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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?"
This is utterly insane. Apparently the distribution of pornographic material doesn't constitute the rights for the authorities to arrest the CEO. Everyday auction sites around the world, not only Bazee, experience a new item submission every 5 minutes. In retrospect, how can anyone keep track of all incoming and outgoing items that registered users submit? This is totally absurd that the CEO is arrested based on this fact. Shouldn't the one who submitted the item be arrested instead? Or how about the people that appeared in the video? There is lawleness in these law.
Often we do not have time for our friends, yet all the time in the world for our enemies.
Any Indians been put in jail recently because of the Patriot Act? Never mind
She's furious because of the eBay connection.
Not so. China had liberal attitudes toward sex before and under Tang (581-617), but thereafter declined into more social control. It has nothing to do with Christianity or westerners. Chinese people have always been sexually open, just that it is taboo talking about it. The Chinese prudence is on the surface and on the surface only. The same goes for most of Asia. Japan, although very influenced by the West, is probably the most extreme country in the world when it comes to sex. Yet there is prudence also in Japan.
The impact of Christianity in China is virtually none. This is fortunate.
Scandinavia has been very religous, that's true. Scandinavia became sexually liberated _after_ religion lost its grip on the populace. I am Scandinavian, so I should know.
This is a process: Christianity was a tool that united Europe, gave it a common cultural ground to build upon. It could have been another uniting factor, with the same final outcome (philosophy, science, technology, medicine, rationality, law, democracy, human rights, freedom, pornography).
As for corruption, Italy and Russia have vast corruption, to name just a couple of Christian nations. You could add a slew of South American nations as well.
And if the Christians are so damn happy, they why they eat so much Prozac? Why are they never content? Living in China, I can tell you that people in general are happier here, unless they are very poor. It seems to be that the richer you get, the less happy you get. At least this has been the recent trend in the West, and there are signs of it also in booming China.
I doubt she really considered the full implications of her actions.
:).
That's what the ban against underaged sex is for - the underaged are supposedly not as able to understand the many possible consequences of their actions (having a child is a long term responsibility).
That said, most adults including me are not much better
actually the whole "brits oppressed indian openness towards sexuality" theory is junk.... if you look at Indian history - before the muslims came to india(as invaders from central/western asia) the society was very much sexually liberated. sexual liberation did not fit into the muslim religious frame work and once they become rulers the society slowly became more and more conservative. Things are a bit more complicated than that because people in the North (roughly) are desendents of aryans while the people in the south are desendents of the indegenous population.
Russia is corrupt becuase their gov't are puppets, the police are underpaid (read: bribed) and the country is run by organized crime syndicates.. not because they're "Christian".
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Would it be rape if a hidden captured a politician taking a bribe, be it in a string operation run by the police or by individuals? What if it was just a security camera? I've no idea how the law in India works, but in the US we have the standard of privacy protection from the *Government*. That means that places can't be forced to included security/hidden cameras in private spaces by the Government. But there's nothing to stop the Government from renting out a room, hiding cameras, then inviting you in to catch you commiting a crime. Nor is there anything to stop them using a camera out in public.
It's definitely nothing like a rape. It's possibly copyright infringement, depending on if one's likeness is copyrightable; that seems sort of crazy, going back to the above example of government corruption. It might be labelled child porn, though I've know idea if India law supports that. That's the only possible reasonable match for a crime. Whether there's a civil matter is another question.
Now, as for your example example, if a girl gives consent for sex, she's giving consent for sexual intercourse unless there's a reasonable context that she knows sex means S such a context would mean that they'd discussed in the past sex and S&M and agreed on it. There's also the point that if S&M was initiated against her will, she could/would disagree with it. So, in all probability she'd vocally disagree to the act which would remove any claim of consent.
On a more fundamental point, there's clearly a distinction between taking a photo of an act and committing an act itself; one is an independent act of recording energy, be it heat, light, or sound while the other is the physical contact of two individuals. If there was a verbal contract (ie, they agreed) that the act would not be recorded in some fashion, then she'd have a basis to sue him regardless of distribution. Just like a verbal contract could stop any distribution if she agreed to it being recorded. But without a verbal contract in place, there's no real basis to prevent the recording or distribution.
Now with all the legalize out of the way, what you're really talking about isn't rape but a loss of trust. While the girl almost certainly didn't make a verbal contract, she also almost certainly assumed that there was an implied agreement that the boy would not record then redistribute a recording of their private act. That's true for most people. But this loss of trust (and whatever embarrassment/humiliation comes out of it) happens in relationships that end all the time. To act like every single bit of heartbreak that occurs is a rape is to greatly diminish the perceived severity of rape. If India or US States wants to enact law to defined the legal qualifications for a relationship such that a list of things have to be explicitly allowed instead of explicitly disallowed, that's certainly a possibility. And at that time, I welcome the inclusion of a new collection of words or phrases to discribe such a situation in the criminal and civil context. But misusing a very serious word as rape to try to analogize the circumstance described does nothing but weaken the perceived inhumaneness of rape.
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