Google Sets Censorship Precedent In India

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.'"

Comments

Now what?

[iCantSpell]

Fuck the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh

Free?

[Beelzebud]

Free Trade doesn't seem to be doing much for freedom around the world.

Re:Free?

[Darkness404]

But you also need to look at it that it exposes the evil in censorship. without these incidents Indian censorship might not have been widely reported so citizens wouldn't act on it, the more the individual knows that censorship is taking place the more they will fight it. It is only when censorship is not noticed that it becomes so much more harmful.

Re:Free?

[TubeSteak]

What makes you think the citizens will act on their knowledge and fight censorship?
In many countries the majority of the population wants certain topics censored.

If the USA didn't have the 1st Amendment, I doubt we'd have such free speech.
I mean, the religious types managed to get alcohol banned for 13 years.
Just think of what they'd have done to words they didn't like.

Re:Free?

[Wyatt Earp]

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

Sounds like a culture problem to me...

[Darkness404]

If somebody starts abusing Lord Rama on a Web site, that could start riots.

Sounds like more of a culture problem than a Google problem there. I mean, is the west the only place where people can say "offensive" things without riots? And even then Islamic idiots try to kill them (look at the Danish cartoonist issue) when free speech is protected by law.

India needs to address this problem themselves by increasing free speech, not by trying to shut it down.

Re:Sounds like a culture problem to me...

[BikeHelmet]

Sounds like more of a culture problem than a Google problem there. I mean, is the west the only place where people can say "offensive" things without riots? And even then Islamic idiots try to kill them (look at the Danish cartoonist issue) when free speech is protected by law.

What are you talking about?

If I go into a large crowd somewhere in the US and start shouting that you guys deserved 9/11 for your arrogance, not only am I likely to start a riot - I'm also likely to get beaten to death or shot.

Methinks your perception is a bit off. If you're going to go insinuating that other cultures or countries are inferior, you should at least examine similar situations. And surprise surprise - everyone behaves similarly when the situations have the same meaning to individual people.

Countdown to troll mod... 5...4...3...2...1

Re:Sounds like a culture problem to me...

[thePig]

I do not think that Hinduism is at fault here. I have read quite a bit of books on Hinduism, and I dont remember seeing anywhere clauses that other religions should not exist or that people should fight if somebody blasphemes. It is mostly people with vested interests that ferment trouble. For example, right wing political parties trying to increase xenophobia for getting more votes for the next election, or not so nice religious leaders trying to increase their clout etc has very good motivation in inciting riots.

What I have seen is that this is indeed the case in almost all religions. More than anything, it is the human development index which specifically shows through in such cases. Where HDI is low, people are more discontent and it is easy to channel their discontent to anger by rabble rousing. In most countries it is the same. If you were to look at countries with high HDI and literacy, people does not take to streets for such issues. People there has more to lose and also they have more channels of information and understanding which makes such people more understanding. Even inside India, states like Kerala has very high HDI - close to that of developed nations - and riots happen very rarely there.

I think it has nothing to do with Christianity or Hinduism or anything. Also, regarding the quote

it is India's fault for letting this crap happen

, I quite disagree with your point. India, even though growing, has quite a bit of people with a lot of discontent. I have seen that Indians do care quite a bit for freedom - in both speech and action. In such a country, there will be many who will incite people, and riots do happen. If it was more like China, then freedom of speech is a little more curtailed, and rabble rousers wont have such a free rein. So, Indian government does not have any other option to block communication channels to avoid these speeches becoming more widespread and cause more deaths.

Re:Sounds like a culture problem to me...

[Darkness404]

I do not think that Hinduism is at fault here. I have read quite a bit of books on Hinduism, and I dont remember seeing anywhere clauses that other religions should not exist or that people should fight if somebody blasphemes. It is mostly people with vested interests that ferment trouble. For example, right wing political parties trying to increase xenophobia for getting more votes for the next election, or not so nice religious leaders trying to increase their clout etc has very good motivation in inciting riots.

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. Of course, subtleties in the phrase may have been lost during translation.

, I quite disagree with your point. India, even though growing, has quite a bit of people with a lot of discontent. I have seen that Indians do care quite a bit for freedom - in both speech and action. In such a country, there will be many who will incite people, and riots do happen. If it was more like China, then freedom of speech is a little more curtailed, and rabble rousers wont have such a free rein. So, Indian government does not have any other option to block communication channels to avoid these speeches becoming more widespread and cause more deaths.

However, was it not the United State's government's job to increase tolerance of black people after the American Civil War? It is the Indian government's responsibility to control its population without resorting to censorship. Especially not censorship of this type. There is a difference between not letting someone go on a government owned radio station saying this and allowing access to information to what Indian people have searched for. Theres a difference between a discussion group and a giant neon sign in the middle of a road.

Do no evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when emerging markets subtly demand it.

Re:Do no evil.

[blarkon]

Google is a disproof of the old saying that the "Internet Routes Around Censorship". For most people Google *is* the Internet. Unless Google's search algorithm becomes open source, we will never know what is getting hidden from us.

I'm beginning to doubt the value of free speech

[mcrbids]

Seriously, I'm beginning to question the value of completely free speech. I've spent my entire life so far in support of it, and the free marketplace, but I'm finding more and more, that both are a fiction and always have been!

The "free" marketplace isn't free, it's a highly unstable situation that's carefully protected by a government that's surprisingly willing to impose on the "freedome" of the marketplace. Until the 1980s, government stepped in many times, repeatedly, over the years, to limit the power of the monopolies in the United States. But after about 1981 or so, we simply stopped caring. And the result has decimated our marketplace! In becoming more "free", we've simply become more monopolistic, where Wal-Mart now delivers some 30% to 50% of the consumed goods in the USA.

This was unheard of before then, but only because the gubbmint stepped in repeatedly to limit the power of (among others) A&P, the mid-20th century equivalent of Wal-Mart. As a percentage of population, Wal-Mart is now at least 5x as big as A&P ever was at its height. Yet Wal-Mart is just one of many vertical monopolies now rearing, to the deafening roar of untrained people who rally and cry for speech and marketplaces free from the controls of the government that was otherwise busy serving their own interests. It's a sad, sad state of affairs.

In a similar vein, I'm finding that "free speech" never existed. For over a century, there were strict controls on news organizations and reporting agencies - strict policies on libel and a general expectation of truth. This was easily enforced, because there were so few news agencies with the ability to reach a significant percentage of the population. And the result was filtered news and information of generally high-quality.

But the Internet has changed all that. Even if strict news reporting standards were still in effect, the news organizations would have to compete with the deafening roar of blogs and other "almost news" sites (Slashdot being one of them!) and so the standards would lose all their teeth anyway.

What journalistic standards is my completely private post written from my armchair going to be held to?

But the end result is that any whining idiot with an opinion that sounds nice gets lots of play, and real information gets lost in the din of noise and misinformation. Without any expectation of accountability, idiots like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly are free to spread their bile and intellectual filth to unwashed masses who haven't developed the means to filter them out, partly due to the falling standards and expectations from our public school system, which has gotten so bad that no schooling at all is often an improvement.

Free speech is just noise without a bullshit filter. Look in your spam box for 99.97% "free speech". If society is to save itself, it will need to learn the difference between speech and honest-to-god information.

Right now, it's not looking so good.

Re:I'm beginning to doubt the value of free speech

[Darkness404]

Until the 1980s, government stepped in many times, repeatedly, over the years, to limit the power of the monopolies in the United States. But after about 1981 or so, we simply stopped caring.

But the problem wasn't that we stopped enforcing anti-trust acts, it was that we deliberately -helped- the monopolies and harmed the general public with such rulings as software patents, the DMCA, etc.

And the result has decimated our marketplace! In becoming more "free", we've simply become more monopolistic, where Wal-Mart now delivers some 30% to 50% of the consumed goods in the USA.

...And in all honesty theres nothing wrong with Wal-Mart delivering most of the goods because Wal-Mart is a monopoly not because of government intervention or lack of the ability to compete, Wal-Mart is simply willing to take risks and deliver what the masses want.

Wal-Mart has competition with a lot of other stores: Target aims to be a more aesthetically pleasing form of Wal-Mart with more specialty goods and generally a more "upscale" atmosphere at the price of a slight bit of higher prices. Costco aims to save consumers more money by allowing them to buy in bulk. And there are many other smaller competitors.

The reason why Wal-Mart has thrived is because it provides a large variety of cheap (in both meanings of the word) goods and is willing to expand into smaller areas. Its a lot more convenient for someone to go to Wal-Mart that has most everything in stock then to go to a specialty store only to find that it would take 2-3 weeks to get in a product that provides little to no price savings. Now, thats not to say that specialty stores are bad or don't provide what customers need, not at all, but they are specialty stores, the things that Wal-Mart isn't going to carry you can pick up there.

In a similar vein, I'm finding that "free speech" never existed. For over a century, there were strict controls on news organizations and reporting agencies - strict policies on libel and a general expectation of truth. This was easily enforced, because there were so few news agencies with the ability to reach a significant percentage of the population. And the result was filtered news and information of generally high-quality.

The information was high quality if you wanted one group's opinion, yes. The thing is, today we try to cover news stories from all possible angles. Back during WWII no effort was made to try to tell the war from Germany's or Japan's point of view, today every conflict even recent ones such as Iraq and Afghanistan have reporters trying to find out both sides of the story. No longer is it ok to just blindly accept the government's viewpoint.

But the Internet has changed all that. Even if strict news reporting standards were still in effect, the news organizations would have to compete with the deafening roar of blogs and other "almost news" sites (Slashdot being one of them!) and so the standards would lose all their teeth anyway

That is because that is what people want to hear. They don't care about the big picture which is what journalism used to be about, they care about individuals and their viewpoints. They want to hear history as told from the diaries of the people who lived through it, not from the history book.

But the end result is that any whining idiot with an opinion that sounds nice gets lots of play, and real information gets lost in the din of noise and misinformation. Without any expectation of accountability, idiots like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly are free to spread their bile and intellectual filth to unwashed masses who haven't developed the means to filter them out, partly due to the falling standards and expectations from our public school system, which has gotten so bad that no schooling at all is often an improvement.

And that is the way it always has been, we jus

But where does it stop? What's the limit?

[Morgaine]

Trying to accommodate the demands of each foreign country's governments on a case-by-case basis in order to do business in their countries is an extremely dangerous game to play. You can rationalize away small losses of freedom as "fitting in with national conditions", but there is nothing to stop "fitting in" going all the way to directly supporting dictatorships and the worst kind of abuses of human rights.

When you don't have fixed principles, you have no principles at all.

Some will say "Google does have a fixed principle: to make money." The trouble is, that is not a principle about human rights, it's a principle that expressly allows human rights to be negotiated away. In effect, it's a principle to do evil against people in order to do well for profits.

Google needs to get its head sorted out before this starts to go really bad. Because it will.

Re:the real problem

[gibbsjoh]

Sadly this is a problem all over the world, not just India - look at Northern Ireland, for example...