Sibal Cracks The Whip On Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft

Mangalore Today / NDTV

New Delhi, Dec 6: Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal  has  asked Internet companies not to screen " derogatory, defamatory and inflammatory content" about religious figures and Indian leaders such as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi on the Web, The Indian Express reported.

Officials from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo!, who met the minister, however, refused to make a commitment beyond saying they would look into any specific complaint that was brought to their notice.

 

 

Their response is learnt to have upset Sibal greatly — more so because, sources said, a US embassy official called up an additional secretary in his ministry after the meeting to express displeasure over the Indian position.

“This is completely unacceptable. The embassy has no business interfering,” a top official said.

Sibal himself declined to comment.

At the meeting, Sibal reportedly showed the executives some offensive pictures of Sonia Gandhi on a Facebook page.

“What do you think about these derogatory pictures of the Prophet Mohammed, the (Indian) prime minister and the Congress president? Anybody will feel outraged. The government of India does not believe in censorship. But sensitivity and feelings of different communities cannot be allowed to be hurt. They (the Internet companies) host these sites and they must regulate it (the content),” a top official functionary said.

Sources said Sibal has been taking up the issue with Internet companies for the past three months, but has got no positive response.

The New York Times reported on its website today that Sibal had had a first meeting with “top Internet service providers and Facebook” about six weeks ago, and had met the same executives again in late November.

In the first meeting, NYT said, Sibal had showed the executives a Facebook page that “maligned” Sonia, and told them, “This is unacceptable”.

In the second meeting, Sibal had told them “that he expected them to use human beings to screen content, not technology”, NYT said, quoting an unnamed executive.

The report, which was published before Sibal’s meeting today, said that the executives would tell the minister that “his demand is impossible, given the volume of user-generated content coming from India, and that they cannot be responsible for determining what is and isn’t defamatory or disparaging”.

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh recently filed an FIR against websites which he said hosted “highly offensive” content against him.