Slashdot Mirror
Facebook, Google Argue Against Web Censorship In India
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook and Google told the Delhi High Court today they cannot block offensive content that appears on their services. The two Internet giants are among 21 companies that have been asked to develop a mechanism to block objectionable material in India, and the Indian government has given the green light for their prosecution. Although India is democratic (in fact, it's the world's largest democracy), many fear the country will resort to censorship."
Should be made to shut up.
An analysis here suggests that the target of Internet censorship was against political blasphemy rather than any generic web censorship. Its worse than a state trying to censor the web as consistent with their national policies; in this case the 'ruling government' is molding laws as it sees fit to its political advantages. Only one of the so called complaints by the ministers was deemed a national security threat.
It makes no sense to throw in the line about India being the "world's largest democracy".
All that that means is that India holds elections, and that it has a lot of people.
It doesn't mean that (as in other 3rd world democracies):
-India has a guarantee of freedom of speech like in the US
-India has constitutional protections for "life, liberty, and property"
-You can refuse to testify against yourself (an important protection against torture)
-The government doesn't censor (plenty of stories on RIM, etc., on Slashdot re: that)
The word you're looking for is "liberal democracy", i.e., a democracy in which an emphasis is placed on liberty.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"American constitution atleast guarantees free speech with virtually no restrictions applied I believe"
That's long gone. As an extreme example, look at how for the last several elections' political conventions all protesters were forced into "free speech zones" out of site of the convention attendees and the press (i.e. you have free speech, but only where nobody can hear you). And the police arrested thousands of people to get them off the streets, for the same reason. Of course, all of those people were then released, because they hadn't broken any laws, but only after the conventions were over and the press was gone.
I'm not saying that the US is the most restrictive country - there are some that are much worse - but the constitutional rights have been heavily cut back in the last decade. Strangely, we had much stronger respect for civil rights when we were fighting the UK, the most powerful empire on the planet, than we do now, fighting a small number of desperate terrorists. George Washington, for example, expressly forbade torturing captured British soldiers, even though the British tortured captured American soldiers.
"In 1776," wrote historian David Hackett Fischer in "Washington's Crossing," "American leaders believed it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution."
This commitment to our principles was how we won the war against a much larger, more powerful empire. Everywhere they went, pillaging, torturing and killing, they created more opposition. Or, as one of their soldiers wrong "Wherever our armies have marched, wherever they have encamped, every species of barbarity has been executed. We planted an irrevocable hatred wherever we went, which neither time nor measure will be able to eradicate."
Our modern leaders have less foresight. But then, I'm sure that the British in 1776 thought that they were right, too.
Rather than me quote the whole thing, go read it http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1217-30.htm.
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