Indian Court threatens to ban facebook, Google etc

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

Now it was the turn for Web majors like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Yahoo, Microsoft, and in total about 21 companies.

Indian court acting on plea of a journalist has warned these companies to remove offensive and objectionable contents.

The story started with a complaint filed in a lower court by Vinay Rai. He is a journalist who alleged that these companies were publishing ghastly material.
Just a few days back, India's minister of communications and information technology, Kapil Sibal provided various examples of "unacceptable" content. To prove his theory he manifested fake naked pictures of Indian political leaders and also a few of religiously sensitive images present over the web servers of these companies, and hence available to the people around the globe.
Justice Suresh Kait has warned these companies that “like China, we will block all such websites”. Obviously websites containing objectionable material, unless they agree to introduce new measures.

Web business tycoons were told to appear before the Delhi court on 13th March. They have to face criminal charges for allegedly hosting offensive and objectionable material on their websites. Ministry of external affairs has been given the responsibility of serving the summons to the companies.
However, I believe that this cannot happen so swiftly. Enormous restructuring is needed, and a lot of Software Engineering and testing has to be done; That too only for a reduction, not removal!
Even the BBC report says -

assuming there are over 100 million Internet users in the India, most Internet-based companies say such broad action is impossible.

Truly said, but forgot to add that here we are talking globally. So the number crosses 500 million mark!!
Now, let’s see the further gesture of the companies and the court. Till then you may also show a kind gesture by reading and clicking on the Ads in the blog.
Yes, I can see your cursor moving. Now just press a left click. Click many. ;)

Internet Censorship: Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz : Thought 2

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

I would again re-emphasize that the--

Internet Censorship is wrong and devastating. We are still fortunate that it is a Fool's day prank. We may achieve it but those efficient programmers are in Mars. Find them and get the task done!

what do you feel?

Internet Censorship: Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz: Thought 1

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

The Internet and cyber Censorship has become latest craze of governments across the globe. But they fail to understand the real situation and challenge in solving the issue:

"The time you spend while reading this article must have been used by several people at several locations to generate several offensive contents for several societies in several languages over several internet portals. And be assured of several formats too!"

Lets see how far the ban in china, Arab spring, and ruling against Facebook, Yahoo, Google etc in India takes us. I believe that the Internet is free, is free, and not be curbed. So, no need to be afraid of. as No Mayan Calendar end date has still been set for the Internet!!

Cheers!!

Click on links too dear!!!

Image against Internet Censorship, Ban/Blocks

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

Facebook Page on Internet Censorship Voyager

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

A page has been created in Facebook for Internet Censorship Voyager Blog Readers.

Users who wish can Like the page and add their comments, thoughts, and feedback on that page too
You may access the page at :
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Censorship-Voyager/172211709553542

You can discuss bans and blocks over websites in China, Arab, India or about any Geographical boundaries.

Let's see you there...

What is Internet Censorship Voyager

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

I have defined in the header itself the intention and the purpose of this blog.


Mission: Travelling in modern times to understand, revisit and analyze the technical and ethical issues related to Global Internet Censorship.

Description	The Internet or the Cyber world has taken our Real world from the Library-Magazines-Only state to the state having Search Engines, Wikis, CMSes, Social networks, Whistle Blowers, et al. But as it reaches to its puberty age, it is fearing about censorships from governments across the globe.

Vision: I intend to understand the real need of Internet Censorship, the real problems, the real stories behind every Cyber Censorship attempts; And bring out to my readers latest news, laws, policies, problems, solutions, viability, and correctness of every such attempts in the name of Offensive and Objectionable contents; And to discuss any past or contemporary ban, block, or charges against Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other Internet and Social networking companies operating in the Cyber World.

New Blog: Internet Censorship Ideas, discussions, problems, and solutions

There is a new blog exclusively dedicated to the Internet censorship issues across the globe. The blog has a related Facebook page too. I am giving the links. Read and like those pages. Blog is full of original, rich, quality articles on the niche area.

Blog Name : Internet Censorship Voyager

Blog Link:  http://internet-censorship-voyager.blogspot.com/

Blog Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Censorship-Voyager/172211709553542

I hope you all will enjoy the stuff out there!!

Court accuses Google, Facebook etc for 'Objectionable and Offensive' contents. Problems in Internet censorship, reality, solutions and viablity.

This blog post comes after the news that Indian court issues summons to Google, Facebook, Microsoft for 'objectionable content'.
You must have heard -

Indian court ruling against offensive content in facebook, google, yahoo etc

Google,Facebook,Yahoo charged for objectionable and offensive contents

Social networking websites warned to remove offensive contents, and

Internet censorship is a debate and technical problems are there, etc.

There are some authorities across the globe and now even Indian court that wants these (and 21 others) Internet companies to develop a (? Big question mark!!) mechanism to keep a check and remove from their Web pages those materials which are deemed 'offensive and objectionable'.

Someone please tell me with such a diverse cultural, regional, religional,politico,socio,economical richness of India, who can find what is objectionable and what is not. And then, at last, thanks to various civic bodies too, which may find anything objectionable even if it is passed by legislation, law, censor boards, and religious authorities. Let’s cut our talks and be focused towards the technical news and aspects.

A Delhi court sent a summons to the headquarters of foreign Internet companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo on Friday, in a private case against objectionable content online. It started with some RTI Activists who found religious content on the sites that he considered offensive, and filed a complaint with a Delhi court, prompting Additional Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar to issue notices to 21 Internet sites in December. Henceforth, The magistrate has asked the foreign entities and Indian Internet companies mentioned in the complaint to appear before the court on March 13.

In addition, India's Information Technology Act requires intermediaries like Internet service providers to remove content that is found objectionable within a period of 36 hours of being notified of the content.

It has been warned that "Like China, we will block all such web sites,". This was said by High Court Judge Suresh Kait said.

News complete. And now the technical aspects.

With more than billions of Internet users let’s see what are problems:

1. Billions of Internet users around the globe
2. Thousands of cultural diversities across the globe
3. Millions of line posted every hour over the internet
4. Approximately 11 hours video upload every third minute across the globe
5. Tweets, status updates, messages, forwarding, comes in a real time environment. So who will keep track of these things
6. What is objectionable may not be objectionable for other and vice-versa
7. Age old problems like “Adult content removal” is still not successful, who the hell can develop an “Offensive content removal” system. Hat’s off to law making people. They think programming just like passing a bill in legislature, or just finding a mistake in law that could convict an innocent or help escape a murderer.
8. Google indexes websites by their webbots (crawlers). But now a filtered Indexing has to be done. So now thousands of daily complaints by webmasters will come, why their websites was not crawled.
9. Facebook has to re-invent ways to check status updates. Monitoring (manual efforts and decision making also reuired here) will make your status updates taking time to come.
10. DNS manipulations and proxy servers are very common these days and known to almost every informed internet user
11. Audio visual contents and text in images are still not possible to handle.
12. Any Language translations API is also not 100% successful till date
13. Bla bla bla
14. Bla bla bla
Seriously, do I need to reason out by logic? You all are better judges. Lets us all see what turn this Internet censorship would take.

Just to add a few comments -

a) In November 2007, "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf stated that he sees government control of the Internet failing because the Web is almost entirely privately owned.

b) Time Magazine has quoted a big Computer scientist saying "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

And also a completely contradicting view to my post -
A 2011 report by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute published by UNESCO concludes "... the control of information on the Internet and Web is certainly feasible, and technological advances do not therefore guarantee greater freedom of speech."

So, it is up to readers to decide how much optimistic should we be in terms of the feasibility and viability of a solution to offensive content removal. Keyword based filtering, firewall filtering, ISP controls, php/aspx solutions at real time websites etc won't help. Think of some another way. DNS manipulations, proxies, content in audio-video and images should also be kept in mind

Consider the vast amount of data already on servers of these big companies and enormous amount of content being generated every second. Remember well that -

The time you spend while reading this article must have been used by several people at several locations to generate several offensive contents for several societies in several languages over several internet portals. And be assured of several formats too!

Before ending I would like my readers to know what Wikipedia has in its store regarding this. It says - Internet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations either at the behest of government or on their own initiative. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship on their own or due to intimidation and fear.
You can read more about Internet censorship at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship

I would again re-emphasize that the

Internet Censorship is wrong and devastating. We are still fortunate that it is a Fool's day prank. We may achieve it but those efficient programmers are in Mars. Find them and get the task done!

I would serious like readers to pour in some comments and help us understand the gravity of the problem and its solutions. But how about starting help with clicking on some advertisement links; They help me make money to understand pubs and discs; The place where I get inspirations to write more. lol;)