Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India

Posted by timothy on Saturday June 6, 2009 @12:12PM from the back-to-spontaneous-generation dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently Microsoft is censoring search results for Bing in India and other countries. If you try to search for the term 'sex,' along with lots of variations, from India using Microsoft's new search engine, an error message is returned that says, 'the search sex may return sexually explicit content. To get results, change your search terms.' There's no preference setting or toggle-on-or-off choice; you simply cannot search for the term 'sex' in India if you are using Bing. While a user still can change their country and try the non-Indian version of Bing, this seems like an unnecessary step and unnecessary censorship on the part of Microsoft. Apparently Google has no problem with Indians searching for the term 'sex.'"

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and then... it was banned. by im_thatoneguy · 2009-06-06 13:00 · Score: 5, Informative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_India
Pornography is illegal in India. I assume the reason Microsoft bans the word "Sex" is ensure it is not sued as a pornography distributor.
Re:In all fairness to Microsoft by Sc4Freak · 2009-06-06 13:09 · Score: 5, Informative

It wasn't a government demand, but Microsoft voluntarily banned these search terms in order to comply with local laws in various countries.
An article on Ars Technica found that 20% of regions had sexual content blocked.
The article states, "Microsoft says it determined this list of regions by looking at their local laws. The company is not taking action in response to specific government demands or regulations; it is simply playing it safe."