The U.S.-based search engine Google Inc on Thursday told a Delhi court that that it has aleady removed alleged objectionable contents from its web posts as it was aware of its responsibility as a service provider.
The search engine, in a written statement filed before Administrative Civil Judge Praveen Singh, denied the allegation that it projected Indian culture in poor light.
The statement said that Google Inc was aware of its responsibilities as a service provider and has a system to ensure that “rights and interests” of all relevant parties were well protected.
The U.S.-based firm said the alleged objectionable contents were removed after its Indian subsidiary Google India brought them to the notice of the service provider.
Every product offered is governed by the policies aimed at striking a proper balance between enabling free speech and expression and maintaining a responsible and safe community, the company told the court.
Seeking dismissal of civil suit, Google Inc said that the case against it was filed in complete disregard of immunity given to a service provider under the Information Technology Act for any third party content linked or hosted by it.
Besides Google Inc, Orkut and Youtube also filed their written submissions in the court on Thursday.
Earlier, Facebook, Yahoo India and Microsoft, accused of hosting objectionable contents, had told the court that neither a case was made out against them nor there was any cause of action.
The court had on December 20 last year, in a ex-parte order, issued summons to 22 social networking websites asking them to remove “anti-religious” or “anti-social” contents from their sites.
The court had also asked the websites to file the compliance reports in pursuance of the direction to remove the objectionable contents in the form of photographs, videos or texts which might hurt religious sentiments.
It had on December 24 set February 6 as deadline for the websites.
The court’s order had come amid a raging controversy over monitoring the content on Internet and of those websites depending on user generated contents, which arose after Union Telecommunications Minister Kapil Sibal had asked the social networking websites to “screen” the contents.
The websites, which have been asked to remove objectionable contents, include Facebook India, Google India Pvt Ltd, Google Orkut, Youtube, Blogspot, Microsoft India Pvt Ltd, Microsoft, Zombie Time, Exboii, Boardreader, IMC India, My Lot, Shyni Blog and Topix.
Keywords: Internet freedom, online privacy, online content, objectionable content, media regulations, national integration, social networking
the Cogent Idea of Justice emerges when people engage in a debate. during a debate all sorts of things come out, both "objectionable" and "objectionable", and for a very logic that the deciding principles for the "objectionable" and the "unobjectionable" is itself obtained through debates between the people. Therefore censorship on Internet which is the largest platform for debates to happen between people from all parts of the country and the world, will turn the debates one-sided by giving advantage to the one who is on the side of the subject-content which is "un objectionable" by some strange unknown standards to the matter of topic of the debate. censorship cannot and should not be accepted where people are involved in debates because that in itself is the process from where "the objectionable" and "the un-objectionable" keep waxing in and then waning out.
This is not a happy news. Internet censrship is also a tool by the governments of taking over the regime permanently. Censorship started from the times of Egyptian Pharoes with the aim of removing the previous Pharoes from his throne even in the after life( that is, in his Pyramid after his death). The new victoring Pharoe would remove, etch out, break all the memories of the previous Pharoe to ensure establishment of his reign from the old Pharoe. censorship has come as a culture as a Islamic of a middle- eastern Abrahmic faith. India, being open faith cultre, had Kamsutra and Shiv lingam worship culture and therefore never practised censorship.
A debate and a dialectics between all the religions and other interest groups should be allowed in the modern free speech democracies so that a **cogent idea of justice** may keep evolving on what is right and what is wrong and thereof a Coherence may come around in the society. censorship will cause Political shallow fights between people.
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