Artists and musicians sat inside cages set up at Jantar Mantar here on Sunday as a mark of protest against the government's attempts to control Internet content.
The idea was to portray that artistes inside a cage playing the guitar or painting a canvas was equal to the government's IT rules that have “caged” the freedom of the people granted by the Constitution of India.
“Not acceptable”
The symbolic protest was organised by “Save Your Voice” which said the government monitoring social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter was not acceptable.
“We want to tell the government that it cannot use vaguely-defined laws and loopholes to take away our freedom of speech and expression,” said the organisation, adding that they were also angry with the government accessing private photographs and information stored online and their surveillance of citizens' mobile and online activity.
“Unconstitutional”
They also said that the newly-notified Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules-2011 prescribing principles to be observed by the Internet companies was unconstitutional as it provided for a system of censorship by private parties, adversely affected the right of privacy, would hamper the growth of the Internet and slow down economic growth in the process and limit the growth of IT-related services and industries in particular.
