Asia Bizz: On February 14, 2012, the Indian Communications minister Kapil Sibal said that the country does not intend to censor social networking sites. Sibal added that the Indian govt. will just ensure that the sites adhere to local laws.
The HRD minister talked to reporters at an industry event and said that they do not have any intention to censor anybody. Earlier the minister warned the social networking sites to censor all the content which was considered as obscene and objectionable. But the warning were ignored and the websites continued to share obscene content related to the popular leaders in the country.
Last month the ministry sanctioned the prosecution of websites like Yahoo, Google, Facebook and 17 other companies over a complaint.
The complaint mentioned that these websites carried objectionable content that could incite communal violence. The spokespersons for the websites explained that it wasn’t possible for them to censor the material as millions of users on the website upload plenty of material every day. The social networking sites also claimed that they were not responsible for objectionable content as it was the users who uploaded the content and not the website.
