Slashdot Mirror
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."
A big hardy "FUCK YOU!"
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
So it's ok to say anything you want, but don't offend religion? What happend to freedom of speech? I think the world is better off without Religion if you ask me!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
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.
...and my hands were on it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Have gnu, will travel.
"No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult." --RMS
If I am not a member of your religion then I don't want your stupid religious crap affecting me. In any way.
This can be applied to any religious group complaining about content offensive to their religion(I think we know the usual culprit here).
Gods are rather powerful and knowing. Can't they just deal with this stuff without involving Google?
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
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
It all depends on the extend of the mockery here.
Let's call it "The Rise Of The State"
21st cenury marked by people rising up, overthrowing unjust tyranical regimes, meanwhile democracies pare away the rights of the people. Anyone see irony here?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
We need a "Artistic" rating.
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.
Let's see.
So now we've had:
-India
-China
-Saudi Arabia
-Turkey
-France
-USA
Of course, that's just the "official state reactions" trying to force some sort of speech off the internet. Then there's MafiAA goon tactics, and of course the Mohammed Cartoons stuff which was "officially stateless" (though Iran, and a few of the other terrorist groups, had a bounty on the head of cartoonists for a while if I remember right).
The one I find most disheartening is the USA. Remember when they actually believed in their whole First Amendment thing? Yeah, that hasn't been the case since Nixon apparently.
This. I am a deeply religious person, and sometimes offended by the insults of unbelievers, but I will defend to the death their right to insult.
Is that you Voltaire?
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Before I get offended that Google would do such a thing or that India would think that it has jurisdiction. I would like to know what the objectionable material was exactly. If it was something like someone comparing the religious leaders of India to pedophile catholic priests I would understand, but if it was just "your God sucks" then Google should have stood its ground. So does anyone have a link or something that actually describes the offence because the article did not.
As an unbeliever I an deeply insulted by religion, and the irrational behaviour it seems to be leading to.
If we were to ban everything which is insulting to anyone, we'd have nothing left to look at.
Again, the quote is a good one, that while I may not agree with someone, I 'll defend their right to say it.
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.
As a pastafarian I am deeply offended that you mock The One And Only True Good by insinuating that there are other gods.
I'm offended that you're offended.
Check your premises.
"Something in another country I can access in the comfort of my own home offends me!"
Don't fucking access it then.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions and pigs running through Mecca, Islam’s holiest city
The first part make the lawsuit make a little sense and make it so that the Slashdot Title is incorrect. In the US it could be considered parody, but parody usually comes close to libel and slander. Gandhi and Singh are also not Gods but religious figures. I'm a bit surprised they took a stance on the Pigs running though Mecca, but it's probably politically motivated to appease some Islamic views so that maybe possibly they might find some common ground (wishful thinking but that's what it sounds like).
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"?
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
A party should have a right to discuss such a law; it's that discussion that's being defended, not the law itself.
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)
Wrong religion. Not all Indians are Hindu. The guy's name is Mufti Ajiaz Arshad Qasmi.
I realize that the desire for censorship crops up in pretty much all religions, but let's lay the blame where it's warranted in this case.
If you're not offended, you're not living in a free society.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
This isn't a protection of God, it's a protection of those men who claim to speak for God.
Gandhi never claimed to speak for God. He didn't elevate himself to Mahatma ether. Those where things that others attributed to him just as you are attributing that he and others like him would commit murder for this offense.
If I were to draw a picture of Drew Barrymore prostituting herself out on the Vegas Strip I could easily find myself slapped with a lawsuit as well. Free speech doesn't mean freedom to commit libel and slander.
Please do not offer my god a peanut.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
So if he's an asshole that has every idea and thought you do would you also be an asshole?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
ruins everything.
Showing bacteria and virii evolving to resist certain drugs is proof of evolution
Nope. God did that.
You lose.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
Protecting intellectual property vs censoring free expression of religion ideas, seems to a different sort of thing to me.
But you people don't kill enough. Don't riot enough. The way to your kind of laws is to influence the state. The way to influence the state, well ... If you want concessions, from America, 9/11 should be your guide. Notice how the concessions after 9/11 increased, not decreased, violence against America. You want concessions from India ? Google "pakistan secession" (also notice what Indian concessions got for India. More violence, in fact, much much more violence).
So there's a second lesson : don't stop the violence just because you got what you want. You need to increase the pressure every time you get concessions and scream about racism everyone someone attempts to tie violence to your ideology.
And the main lesson : if you want to oppose these kinds of people, grand statements do not suffice. You want to defend to the death someone's right to say something ? Don't forget that you need to add that you are prepared to kill to defend someone's right to say something if it comes to it. Without that, it doesn't mean a thing.
It means that they actively do business in that country and maintain offices, datacenters et al.
Cute ... and what about the religions who kill in response to insults ?
Another flaw is limiting this to religions. Communists have killed in response to insults. Hell, they've killed in response to facts. Then again, muslims killed dozens in response to the claim they're intolerant ... you can hardly imagine more complete proof of the evident truth about islam ...
And most of the other countries have suppressed evidence of genocide (Saudi Arabia, China, especially Turkey, India), suppress entire political ideologies (France, India) ... in addition to all of what you say happened in the USA.
And I do agree with the other criticism against you : most of what you complain about boils down to suppressing warez sites. Which just doesn't compare to the atrocities those other countries (excepting perhaps France) commit. Warez doesn't deserve defense.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
If you give the government the ability to define what sort of incitement to hatred is acceptable, they will accept hatred of the opposing political parties. This sort of interference in the democratic process is a much MUCH bigger danger than individuals.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!