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Google Sets Censorship Precedent In India

Posted by timothy on from the in-accordance-with-local-laws-and-privileges dept.

eldavojohn writes "Censorship varies from country to country but India, home to a sixth of the world's population, appears to be shaping up much like China. Not far behind everyone else, Google has increasingly censored websites with an incident where a very popular politician died and Google forcibly deleted and dissolved a group on Orkut where offensive comments about the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh were posted. An official from India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said, 'If you are doing business here, you should follow the local law, the sentiments of the people, the culture of the country. If somebody starts abusing Lord Rama on a Web site, that could start riots.' The lengthy opinion piece calls attention to the beginnings of a definitive lack of free speech online for Indian citizens. A spokeswoman for the 'Do No Evil' company explained, 'India does value free speech and political speech. But they are weighing the harm of free speech against violence in their streets.'"

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sounds like a culture problem to me... by Trepidity · · Score: 1, Informative

    Yes, I didn't think that Hinduism would be that violent either, but the quote in the summary from India's ministry of technology did make it seem that it was a typical occurrence.

    It's unfortunately a reality of modern India that far-right "Hindu nationalism" is a common interpretation of Hinduism.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  2. Re:Free? by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, prohibition wasn't so much a religious movement, but a pan-belief movement.

    There were the religious groups, anti-immigrant groups (they didn't like the beer and alcohol drinking cultures from central, eastern and southern Europe), and the biggest part were was the suffrage movement.

    And it wasn't just the US, they did it in 1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union, Canada, Iceland and other non-Islamic states -
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Russian_Empire_and_Soviet_Union

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement#United_States

  3. Re:Now what? by knappe+duivel · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, I was quoting The Simpsons. Homer was declared the best Kwik-E-Mart attendant ever, after doing his usual best.