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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."
Feel free to be politically correct and mod me down.
But elections being this close, and due to the victory being uncertain because of corruption scandals, the ruling congress party in India is out to appease the muslims who vote en-masse.
And muslims have long since been against freedom of speech and expression of non-muslims. If Google complies, it gives them a tool to get those mohammed cartoons removed from internet permanently. "Gods worshiped in India" indeed. Save for some lunatic fringe groups, hindus in general, tend to usually ignore such stuff. Or at least, barring some peaceful protest, they are at least not out to kill the heretics.
While they have agreed to take down the content in a civil suit, they still face criminal prosecution. In India you are criminally responsible for third party posts to your website, so Google India employees are still facing criminal charges. And agreeing to take it down has destroyed the Google employees' defense that they could not have preemptively taken it down because it is out of their control.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
This is India, not the US. Although I'm not familiar with the Indian government, I they don't follow the United State's First Amendment to the same degree we pretend to follow it her and in much of the West.
Although Religion may be outdated, we can thank it for many cultural and technological advances, even in modern fields such as genetics.
More seriously:
1) Your god is too weak/inferior/doesn't exist thus cannot punish me... you're not serious suggesting you are more powerful/all knowing that your own god and therefore usurping his power and position to judge, are you? This is the change of venue strategy.
2) The holy texts of religion X basically mock religion Y therefore lets ban religion X before wasting time on the inter-tubes. This is the distraction strategy.
3) Share the links. Mass civil disobedience strategy. Sooo.... lets go for it. Lemme guess, its something really creative like a link to the new testament at PG...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It just makes me ask, as an atheist, can I file a suit that says all references to God mocks my opinion and have Google remove those links from every search?
(Disclaimer: Devils's Advocate [no pun intended] only. I have no problem what you do with your personal life... just keep it personal.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
We can also thank it for the inquisition and the dark ages. While we're at it, why don't we thank it for the Bush administration and it's stifling of scientific progress. To defend religion as a friend of and benefactor to scientific advances is akin to thanking colonial slavery for having a black president.
I got here through a series of tubes
We need a "Artistic" rating.
I think you mean the first to completely cut all funding for embryonic stem cell research. There is a pretty broad consensus in the scientific community that these guys were not friend to advancement and if you could possibly prove otherwise I'd love to see some proof.
I got here through a series of tubes
Meanwhile, was it really over a decade ago that the cult of scientology was forcing comments off of slashdot?
Google has agreed before a court in Delhi to remove religious and other content considered objectionable, though some other Internet firms are likely to appeal the court's decision, plaintiff Mufti Ajiaz Arshad Qasmi said on Monday.
The appeal:
The government allowed the court to prosecute the Internet companies under various Indian laws in the criminal case, but Google has meanwhile appealed the decision before the Delhi High Court.
Basic background: India is the country with the second largest Muslim population in the world, number of Indian Muslims dwarfs Pakistan, Arabia, Egypt, Bangladesh. Just recently Indonesia overtook it. Muslims form a sizeable vote bank, some 15% of the electorate and almost all the politicians kow-tow the lines drawn by them. There is widespread belief that the Muslims are punching way above their weight politically. But even when there is provocation like Muslim painters paint Hindu goddesses in the nude or something, the Hindu reaction is usually divided. The secularists are mostly in control of the hard liners on the Hindu side. Once in a while you hear Hindu hardliners banning Valentines Day or protesting some movie or a book.
Having said that, for country with that large a Muslim population, very few of the Indian Muslims are involved in terrorism, or support terrorism. Despite periodical outrageous attacks by Pakistani Muslims terrorist outfits inside India, there is no widespread retaliation against the local Muslims. Indian Muslims join the police and military in large numbers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
WW1 and WW2 were religious? Korea was Religious? Vietnam? Iraq 1 n 2? Afghanistan? Libya? Kosovo?
Oh, you mean wars from hundreds of years ago? like the Civil War? oh wait, not that war... you mean other wars like Napoleonic? wait, no not that one ... hmmm couldn't be Revolutionary wars and all the other wars of revolts ...
Wait? You're not one of those "I HATE RELIGION" trolls are you that turns a blind eye to every significant war of the last 200 years or so, just so you can bash religion for long past "wars".
I think Politics and Governments cause wars, so ... let us ban those!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
That sounds great. And this is what happens in practice with ... shall we say ... "a certain faith", and a few various ideologies ...
an example of what india had to deal with in the past
The crux of the matter is simple : an enlightened civilization makes the statement referred to before, attributed to Voltaire (who also didn't mean it)
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
The rest of the story has been repeated countless times :
group X: "oh really ? Let's see what happens if we kill a few (dozen) people over this"
"enlightened" civilization: "please please PLEASE stop. We'll kill those people we'd "defend to the death"
Group X has historically been muslims, dictators and communists in regions where they have enough control to actually commit large-scale violence. The conclusion is of course, as simple as they come : against "modern free-thinking atheists" any amount of violence, if it's over the threshold of killing people, will make "free-thinkers" acquiesce to any demands. This has been used both by "protestors" (e.g. see the effect of the sept 11 attacks on the american press), and governments (e.g. the Iranian government control over newspapers is much more based on regular attacks against the worst offender than it is on constant inspection).
Needless to say, there is one way to stop this : if any ideology starts using violence, should result in slowly building attacks against any member of that ideology. That is the only recourse, except pie-in-the-sky 100% police effectiveness and worldwide freedom of speech laws.
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 sympathise with your statement, but a government or a state has the duty to ensure the safety and freedom of all citizens and non-citizens who live in their area of control. Incitement to hatred or crime is such a danger and thus the government has to act and limit those actions of speech. There must be a debate over this limits.
So all those who called for the death of Osama Bin Laden should have gone to jail for that?
He should have stand trial, if possible. That was not the case. If somebody with executive power in the government issued a shoot-to-kill order, this person as well should have to face a trial. There was no declaration of war to Pakistan. If my neighbour tells me Bin Laden should be killed right away, I try to explain why this is not the best idea, but my neighbour should not go to jail because she has no power to issue those orders. If my neighbour repeatedly says "I am gonna kill this parasite at the other of the street" there should be consequences.
If we ever have another world war, it will be because of too much censorship, not too little.
Agreed. There's one raging, because a lot of the footsoldiers in Quaida/Taliban/etc are cut off from the wealth of information the world has to offer and a notion that god might be an idea invented by humans. The only answer I can think of is access to education and the basic concepts of human rights, as well as economic well being. In western countries the free flow of information kinda works.