Web content regulation: Mixed reaction from MPs

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 06, 2011, 18:07

Tags: Website, content regulation, response, MPs

New Delhi: Government's move to ask social networking sites to prevent objectionable content from appearing on their web sites on Tuesday evoked a mixed response from politicians who make prolific use of the Internet medium.

Congress MP from Kerala Shashi Tharoor, a regular on Twitter micro-blogging site, said he was against political censorship but there were some issues of concern like "communally inflammatory" material, while BJP MP Varun Gandhi decried any effort to "gag" Internet.

"Spoke to Kapil Sibal. He assured me he opposes political censorship. Concern is communally inflammatory images & language which he described. Have to say I support Kapil Sibal on the examples he gave me: deeply offensive material about religions & communities that could incite riots," Tharoor said on Twitter.

"I reject censorship. Art, literature & political opinion are sacrosanct. But inflammatory communal incitement is like a match at a petrol pump," he said.

However, Gandhi, BJP MP from Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, disagreed with Tharoor and said Internet is the only truly democratic medium free of "vested interests, media owners & paid-off journos."

"Can see why Sibal wants to gag it," he said.

RLD MP Jayant Chaudhary, son of party chief Ajit Singh, also appeared to question the Telecom Ministry's move to ask Facebook and Google to evolve mechanism to ensure objectionable content on social networking sites are removed.

"Censorship of the internet - Forget the desirability issue for a minute, IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE??!!!

"Maybe Facebook, Google, etc will be asked to monitor/ remove offensive content, but what about the small blogs and vast numbers of websites that are too small to be checked?" he asked.

Tharoor said that on specific issues raised by Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal he would speak to him directly.

PTI

First Published: Tuesday, December 06, 2011, 18:07

Comments

Satish Chandra - Toronto
NATIONAL SECURITY & FDI : The sudden decision to allow FDI in retail, whose timing has amazed everyone, was prompted by what I wrote on November 18, 2011 about more than a thousand Indian Air Force aircraft having crashed since 1970, the vast majority of the crashes caused by microwaves from U.S. satellites and the new Chief of Air Staff, N. A. K. Browne, who is a CIA-RAW operative, causing two such crashes in his first week in office to boost his bid to buy worse than worthless foreign aircraft for tens of billions of dollars (see IndianAirForcePilotsMurderDOTblogspotDOTcom), this made the purchase impossible and so RAW dictated (see `What You Should Know About RAW` in my blog above for how CIA-RAW dictates all such decisions) the FDI in retail decision as another avenue to bring India into slavery to the white countries, as an act of defiance and attempted defeat of my defence of India. Satish Chandra