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Desi Ishtyle

Should the government regulate Internet content?

By: Santosh :+: Under: Desi Ishtyle, Opinion, Politics
On: ⋅ January 22, 2007 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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Pavan Duggal, an advocate for the Supreme Court of India makes an argument in favor of the Government of India punishing YouTube.com for displaying the controversial video of Gandhi.

The government can invoke the provisions of Section 67 of the IT Act. This is so because the concerned act of putting the said videos online is an act which has resulted in publishing, transmitting and causing to be published information which is likely to deprave and corrupt the minds of those who, having regard to all the relevant circumstances, are likely to see and hear the same. Clearly, this is an offence punishable with imprisonment for five years and Rs 1 lakh as fine on first conviction.

My position on this matter is abundantly obvious. I feel that the above video is in poor taste. Gandhi certainly deserves better (thanks Heather). But the Indian government or any other government has no business in this matter. “Deprave and corrupt the minds”? Whose minds? Does the government think that ordinary citizens lack individual judgment? If someone is smart enough to browse the Internet, they must surely have enough sense to discriminate between the appropriate and not-so-appropriate instead of having the government make that decision for them.

One of the most significant aspects in this entire exercise is the issue concerning extraterritorial jurisdiction. YouTube is a website that is located on servers which are physically located in the United States. It is an American website covered by their laws. A perusal of the terms and conditions of the website clearly shows that it does not want its users to submit material that is unlawful, obscene defamatory, libelous or racially or ethnically offensive or is otherwise inappropriate. It has the inherent right to remove such undesirable content.

That video certainly is not unlawful. It may be obscene or just in bad taste like a really bad joke. That is a personal call not a federal one. Libelous? Who knows? WWGD (what would Gandhi do?). Probably laugh at the video. Racially or ethnically offensive. It would be but the person in the video, Gautham Prasad, is a NRI. Is it inappropriate? Sure. But so is a lot of other stuff on the Internet. Who decides what is inappropriate and what is not? A joke for someone is inapproriate for someone else. What about all the sardar jokes on the Internet? To me, if the government wants to ban racially and ethincally offensive material, they should ban all websites with sardar jokes first and then deal with this issue.

To sum it up, the Government of India should stay out of this matter. Banning YouTube or any other general public website is a slippery slope best not ventured on.

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