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India OKs Censoring Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo
An anonymous reader writes "An Indian court given the green light for the prosecution of '21 social networking sites.' The list features 10 foreign-based companies, and could affect websites provided by Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and YouTube. The recent development is part of an ongoing argument between the companies and India over whether content should be regulated (read: censored) in the country. The approval was actually made on December 23, 2011, but was only revealed yesterday. India warned these websites it can block them just like China can."
Nah, that would not work. For one thing, Indians have had free rein over their Facebook, Google and twitter accounts since the very beginning. The citizenry will find it way too hard to make the shift from a global to a local platform.
Furthermore, we Indians are used to being relatively uncensored at every turn. The moment we "realize" that the government is actively monitoring every tweet and every post, people will start withdrawing from the services offered.
We have a deep mistrust of our government. It is one thing to force the uneducated into censorship. But those of us who use the internet have at least a basic education, and we don't like the government meddling in any of our affairs. especially if we can't see a justification in it.
What irks many of us, is the fact that the government spends too little of our tax money in the right places. For instance, the roads are potholed, the water services are unreliable. Energy production has crawled into a hole and died. There is hunger and starvation all over the country. The middle and upper classes are the ones who are most impacted by the Governmental organizations. The Police are unreliable.
When an accident occurs, we fear reporting it to the cops because we know that if we do, we're the first to be taken in for questioning and the cops overstep their authority at every turn. You see a guy dying on the street, and passers by will stop just to mull around and stare. Everyone will complain that someone should do something, but no one will consider calling the authorities or helping the poor chap to a hospital because the helper becomes the hunted in the eyes of the authorities.
A friend of mine was put in the slammer for moving the victim of an accident. He was let free four days later because the court decided he was innocent, but he left with bruises and came down with a bad case of diarrhea. The cops actually beat the guy up during their "questioning for facts"! He was just trying to help an injured guy who ended up dying on the way to the hospital.
We love our country, but we hate deeply, those in power who're trying to run it because they don't appear to care for the public.
An alternative website, monitored/restricted or not, will hold even less water in such a country. They might be able to forcefully lock social networks out of the country, but they can't get people to use a government-controlled one.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
Freedom of speech in India is far weaker that what most Indians think it is. Prominent people are regularly arrested for exercising free speech, by making speeches, making politically incorrect statements, burning copies of the constitution, writing articles, etc)
To take a recent example, an opposition leader who played a part in exposing India's largest corruption case, has an arrest warrant out on him because he wrote this article in July Analysis: How to wipe out Islamic terror (the article seems to have been removed from the online version of the newspaper itself)
Censorship does not directly affect most people in India not because of free speech protections (which are very weak), but because the government is not strong enough to impose it on everyone.
The threat to internet freedom is not from and Indian version of the great wall of china, but from the possibility that, to protect their business opportunities in India, Internet companies will bend over to accommodate the govt of India. If history is any indication, the people in India will protest very loudly for a few days, then get distracted by the latest celebrity scandal . Ultimately they will adjust to one less freedom (the infamous attitude we term as "Chalta Hai") and forget about it.