Censored Web

14 years ago

New rules established by India’s Department of Information Technology on April 11 censor speech deemed “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.” The rules require Internet sites and service providers to remove offending posts within 36 hours “upon obtaining knowledge by itself” or if they have “been brought to actual knowledge by an affected person in writing or through email….”

The Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011, prohibit content that:

(a)belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right to;

(b)is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever;

(c)harm minors in any way;

(d)infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;

(e)violates any law for the time being in force;

(f)deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of such messages or communicates any information which is grossly offensive or menacing in nature;

(g)impersonate another person;

(h)contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource;

(i)threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation.

Freedom House ranked India 14th among 37 countries on Web freedom in its Freedom on the Net 2011 report, rating it “partly free.”

Internet Freedom Rankings

1	Estonia
2	USA
3	Germany
4	Australia
5	UK
6	Italy
7	South Africa
8	Brazil
9	Kenya
10	Mexico
11	South Korea
12	Georgia
13	Nigeria
14	India
15	Malaysia