Indian Minister Seeks To Censor User-Generated Content Online

First time accepted submitter punit_r writes "Indian minister for Communications & Information Technology Kapil Sibal met officials from Facebook, Google, YouTube and Yahoo on Monday, 5 December 2011, and told them to screen what goes on the sites. He basically asked the websites to actively screen content. How do you screen such massive amount of data? Well, the IT minister has the perfect recipe: 'We'll use humans to screen content and not technology,' said the IT minister. Meanwhile, he got it back from the social media."

Comments

Cool!

[thisnamestoolong]

So this guy is so rich that he can afford to finance a whole industry of millions of workers to monitor the web? Well, that should solve a lot of economic problems in India! Maybe he could outsource some of those jobs over here!

Of-course

[roman_mir]

Of-course he wants to stop people from speaking. That's what all people in power want - to make sure that the masses never speak.

That's why individual liberties must be the primary concern of all people and that's why the principles upon which governments get established must put individual liberties ahead of all other concerns.

Corruption

[Wowsers]

If you hire all those humans to check the content, just think of all those minds that will be corrupted from the content they are supposed to sift through.

Re:Corruption

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm told that its a job that actually burns you out, curb-stomps your soul, and then just keeps going until you eventually crack and quit.

Censorship is a pure cost center, and(once you get down to the level of pressing the "wicked"/"Not Wicked" buttons in response to an image series) pretty low skill, so there is absolutely no incentive to refrain from pushing you as hard and fast as they can and treating you with all the tender loving care usually reserved for retail peons.

Plus, and I can't stress this enough, You don't get to look at the porn you want, you get to look at the porn the internet wants.

Name suggestion

[chortick]

He could call it the State Telecommunications And Security Initiative? I'll have to check now, I'm worried that STASI might be already taken...

Lack of tolerance

[benignbala]

The whole problem is because of lack of a tolerance to criticism. The actual reason is most probably someone wrote something really harsh about the policies adopted by his political party. And that is something the he couldn't take in his stride. Anyone who wants to have a public life, should also be ready to face the criticism. Curbing freedom and there by the criticism of the very people who elected you is something very cheap. And in addition to that, he had probably assumed that a large user base from India implied control of the industry. Imagine using humans to track each of those millions of posts on G+, FB, Twitter combined together. Absolutely foolish. If anything, he is tarnishing the image of the country. Hailing from India, what I sense is, he is anticipating a huge wave of protests from the people vis-a-vis the Jan Lokpal bill(a bill to fight corruption). His party is proposing a version which not really liked by a a lot of people. That bill is likely to be tabled sometime soon. And to get away from such criticism, he is going all out.

Re:Exactly!

[hihihihi]

it dosn't matter libraries or liberties.. the bastard and his government has taken care of that all.

just take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Literacy_in_India_1901_-_2011.PNG

for first 50 years of independence - him and people of his likes has taken complete care that masses remain illeterate. the jump seen after 1990 is *after* our oh-so-precious ministers were forced to open the economy.

and now they want to screen the content which they may not like... i am sure they will start with wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India

He is preparing for the Dec Protests

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time Indian citizens protested against the Govt for Jan Lokpal (an anti-corruption bill) the protesters made use of sms, twitter & facebook.
A month after the protest the Govt passed a bill restricting the number of SMS that can be sent by a person to 100 SMS'es per day.
This looks like the next step.
No one expects fb or twitter to filter all user generated content... But it will certainly give the party in power an excuse to block these sites when the time comes.

Re:No problem

[Pi1grim]

Better to deduct it from his salary.