Clandestine Internet Censorship in India

nooyi86 writes "China and the Middle East block sites in order to suppress political or social dissent. Website blocking in India, on the other hand, is driven by national security-related paranoia, or hate speech that may lead to violence. The state must save its citizens from propaganda of both the extreme right and the extreme left. Shivam Vij has posted a comprehensive profile of Internet censorship in India."

Comments

Another grey area...

[NotQuiteReal]

Does intent matter?

Even the article summary says it - this is not censorship for political means, it is to prevent inciting violence.

I am 100% for "free speech", but even in the US you "can't yell fire in a theater".

In the US you can freely spew "hate speech", and most people ignore it, as they should.

But is there a different standard, based on the local population? Clearly there are some places in the world where the people are culturally less likey to ignore perceived insults. Should the "don't yell fire" rule be adapted for the locale?

In the West you can do something offense like piss christ and not get a village burned down.

Can you say the same where you are? Should you be able to?

Let's see who has the balls to come up with "Piss Mohammed". Ask a certain Danish cartoonist if he would like to try. Ask him if he would like to do it in a village in India.

Everything is not black and white - there are shades of grey and lots of other colors too.

Re:Another grey area...

[wannabgeek]

Whatever you say may be true. As I see it, the bigger problem here is not the blocking, but the clandestine way the government can go about it and the fact that the government (ie., the executive and the beauracracy) not being answerable to anyone. A single beuracrat can do this all by himself without needing a permission from judiciary or even legislature. Yes, if it becomes an issue they may step back if it seems to hurt the government politically, but the rules do not prevent the government from acting on its own.

Just a little while back, blogspot was banned. It became a huge issue and so the government directed the ISPs to lift the block. Once the ban was lifted on blogspot, people were content. Nobody asked the government what justification it had to block the various sites and the government did not even bother to issue a clarification about why it did what it did.

Re:Another grey area...

[Max von H.]

The USA: 280 millions ppl, somewhat educated for the most part.
India: 1 billion+ ppl, out of which a big bunch are poor and uneducated.

Educated people mostly disregard hate speech ('they know better') but we've all seen the kind of mass hysteria that can go through the poor/illiterates, whether it's in South-East Asia, the Middle-East, Africa, a football stadium or in Kentuky.

I can't stand censorship, but I don't believe hate speech should be tolerated, especially when the targeted audience doesn't 'know any better', for it leads to a form of wide scale brain-washing. Hate speech goes against the very idea of freedom and equality, why should it be tolerated? Theft is against our principles and isn't tolerated, calling for hate and murder shouldn't be either. Hate speech is what's used on populaces to spur wars and, ultimately, makes the bed for extreme dictatorships.

I don't think the exercise of freedom should require the ability to destroy what's taken centuries to achieve just to satisfy some ignorant, frustrated, deranged wannabe-dictators.

Note that I live in a country where hate/racist/negationist speech is forbidden by law and I for one find myself a lot more free than if the stupidest branch of the gene pool was able to get its way.