[Reader-list] Meeting on 'Resisting Internet Censorship' on April 21 at Bangalore Intl Centre

[Pranesh Prakash]

Dear all,
The Centre for Internet and Society and the Foundation for Media
Professionals invite you to an open discussion on

'Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of
Expression in India'

Date: April 21, 2012
Time: 2.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.
Venue: Bangalore International Centre, TERI Complex, Domlur Stage II

The discussion will be moderated by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

Participants include:

* P. Rajeeve, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha, CPI(M))
* Rajeev Chandrashekar, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha, Independent)
[tbc]
* V.R. Sudarshan, Member of Legislative Council, Karnataka (Congress)
* Na. Vijayshankar, Cyber Law College
* Mahesh Murthy, Pinstorm
* B.G. Mahesh, OneIndia.in
* Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Centre for Law and Policy Research
* Siddharth Narain, Alternative Law Forum
* Ram Bhat, Maraa
* S. Senthil, FSMK [tbc]
* Arati Chokshi, People's Union for Civil Liberties (Karnataka) [tbc]


## Immediate Background

Member of Parliament, P. Rajeeve has introduced a motion in the Rajya
Sabha calling for the Internet censorship law passed last year
("Intermediary Guidelines Rules") to be annulled.  This motion will be
taken up once the Budget Session 2012 reconvenes, and will need the
support of the majority of both Houses to be passed.  Apart from this,
we have seen multiple cases in the past few months of flagrant abuse of
the speech laws, especially the Information Technology Act, including
the removal of CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com, the arrest of M. Karthik,
a 20-year-old atheist from Hyderabad, and of Prof. Ambikesh Mahapatra
from Kolkata for 'defamatory' cartoons of Mamata Banerjee, both under
s.66A of the Information Technology Act.  We need to develop strategies
to combat this over-eagerness by authorities to abuse speech laws.


## More Detailed Background

Internet censorship has been in India ever since VSNL brought internet
connectivity to Indians in the mid-1990s, when websites were blocked
through executive fiat.  In 2000 the Information Technology Act was
passed, and while it had a provision on electronic publication of
obscene materials, it did not contain any provisions for blocking of
websites.  Still, Rules were made under the Act under which the
government blocked numerous websites.

In 2008 the Act was amended, bringing more transparency to the
censorship regime.  Unfortunately, cases like the
CartoonsAgainstCorruption.com and the disparity between censorship
statistics published by Google and the official statistics revealed
under RTI by the Department of Information Technology show a large
amount of extra-legal censorship happening.

In February 2011, the DIT published draft rules that were severely
criticised by many MPs, including Rajeev Chandrashekar, P. Rajeeve,
Mahendra Mohan, and Kumar Deepak Das, organizations including CIS,
Software Freedom Law Centre, IAMAI, and companies like Google India.
Many MPs, including Rajeev Chandrashekar and P. Rajeeve, raised concerns
about the draft.  In April 2011 disregarding all these concerns, the
government pressed ahead with the Rules.  These rules allowed any person
to get content removed from the Internet by writing to any
'intermediary' (like Rediff, BSNL, Google, Facebook, etc.) within 36
hours, with no questions asked, and no intimation to the content owner
(hence no question of challenge), and once again made internet
censorship as unaccountable as it was pre-2008, only with the power to
censor in the hands of every citizen, rather than just a few government
officials.

In May 2011, due to the backlash in the media, with negative editorials
in prominent newspapers, Mr. Kapil Sibal indicated in an interview that
the rules would be revisited.  From August 2011 onwards there was a
crackdown on several web companies, including Indiatimes, Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft, and Facebook, with the government asking them to proactively
monitor online content and remove what it deemed objectionable material.
 Since then, a number of egregious cases of censorship through filing of
intimidatory FIRs and lawsuits have been happening.


## Organisers

The Foundation for Media Professionals is an independent, not-for-profit
organisation, set up in April 2008, by a group of Indian journalists
with diverse media backgrounds and work experiences. Though we are
traditionally referred to as journalists, we have decided to call
ourselves differently to emphasise the importance we place on
professionalism, so that we can be true to our vocation as watchdogs of
society.

The Centre for Internet and Society was registered as a society in
Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation,
it runs different research programmes on topics such as Accessibility,
Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, Telecom, Digital
Natives and Digital Humanities.

Regards,
Pranesh

-- 
Pranesh Prakash  · Programme Manager · Centre for Internet and Society
@pranesh_prakash · PGP ID 0x1D5C5F07 · http://cis-india.org