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Indian Court Orders Google To Remove Content
itwbennett writes "A Court in Delhi, India has ordered Google to remove content that 'is said to mock gods worshipped in India,' according to an IDG News Service report. Mufti Ajiaz Arshad Qasmi, a private citizen, 'had filed a civil suit against Google and other Internet companies including Facebook, objecting to certain content on their websites.' While Google agreed to remove the content, citing a 'long-standing policy of responding to court orders,' other Internet companies named in the suit are likely to appeal."
Google has to comply with the laws of the countries in which it operates. Texas is prevented by the bill of rights from passing laws that limit freedom of religion and religious commentary, so Texas could not legally issue a court order demanding that Google remove such content.
Saudi Arabia and India apparently can, though. Google's choice is to either comply with the laws of those nations or simply cease operations in those nations. Considering that no nation on earth has truly unlimited freedom of speech, let alone the US, it makes sense to make occasional court-ordered concessions by removing data accessible in those countries.
I am an Indian (live in the US now) and am a Hindu (by birth - I really don't care much for any religion personally) and I find your description to be biased and false. Just as Hindus in general, are laid back about most things, so too are the Muslims. I had the good fortune of studying in a Jesuit run school in a relatively poor, muslim neighborhood in Mumbai, and I had several close friends across many religions. Hindus are just as "against freedom of speech and expression" as are the Muslims. You are just deluding yourself if you think otherwise.
You need no more proof than to look at cases such as the artist M.F.Husain, who was pretty much exiled from the country by Hindu fundamentalists who were outraged that he depicted some Hindu deities in the nude.
"Or at least, barring some peaceful protest, they are at least not out to kill the heretics" - Yeah, sure, tell that to all the victims of the Gujarat riots at the hands of crazed Hindu fundamentalists (with complicity from the pro-Hindu state government).
Before George W. Bush, the federal government provided zero funding for any embryonic stem cell research. Under George W. Bush, the federal government provided funding for some embryonic stem cell research. You may not like the restrictions he placed on such federal funding, but he was the first President to provide any such funding. This source clearly lays out the timeline in the seond to last paragraph.
One of the things you will find is that a large portion of the "scientific community" exists within colleges and universities, which view anyone who believes that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions as ignorant heathens.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Islamic and Arabic in that timeframe were used interchangeably. Mullahs and muftis might not have but hakims did. Under early Islam studying science was akin to studying Allah.
Also note that when Google complies with these court orders they do so only within the jurisdiction of the court order, so in this case anyone within India will not receive these search results, but will instead see a message that some results have been removed due to court order.
Bullshit. It is illegal to deny that the Holocaust happened. It is perfectly legal to criticize the jewish faith. Two very different things.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Is that you Voltaire?
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. " Though these words are regularly attributed to Voltaire, they were first used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing under the pseudonym of Stephen G Tallentyre in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), as a summation of Voltaire's beliefs on freedom of thought and expression.
The quotation is also a "fallacy", if used without context. Imagine there's a party saying there should be a law that will kill you and your family, will you "defend it to the death"?
Let's see. USA has had:
- Government attacks on journalists.
- Government attacks on citizens who take video recordings of police in public, often because those citizens posted to sites like Youtube the evidence of police committing abuse and brutality.
- Government shutdowns of entire websites based not on convictions under the law, but of "indictments" based on one-sided presentation of carefully chosen and misrepresented lists of evidence, complete with fabricated and delusional accusations of "mass conspiracy" spun out of whole cloth with inserted accusations of "terrorism" and other things designed not to have any factual basis but merely to constitute an emotional appeal (read: "oh but think of the children", which always comes behind some censorship law or other).
Hell, you don't even have to be that recent. The "USA PATRIOT ACT" (what an Orwellian name!) has plenty to be worried about already. And then we have the DMCA and all the other chilling effects laws the USA has enacted...
Google obeys court orders in all countries where it has a presence, it does not selectively choose. There is no Google North Korea, and their site is banned there, along with, you know, the Internet, so Google has no reason or obligation to answer to the North Korean government. Abu Dhabi is a city, not a country, but assuming you were attempting to refer to the United Arab Emirates, yes, there is a Google UAE, and Google would respond to any court order from the UAE. Note that the UAE is a fairly progressive country, and not the backwater Islamic police state that only exists in your mind. And finally, there is no Google presence in Yemen, so Google would likely ignore any court orders from there. Now that I've properly answered your questions, feel free to return to spouting "Google is teh evilz" type nonsense.
They would, probably.
I mean, they complied to requests from Cook Islands, Solomon Islands and Sri Lanka, what makes you think other nations would be different?
Stop trying to ascribe personal qualities to corporations, FFS. There's no compassion, pride, ideals and so on, there's just profits and public relations.
"Lack of spine", "principles" and "do no evil" don't even come into this, you want to do business in a country, you abide the law of that country.
FB and Google already complied to the court order, others named will probably follow right after getting some press where they'll tell how they really don't want to do that (because they didn't pay their developers to implement region-based content filtering yet)
Abu Dhabi is a city, not a country, but assuming you were attempting to refer to the United Arab Emirates, yes, there is a Google UAE, and Google would respond to any court order from the UAE.
But it is a state. The United Arab Emirates, as its name suggests, is a federation of seven states.
Note that the UAE is a fairly progressive country, and not the backwater Islamic police state that only exists in your mind.
Only relatively speaking. Only 10% to 15% of the population of UAE are citizens; all the others have diminished legal rights. Labourers are brought to the UAE on slave contracts, often defrauded and treated as indentured servants. Racial discrimination is legal and open. The conservative government tries to combat prostitution, but it's still very widespread and organised, importing "labourers" from Ethiopia and Eastern Europe by the thousands.
Afghanistan?
Not sure which one you're referring to, but yes, both were religious.
The Soviet-Afghan war was actually a civil war between socialist secularists and moderate-to-radical Islamists, with the first faction backed by USSR, and the second backed by Pakistan and USA. The primary reason for the war was that Islamists were offended at such horrible Soviet innovations as mixed-gender schools and universities.
The second war was against Taliban - 'nuff said.
Kosovo?
Definitely religious. Serbs are Orthodox Christian, Albanians are mostly Muslim. Kosovo itself is called "Kosovo and Metohija" in Serbian, and "Metohija" literally means "monastery lands" - because that was the historical seat of the Church in Serbia, and it's where most of its monasteries were. Then it also has Kosovo Polje, the place of the historical battle where (Christian) Serbian forces were defeated by the invading (Muslim) Ottoman army, after which Serbia was annexed into Ottoman Empire.
And yes, it also comes up in the fighting - Albanians burn down churches, and Serbs burned mosques.
Libya?
What, did you miss the jihad flag flying over Bengazi in the wake of rebel victory? Or that the country is transitioning to Sharia as its primary source of legislation?
WW1 and WW2 were religious?
You may have missed the bit in WW2 where Jews and Gypsies were being rounded up and burned in big ovens and the fact that the Nazi leader followed a mix of Christianity and pan-german mysticism and came to power partly because a group of well connected secret society/cultist types thought he was their prophesized leader. Oh, you might have missed the symbol that Nazi Germany used for its flag.
You may have also missed the bit from WW1 where Archduke Ferdinand was killed by a Serbian Orthodox Christian and that one of their chief complaints against the Austro-Hungarian empire. Then there's the whole bit with the Ottoman Empire.
Religion was not the only factor in these wars, clearly, but neither did it play no role. As for Korea and Vietnam? Did you miss the bit where the US was getting so worked up about the "godless commies" that they changed their national motto to "in god we trust". Iraq 1 was heavily based in fallout from the religious war between Iraq and Iran. In Iraq 2, the born-again Christian of the United States, who claimed to have mystical powers and to receive direct instruction from his god, referred to the war as a crusade. It was also frequently justified on the basis of the Sept 11th terrorist attacks, which had a firm basis in religion, and, when people pointed out that Iraq had nothing to do with those, the alternative reason given was that Saddam Hussein had brutally gassed Kurds to death in a religiously motivated civil war.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Epicarus 47 A.D.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I am aware of that, I just think that there are limits to what is tolerable to discuss in order to have a worthwhile discussion or discourse, based on historical experience and the western "unalienable rights".
Historical experience tells us that any attempt to shut down discussion will be abused. If we allow the government to set limits, they will set the limits in a way that benefits the government, and not the people. Therefore, there must be no limits.
I won't defend somebody who says "kill $foo" and there will be a better world.
So all those who called for the death of Osama Bin Laden should have gone to jail for that?
So to avoid to "build world" again like after WWII, we shut down the threat to freedom.
If we ever have another world war, it will be because of too much censorship, not too little.
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Agreed regarding semi-totalitarian states like China or Iran.
There, but for Voltaire, go we. Freedom is not an end state. You can't just go "ok, we're free now, we dont' need freedom of speech anymore". If you can't exercise your free speech rights during good times, how can you expect to keep them when times are bad?
Nowadays the opposition in western and western-oriented countries usually doesn't get crushed about issues of free speech
Did you miss the Occupy protests this fall? They were crushed by the police. Did you miss the Gasland director being arrested for recording an open, public, session of Congress? Did you miss the US dropping 27 positions on the Free Press Index?
The price of freedom is eternal vigilence. We forgot this lesson in the US, and are in the process of losing our freedom. It will take another bloody revolution to get it back. Whatever country you're from, please stay vigilant.
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