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Posted on 16-01-2012

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Google and Facebook attended the hearing of their petition at the Delhi High Court today, which they’d filed to challenge the court’s order to prosecute them for hosting objectionable content. The hearing was adjourned till January 19, with the two giants steadfastly maintaining there was no way for them to monitor content before it was posted.

According to reports about today’s hearing, the presiding judge was not impressed by Google’s stance. Google India’s lawyer, Neeraj Kishan Kaul, argued that while it is easy to say filters can be used, it is not that simple. Blocking queries on the world “sex” for example, would also block data from ID documents, which also feature the word.

Kaul added, that since Google is primarily is search engine, any offending material it shows in its results belongs to the website it is hosted on, and is controlled by the owner of the website. “Google has nothing to do with it," he continued. 

“There are serious issues regarding freedom of speech. We have this freedom in our country unlike a totalitarian regime like China. We are proud we have this freedom," Kaul said, adding that Google India subsidiary was not responsible for actions by its parent company, trying to disambiguate the issue of jurisdiction. The presiding judge was apparently not impressed by this argument, saying (and also showing some unexpected naivety of the many dilemmas of Internet litigation):

"Are you not a beneficiary of Google Inc's business? If some illegal activity is being carried out by a tenant and the landlord is a beneficiary, then how can the landlord not know what's happening?"

For now, the March 13 hearing still stands, with the court summoning executives from 21 social networking and other sites (including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube, and Microsoft) to be present for the hearing of the petition filed by Delhi resident Vinay Rai, who showed the court the obscene depictions he found on these web properties of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian deities.

Web experts have already pointed out the mechanisms in place for dealing with objectionable content, including the ability provided by most websites to point out objectionable content. Indian laws in the past have also stated that sites will have to examine and delete the objectionable content, if found to be outside the guidelines provided. For a search engine to be responsible what appears in search results, however, seems patently ludicrous, raising a host of new questions about search bias.

The legal issues surrounding the debate are undoubtedly complex, and we only wish the attitude adopted by all parties will be one of clear-eyed and calm co-operation, without hyperbole and excessively demanding rulings.

Source: NDTV