Editorial

Unacceptable
Anyone who has been online at any time in the past 48 hours would know of the latest stunt being attempted by the Government of India – intimidating cyberspace into being more respectful of the powers-that-be. The Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, has been on the case for the past month and a half and has met top officials from the India offices of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook desiring that internet companies monitor and screen every single tweet, video, photo, blog-post and all other forms of user-generated content before it is published online.
The Minister wants all of this to be pre-screened by ‘human’ employees and “disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory” content be removed even before they were posted. Needless to add, the cyberspace is inflamed as every sane person should be frightened and shocked by ignoble attempt at ordering something which is not only impossible, but also potentially dangerous for the frightening indicator it presents of what the Government of democratic India could do if it could to curtail freedoms and opinions. Readers would have already caught up on the outcry and debate that Mr. Sibal’s ‘desire’ has triggered, but this has emerged as an issue which needs to be discussed at every forum possible and challenged with force and earnest to pre-empt the wider censorship which will be attempted next if this move passes unopposed.
The ignorance that sycophancy can induce is staggering. Mr. Sibal wants every user-generated comment on the internet from India to be pre-screened by employees and not software or through user review [a current practise in which users can flag objectionable material and have it removed]. The Minister me officials from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook, but the internet is much bigger than these four organisations and the traffic in these sites also too huge to be screened by any means. As one blogger pointed out for Mr. Sibal’s benefit - 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and 250 million tweets generated per day. On last count, Facebook had a little over 38 million users in India, that’s nearly 47% of Indians with internet access! Just wondering how many ‘human’ employees will be needed to pre-screen every post on Facebook before it was uploaded? The IPL channel on youTube racked up 55 million views last season. Many of these viewers would have left behind comments as well. Google has 100 million users in India. What Mr. Sibal desires is staggering in its ignorant imperiousness.
The demand is the Central government’s latest attempt to monitor and control electronic information. In April, the ministry issued rules demanding Internet service providers delete information posted on Web sites that officials or private citizens deemed disparaging or harassing. Last year, the government battled with Blackberry’s manufacturer, Research In Motion, threatening to shut the company’s service off in India if it did not allow government officials greater access to user messages. The latest attempt, when Mr. Sibal met top officials of the top-4 internet companies on Monday with his demand for self-censorship, had the Minister show attendees a Facebook page that maligned the Congress Party’s president, Sonia Gandhi.  “This is unacceptable,” he reportedly told attendees and asked them to find a way to monitor what is posted on their sites. Agreed, the anonymity of online presence and the platforms it provides to speak unabashedly can make the targets of such unrestricted comments squirm. And that has been an important aspect of online forums. There are already laws in place by which the content creators can be taken to court if they break any privacy or security laws. There is also an inbuilt mechanism with most service providers to monitor comments and remove what has been peer-attested as objectionable. But that is obviously not enough for Mr. Sibal and his Ministry, they want what is “unacceptable” to be censored even before it is posted. Of course, they have not reasoned out about how unacceptable is to be defined and who needs to be protected from unacceptable comments. And then, as one blogger pointed out, there is the question of privacy. Many internet users, say Facebook members for instance, share and post comments for a closed circle. To eavesdrop on their private traffic would be reprehensible even if it were possible. The new media is obviously spreading paranoia among the powers that be because it is much more difficult, in fact impossible, to stifle or even co-opt it. And hence, perhaps, the desperation to pre-empt it. Of course the ploy will fail, but what is scary is that Mr. Sibal will continue to remain in charge of policy-making for IT, and, despite his obviously domineering arbitrariness, also the Minister responsible for Education in India. What is also worrying is that this attempt could be the government [obviously inspired by China] testing the waters on how far they can push efforts to control cyberspace.