New web rules in India draw flak

Rules allow netizens to demand websites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable.

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.”

The new rules, quietly issued by the country’s Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list of criteria.

Critics of the new rules say the restrictions could severely curtail debate and discussion on the Internet, whose use has been growing fast in India. The list of objectionable content is sweeping and includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.”

The rules highlight the ambivalence with which Indian officials have long treated freedom of expression. The country’s constitution allows “reasonable restrictions” on free speech but lawmakers have periodically stretched that definition to ban books, movies and other material about sensitive subjects like sex, politics and religion.

An Indian state, for example, recently banned an American author’s new biography of the Indian freedom fighter Mohandas Gandhi that critics have argued disparages Gandhi by talking about his relationship with another man.

Although fewer than 10 per cent of Indians have access to the Internet, that number has been growing fast — especially on mobile devices. There are more than 700 million cellphone accounts in India. The country has also established a thriving technology industry that writes software and creates Web services primarily for Western clients.

Even before the new rules — known as the Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011 — India hastried to restrict speech on the Internet. In 2009, the government banned a popular and graphic online comic strip, Savita Bhabhi, about a housewife with an active sex life. Indian officials have also forced social networking sites like Orkut to take down posts deemed offensive to ethnic and religious groups.

Using a freedom of information law, the Center for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research and advocacy group, recently obtained and published a list of 11 websites banned by the Department of Information Technology. Other government agencies have probably blocked more sites, the group said. The new Internet rules go further than existing Indian laws and restrictions, said Sunil Abraham, the executive director for the Center for Internet and Society. The rules require Internet “intermediaries” — an all-encompassing group that includes sites like YouTube and Facebook and companies that host websites or provide Internet connections — to respond to any demand to take down offensive content within 36 hours. The rules do not provide a way for content producers to defend their work or appeal a decision to take content down.

An official for the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, an advocacy group based in New Delhi, said that it was considering a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the new rules.

“What are we, Saudi Arabia?” said Pushkar Raj, the group’s general secretary. “We don’t expect this from India. This is something very serious.” An official at the Department of Information Technology, Gulshan Rai, did not return calls.

Subho Ray, the president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, which represents companies like Google and eBay, said the liability waiver was a big improvement over a previous law that had been used to hold intermediaries liable for hosting content created by others.

©2011 The New York
Times News Service