Well first of all it is legal to have pornographic material on your computer in India, but it is not legal to trade porn (irony). The tape in question, is being seen in India, as not any ordinary porn movie, but it has become more of a scandal (which ,IMO, has blown out of proportion). This is mainly because things like these don't happen in India everyday.
Parents are now even worried about giving Cell phones with cameras to their kids (for those of you who didn't know the tape was shot with the help of a phone and got transferred all over with the help of MMS).
According to this, age of consent in India is in fact 16.
I'm not disagreeing with the parent post, but I hope that they don't "throw the book" at the guy that was in the video.
Child porn laws are there to protect children from predators, not punish kids for stupid mistakes they make while they're teenagers. I know several people who did stupid stuff like that, taking "racy" pics when they were in high school, which were probobly technically illegal. Kids on hormones do stupid things like that, putting them in prison will not help them at all.
This has to be the most ignorant and trollish post on /. ever
Kama has found mentioned in texts as early as the Vedas. Initially he was regarded as a creative spirit who welled out of Purusha, the supreme male element. Some parts of the Vedas go even farther and say that Kama himself was the supreme creative being, self-existent and sprung out of the cosmic waters at the beginning of time. In this context he was the supreme god who created everything else and whose first emanation was desire and whose second was the power to achieve that desire.
The Vedas are texts prepared over long lengths of time by diverse persons and the older versions were modified frequently. Thus Kama is found mentioned in many forms, all of them being some aspect of creativity.
Later, as Hindu Mythology progressed and developed into what it is today, Kama became identified with sexual desire, a more frivolous aspect of his creativity. Kama is depicted as a handsome youth who carried a bow entwined with flowers and shot arrows that produced love in their targets - That's your cupid.
The aim of Kama in Indian literature deals with pleasure and love. It is hypothesized that Kama teachings came into existence because of frustration in married life in a patriarchal society where marriages were arranged for convenience, while marriages of love were uncommon. The Kama literature was written in a technical format and is thought to have been written for the people of the higher castes because the social atmosphere of the time permitted very little private time for a husband and wife. Sexual relations were seen as the only allowable token of affection a husband could show his new bride, but at the same time, sex was a source of anxiety for the couple because it was one of the only activities privately shared by the couple and stood as the grounds for which the relationship was based. The lower castes did not have such problems because the men and women interacted on a daily basis, and therefore were able to develop relationships not solely based on sexual performance.
The best known of the Kama literature is Vatsyayana's Kamasutra, which was written around the third century C.E. It is a technical account of the social structure dealing with manners, morals, sexology, and culture in the third century.
This has now been bastardised by a western interpretation, that translates the very connotation of Kama to fucking.
If you've had a girlfriend, I'm sure you'd know there's a difference between sex and making love.
You can read more about Eastern Indian mythologies and beliefs at:
www.deliriumsrealm.com
www.pantheon.org
I could write about "Soma" or "Sura", but I'm sure you'd conveniently choose to ignore that, just like you'd this post
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Baazee's CEO is not being held for selling porn!! Nor is this about moral standards in India!!
First, read the law. The IT Act 2000 says:
Section 67
===========
Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form
Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstance, to read see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees and in the event of a second or subsequent conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and also with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees.
79. Network service providers not to be liable in certain cases
For the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that no person providing an service as a network service provider shall be liable under this Act, rules or regulations made thereunder for any third party information or data made available by him if he proves that the offence or contravention was committed without his knowledge or that he had exercised all due diligence to prevent the commission of such offence or contravention.
Explanation.- For the purposes of this section,-
(a) "network service provider" means an intermediary;
(b) "third party information" means any information dealt with by a network service provider in his capacity as an intermediary;
Baazee(eBay India) published the sale of the child pornographic material and benefitted from such sale by means of commissions earned. Since they benefit from the sale of the material they should be held liable for the material sold through them. Also, it unlike AT&T which does not intend to benefit from the usage of their service for illegal purposes. In this case, allegedly, Baazee did not remove the porn sale item even after being informed, thereby indicating that they had no qualms from benefitting from such sale.
Yea, and that site is a crock of shit. I think this is a slightly more credible source.
My Favourite Meme
and there are people who, like king canute, try to stem the tide by ordering it not to be.
It is rather unfortunate that the folklore rendition of that event has lost Canute's whole point:
He had got fed up on his sycophants that constantly praised him saying that nothing was impossible for him. So he wanted to give a lesson for his court by showing that there was, indeed, something that he couldn't do.
Sorry, no torrent, but a quick search in emule resulted in this hash.7 D985BF 4827F3E43EFF7ADCA|/
Absolutely not verified, btw.
ed2k://|file|RKP_CLIP1.avi|2131968|8F07FAF4