[Reader-list] Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules (IndiaRealTime blog, WSJ)

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo CIS-India/News

original to:
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2011/05/02/digerati-see-censorship-in-new-web-rules/


Digerati See Censorship in New Web Rules.

Attention Indian bloggers and social media fiends: the next time you’re
composing a witty tweet or posting an edgy item on Facebook, please take
care that what you’re writing isn’t “grossly harmful” or “harassing” or
“ethnically objectionable” or – oh, the humanity! – “disparaging.”

India has introduced stringent new rules to police the Web and remove
content that goes out of bounds.Those are among the types of content that
are banned under Internet regulations the Indian government recently put
into effect to enforce sections of an information technology law passed in
2008. It’s up to “intermediaries” – Internet service providers, social
networking sites, etc. – to police the Web and remove content that goes
out of bounds.

As word of the new rules spreads, digital media barons and commoners alike
are freaking out. Is the world’s largest democracy ever-so-quietly
trampling on free speech by enacting a censorship regime for the Web? How
exactly will these rules affect day-to-day activity online?

On the MediaNama digital media blog, Nikhil Pahwa offers a bleak analysis:
“These rules give the Indian government the ability to gag free speech,
and block any website it deems fit, without publicly disclosing why sites
have been blocked,” he writes.

Concerns are also pouring out on Twitter, with user posts like “Looks like
we will become China soon” and “Moving to a more draconian state” and
“When the hell did this happen?”

To shed some light on that last question: These rules merely advance what
has been a quiet effort for several years by the Indian government to get
a grip on the Web without the kind of blanket censorship or
Website-blocking practiced in countries like Iran, China and Saudi Arabia.

In a front-page story last year, The Wall Street Journal showed how Indian
police and government authorities, acting on complaints from Web users,
have successfully pressured Google Inc. and other companies to make
inaccessible to Indian users Web content that offends figures ranging from
Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi to Hindu nationalist leader
Balasaheb Thackeray.

The IT law was in effect then but as the government issues more specific
rules to enforce it, its powers appear to be broadening–or at least coming
into much sharper focus. The cumulative impact of the government’s Web
regulation regime, says Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and
Society in Bangalore, is to foster a culture of self-censorship not just
by Web users but also Internet companies that will likely err on the side
of caution by removing anything that seems edgy or potentially offensive.

Mr. Abraham cited as an example of overreach in the rules a provision that
bans information that “impersonates another person,” which he said would
outlaw everything from parody writing in which the author pretends to be
in the shoes of a celebrity to Twitter accounts such as Dr.YumYumSingh,
whose tweets are a running send-up of the honorable Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh. “There are many occasions when people take on a pseudonym,
or pretend to be someone else. If it isn’t done with the intention of
financial fraud, there’s no need to clamp down on it,” he said.

Mr. Abraham also lamented that people whose content is taken down appear
to have no recourse under the law to protest to ISPs or the government.
It’s up to the ISPs to offer such recourse in their terms-of-use, if they
are so generous.

To put this in its proper perspective, Indian authorities have never tried
to disable Web access for large segments of the population or block very
large numbers of sites, so far as we know. CIS revealed through a
Right-to-Information request that 11 sites are currently being blocked,
including a Facebook page that disparages constitutional framer and
low-caste champion B.R. Ambedkar. There are certainly countries practicing
a much, much higher degree of outright Web censorship.

But is fostering self-censorship–if that’s what’s happening here–just as
bad as censorship itself?