Tag: internet censorship

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India to Oppose International Framework for Net Censorship

According to Hindustan Times, today India would be looking to oppose the any form of internet governance rules set up under the UN.

Internet censorship already exists in many countries, in which many social networks, YouTube and search engines fine themselves blocked in countries.

But ITU’s plans are to take such censorship further in laying down rules for content published on the internet across the world. In effect it would take over all authority from ICANN and give itself censorship powers. ICANN itself does not do any content regulation and more or less confines itself to technical standardization.

The big supporters of the creating new internet governance rules at the UN are not surprisingly Russia and China along with few more countries. Some of these rules will also include issues of tariffs applied by governments on certain sites along with handing over registration of country specific domains like to the governments rather than ICANN.

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The UN sponsored summit called World Conference in International Telecommunications at Dubai next month, where talks on setting up internet governance will be held between countries.

India’s flirtation with Net Censorship!

The government in India has not necessarily brought about heavy handed net censorship like that of China. But many internet users are worried with rising number of content removal requests from government agencies. Indian government in the past had actually recommended manual screening of content on social media sites. NGOs and activists have also held protests against rising cases of net censorship in India.

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But it a relief to see India not on the side of countries like Russia and China on issues of regulating content on the internet.

Who else is opposing Net Censorship?

Not surprising one of the biggest opposition to ITU’s plans is from the search giant Google. Google owns YouTube which is a favorite target of many countries which try to crack down on internet freedom.

Would you support content regulation by the UN? Do drop in your comments and views.

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86% of Removal Request by India to Google are without a Court Order

Google puts out transparency reports every few months. One disturbing trend came out in the previous report was that India has 49% increase in the number of removal requests made by government agencies. The latest report shows that 86% of the removal requests by India are without a court order.

Worrying trends of Internet Censorship?

Content removal requests are not really a big issue as such. Majority of them are for copyright infringement. But these are numbers collected about requests made only by government agencies (eg: Police, courts). Usually in such cases government agencies approach the courts to block a website or webpage before sending a removal notice to Google.

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The current trends shows that 86% of such requests are made without a court order. One would think that such urgency of getting items removed might be predominantly matters of national security or hate speech. That is not the case as 35 out of 64 of these requests which are without court order in the past 6 months are categorized under “Defamation” and not other more serious issues like hate speech, impersonation, privacy and security.

This is a major worrying sign as only countries with a high level of internet censorship actually try and remove content online requiring court orders.

What are your views on internet censorship in India? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Google Transparency Report 2012

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Anonymous Protests Internet Censorship across India!

Yesterday Anonymous, a hacktivist group has staged its first protest across several cities in India. It was protesting against internet censorship by the government and also certain ISPs. Internet censorship has been a hot topic of discussion for a while now but in recent times it has reached a tipping point in India. The Twitter hashtag #OpIndia was used to organize the multi-city protests across the country.

The group takes its inspiration from the movie V for Vendetta where a masked anonymous vigilante launches a political revolution.

Recent instances of online censorship in India

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Internet censorship has been a hot topic of discussion over the past few months in India. You might recall a famous (rather infamous) demand by a Minister to have manual screening of all online content put up on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The minister later flip-flopped on the issue saying he wanted some sort of monitoring of content.

There there was the Delhi High Court case against Facebook and Google. It had asked the websites to remove objectionable content or face bans. There were even comparisons drawn to how a system like China needed to be developed. The case still continues on the courts.

Internet Service Provider (ISPs) companies have often been accused of blocking access to websites on an adhoc basis. Popular file sharing websites have routinely been blocked by certain ISP’s who have links to Bollywood studios.

Laws pertaining to Internet usage in India are also a little unclear. For instance apparently certain content which is deemed offensive should be removed within hours. It is impossible to adhere as what exactly constitutes offensive is not defined with explicit clarity.

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Tipping point

According to IBN Live some ISPs started to block video and filesharing websites like Vimeo. This was in response to a court order blocking certain links which were infringing copyright laws. The ISPs in question blocked entire domains instead of just those particular links.

Anonymous’ OpIndia hackers retaliated with attacks on websites owned by a political party along with some official government owned.

Interestingly Anonymous posted this tweet after some of online attacks.

Final Thoughts on Anonymous Protests!

Internet freedom is very dear to probably all internet users. Mostly people are unaware, that these freedoms can be restricted. The protests as long as they are peaceful will help in the long run to make people more aware of their internet rights which they might take for granted.

One major challenge for such protests is to keep their focus on internet freedoms and rights rather than come across as groups that support online piracy.

What are your views on Anonymous #OpIndia protests? Did you attend any protest in India? Do drop in views and experiences in your comments.

Image: Share Press

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Google to Redirect Blogspot Hosted Blogs to Country Specific Domains

If you are living in India and have a blog on Blogspot, this might interest you. Google is redirecting all blogspot blogs from blogspot.com to blogspot.in.

This is not for only blogs from India, but all blogs that are looked up from an IP address in India. While if you are using your own personal domain hosted on Blogspot, your domain name will remain the same.

For example that Google’s official blog which has the original URL as

http://googleblog.blogspot.com

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but for Indian users, it shows up as

http://googleblog.blogspot.in/

Why is Google re-directing Blogspot blogs?

Well Twitter has decided to censor tweets based on country specific basis, so that they can conform to local laws regarding content. Google is doing pretty much the same thing.

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As Google explains in the this support forum, it is trying to conform to local law agency suggestions on taking down or blocking certain content at the same time keeping it online otherwise.

For example, if a URL is deemed offensive in India and the court orders Google to remove it, it can block the link for Indian readers but it would still be available from other countries.

Will it affect Google Page Rank or search rankings?

I tried to run a Google search for .in domain of Google’s official page. The query I entered was

“site:http://googleblog.blogspot.in/”

and it returned no results. So I guess we are not going to see two separate URLs for the same content showing up in the link.

Google will probably (hopefully) make sure that it does not affect many blogs and the search juice they get.

Would love to get your views in comments about Google new move for Blogspot. Do drop in your comments.

(via Google System)

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Analysis

[Funny Poster] The Internet Powered by SOPA/PIPA!

SOPA is not exactly an issue of the US Government trying to control free speech. Well at least officially it is not about free speech. It is mainly supposed to deal with piracy issues and shutdown websites which are sharing copyright content illegally. Criticism of SOPA is high, especially after Wikipedia shut itself down for a day as a protest.

One criticism of SOPA is that it is actually unfair to internet companies and gives media companies extra-ordinary power. This nice poster from Nasc, a website that specializes in pixel art, shows how the internet would become exclusive to media companies while other’s like Wikipedia, Google and would be treated as suspicious.

The picture above might be funny, but it does show what exactly is the problem. Most media companies, including some of the press have always believed that they have some sort of exclusivity with distribution of content. The internet has levelled the uneven world a lot.

Possibly such laws are trying to hang on to the old way of doing things, which was full of controls and exclusive access. In an open web today, exclusivity has hardly any place.

Do you think SOPA is about censorship or about hanging on to older ideas on distribution of media content? What are your views? Do drop in your comments.

Related: How does SOPA work? [Infographic]

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Twitter to Censor Tweets! Is Twitter Selling Out?

One of the best things about Twitter is that there is no censorship, there are no real controls either and no expectations about what is being shared on it. The free for all nature actually leads to some amazing discussions more often that say hate speech or even spam.

All this is might change very soon as Twitter will soon start blocking certain tweets to make sure they adhere to local laws of this country.

Twitter’s Country specific Settings!

  • If you sign-in to your Twitter account and look up your Account Settings.
  • It will show you the specific country that Twitter has classified your account under.

Thought users can change the country in the settings, it does not mean they will avoid their country specific censorship of Twitter.

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Twitter associates the country specific information of an account thanks to a cookie stored on a browser. This probably will make it difficult for users to change count specific details just via settings.

Why Twitter has chosen to censor certain Tweets?

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Actually, this is something that is unavoidable. Every country defines freedom of expression in different ways. For example in the US, all statements are legal. While spreading racist content is illegal in France and Germany.

There is also the question of copyright laws which can change from country to country.

Back in India, we have had the issue of internet censorship being raised. But without an actual law specifying what exactly is illegal, I doubt Twitter will filter or block tweets in India except the ones that are breaking laws in many countries.

The fact is this will make if easier for Twitter to grow a lot more in certain countries. This might make it a lot more locally relevant at the price of being globally relevant.

Do you think Twitter is selling out on its principles? Do drop in your comments.

(via Twitter Blog)

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Does India Really Want Internet Censorship Like China?

Internet censorship was something we never imagined in India. There have been calls for bans on social media networks by some groups but no one really gave such ideas any real importance. Then came the bombshell from Indian Government’s Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal who first wanted internet websites to screen all their content. Screening online content is just another definition of ‘online censorship’.

Today according to this report on NDTV, a Delhi High Court Judge warned Facebook and Google that if they failed to create a mechanism to remove objectionable online content, they would block these websites like China does.

Why was the case heard in Delhi High Court?

The case against 21 internet sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more for objectionable content has been registered in Delhi High Court. These are complaints against posts and images that are objectionable. I am not a lawyer, but it is a little strange to ask for filtering of content created by billions of people every day. The case is not about removing objectionable content but filtering this content.

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After the court’s observations, the government of India has also now sanctioned prosecuting these websites.

What could happen next?

The worst case scenario, is that websites like Facebook and Google cloud be blocked. I do not think Google or Facebook will adhere to any screening unless India does have a law that defines what exactly needs to be blocked, removed or screened. Personally I doubt the Indian government would like to see itself in a club that contains mostly autocratic regimes from around the world.

Also these are observations of a High Court in Delhi. The Supreme Court could also be approached to also address the issue if websites could be held accountable for content created by third parties (users).

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Google and Facebook’s Defence…

Almost every social network has a procedure to remove objectionable content from its website. Another issues is India does not have a Data Protection Act which lays down privacy laws for online content. So internet companies tend to adhere to community rules from the US.

Google is not even hosting the content but only pointing to links to content written and hosted independently.

Holding websites responsible for user-generated content is the same as holding a telephone company responsible for what was discussed on the phone by users.

As someone who lives in India, a country with free press and no internet censorship, the suggestion that China is a model we want to follow – is very depressing and disheartening. 🙁

Web censorship of any kind tends to be abused and ends up killing innovation. What are your views on internet censorship and the possibility of it happening in India? Do drop in your comments.

Related: Read about SOPA which could give rise to Internet Censorship in the U.S.

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Analysis

How Does SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) Work! – Infographic

In recent times there has been a lot of buzz online about a Anti-Piracy Bill in the United States. Many internet companies like Mozilla, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo and more have stated their opposition to SOPA.

An organization backed by Mozilla, Creative Commons and Wikimedia has created this infographic below that shows the effect the bill could have on internet companies.

Considering a majority of the internet companies are in the US; this could have a global impact. Somewhere down the line, it seems legislation has to catch up with technology as older rules on copyright and publishing cannot be applied on internet communities where a lot of the content is user-generated.

Do drop in your views.

Related: Indian Government flip-flops on Internet Censorship!

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Indian Government Flip-flops on Internet Censorship!

According to news reports India’s Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal asked internet companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo to screen content which may be deemed inflammatory.

While the Indian government has regularly made noises about online content being screened, the suggestion from the minister that human beings should be used to screen content instead of automatic checks. This demand is a little strange and quite impractical.

With over millions of hours of video content generated and billions of blog posts published a year, it would require thousands of people to actually screen such content manually.

What is more interesting is that the government has not defined what is inflamatory and is asking the companies to take do it themselves.

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Criticism for the move

Kapil Sibal’s comment have been made fun of on social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. It is ironic that what he set out of control was dished out to him.

Politicians are often criticized about their views and made fun of on social media websites. It is next to impossible to try and control the internet.

Clarifications have come in that the government is not looking to censor online content. I guess we have not heard the last of this issue as most governments around the world are looking for some sort of control over content.

I do not like any sort of censorship on the internet. It kills creativity and dialogue. In my opinion governments should not try to find ways to censor or control the internet but actually use internet tools to reach out to people and get their opinions.

What are your views? Do drop in your comments.

(via Economic Times)

Image Credit: daviddicke.com