With great power comes great responsibility.” – Hollywood movie, Spiderman.

India’s Communications and IT Minister may not be a fan of Spiderman, but he is showing a rather unusual, even misplaced, zest and eagerness to apply Spiderman’s famous theme in the context of India’s cyber space. Kapil Sibal is a busy lawyer; as the Communications and IT Minister, he has become busier, burdening himself with the responsibility of cyber patrolling and keeping an eye on content on the social networking sites. 

Relishing his new avatar as India’s cyber policeman, he summoned officials of social networking sites Google, Facebook and Twitter, to his office on 5 December. Sounding miffed, he tersely told them that some of the content on the social networking sites was unacceptable. In effect, he wanted the content to be “pre-screened” by companies that provided social media platforms.

The minister was apparently incensed when he came across some offensive material that was uploaded on the net against Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. But the problem started much earlier, with some Facebook pages like ‘I hate Sonia Gandhi’, ‘Manmohan Singh is a puppet of Sonia Gandhi’ and an utterly distasteful morphed photograph, which was widely circulated during the anti-corruption protests against the UPA government.

Cyber Policing
Sibal’s controversial directive has now the backing of a Delhi court, which recently set a deadline for 22 social networking sites, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to remove all “anti-religious” and “anti-social” content in the form of photographs, videos or text that might hurt religious sentiments.

Critics of Sibal’s latest diktat are not convinced. Leading cyber law expert Pavan Duggal says, “It could have a detrimental impact on the freedom of speech and expression in cyberspace. The Internet is a unique phenomenon and governments have to realise that online censorship is a non-starter in the context of social media and real time communications.”

Agreeing that the Right to Freedom of Speech is not absolute, he says, “Self-restraint has to be the way forward. Unless people exercise self-restraint, we cannot fight the menace of online defamation and other unwarranted behaviour.”

He also points out that it is neither humanly nor technologically possible to keep a tab on every single message or introduce a filtering mechanism. “The number would run into crores if you aggregate, on a daily basis, all the messages and tweets on all social media platforms in India. Any kind of filtering mechanism is likely to run into opposition from stakeholders, be it users or service providers,” he told Yuva.

India has over 100 million Internet users, less than a tenth of the country's population of 1.2 billion. It is the third-largest user base behind China and the US. Facebook has more than 25 million and Twitter has around 3.5 million users in the country. Sibal has run headlong into these mind-boggling statistics in his attempt to regulate the maddeningly diverse cyber world.

Pushparaj Deshpande, a member of the Congress think tank, has an interesting take on the issue. “The whole world is like a huge kitty party. Somewhere, someone, almost at any given point of time, is involved in some kind of gossiping. It’s pervasive, unstoppable and practically impossible to regulate. Although there is a mechanism to remove offensive material and abuse, there is no way every single post can be monitored.”

Pushparaj, who holds a Master’s degree from Oxford, contends that these are sensitive issues that need to be debated, preferably publicly. “If this is the outcome of the minister’s statement, then it’s good for Indian democracy. It’s time we targeted the issue rather than the person in question.”

A possible solution, according to him, could be self-regulation. “We ought to self-regulate and, given that there are some people who are irresponsible and obtuse, perhaps someone ought to regulate them! Either one goes the China route of banning websites collectively, or all social networking sites co-operate to create filters catering to your preferences, not theirs. Neither option seems administratively feasible given the numerous others that India faces.”

As the shrill protest snowballed into a major debating issue, the government did a volte face. “There is no question of censoring the Internet. Whatever law has to be made is already in place. The government is committed to abiding by whatever is included in the Constitution, which is freedom of speech and expression. We protect that with a lot of energy,” said Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communication and IT.

Sibal, on his part, said, “This government does not believe in either directly or indirectly interfering in the freedom of the press. I suggested that these platforms should evolve a mechanism on their own to ensure that such content is removed as soon as they get to know of it.”

To build up his case, he argued that many websites allowed offensive material against religious communities, which could add to communal tension. “They will have to give us the data of where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue.”

Virtual Bouquets and Brickbats
Expectedly, social networking sites were awash with jibes targeted against Sibal. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, a stockbroker, tweeted, “Don't think Sibal even understands the Internet. This happens when you make a lawyer the IT Minister. Like hiring Mayawati for an item song.” Rahul Roushan, who runs the satire website Faking News, said, “It is funny that they say the Lokpal cannot monitor the lower bureaucracy because of its size, but they think they can monitor each and every Facebook user. Ridiculous!”

RLD MP Jayant Chaudhary is not convinced too. It is preposterous to talk about desirability of the Internet censorship when it is not possible at all, he says. While, Supreme Court lawyer Rajiv Dhawan agrees. “The decision to screen the objectionable content is objectionable in the first place. The Internet is very difficult to police when it comes to media like the Internet, it is impossible to censor, be it interviews or news.”

BJP leader SS Ahluwalia holds similar views. “I wonder why Sibal did not invite YouTube to the meeting. Had he done so, he would have come to know that these sites have their own regulation (through filters). If the government wants to regulate websites, it should bring up the issue in Parliament and pass a legislation.”

Reactions from Online Entities
Sites like Facebook and Google did respond to Sibal’s directive. California-based Facebook issued a statement, saying it would remove any content that was hateful, threatening and incited "violence" or contained nudity.

Google was more forthright in its comment. “We work hard to follow the law and also give people access to information. But when content is legal and doesn't violate our policies, we won't remove it just because it's controversial, as we believe that people's differing views, so long as they're legal, should be respected and protected," it said in a statement.

A major grouse of the Internet companies is that India’s cyber laws are ambiguous and has no clear guidelines about what constitutes 'offensive' and hateful. “The government should come up with clear guidelines rather than sticking to vague terms such as offensive and objectionable. It will help the companies to control content better as it happens in the case of China. But here they want to control the content, at the same time advocating freedom of speech,” Google said.

In Support
But Sibal has supporters too. Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, a regular on Twitter, said he was against political censorship but there were some issues of concern like “communally inflammatory” material. “I reject censorship. Art, literature and political opinion are sacrosanct. But inflammatory communal incitement is like a match at a petrol pump,” he posted on Twitter.

No one denies that the Internet is vulnerable to misuse by terror and fundamentalist outfits and that the government has the power to act on credible intelligence inputs to track and thwart terrorist attacks, writes R Swaminathan, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. Between July 2009 and June 2011, the government had placed before Google over 7,600 user data requests with the search engine giant complying in over 70 per cent of the cases.

“The government’s concern is understandable. You cannot allow people to post messages that hurt religious sentiments, vilify individuals and spread hate… But for every genuine request, there are others with mala fide intentions,” he says.

It is apparent that manual checking of each and every message on the Internet will be nothing short of a logistical nightmare. Critics hold that Sibal should not have talked to companies in the World Wide Web (www). If he was serious, he should have approached them with a court order from a judge charging them with breaking a specific law. “You can go after groups and websites but not after individual users and blogs because there are so many, they argue.

Censorship In India: A Timeline

• 1975: Indira Gandhi imposes an Emergency. As part of press censorship, any report or article deemed critical of the government is banned
• 1988: Rajiv Gandhi’s proposed anti-defamation bill, in the wake of criticism over Bofors scandal, triggers an outrage. The bill is withdrawn.
• 2006: Government bans 17 websites and pages of blog sites in the wake of Mumbai train blasts. It is revoked within 48 hours after a huge outcry
• 2007: Orkut accepts Mumbai Police’s suggestion to block forums and communities that contain defamatory or inflammatory content. It also agrees to provide IP addresses from which such content is generated
• 2010: Govt. threatens Blackberry’s manufacture, RIM, to shut its service if it does not allow access to encrypted email and instant message services that could be used to plot terror attacks. The matter is still unresolved
• 2011: Press Commission of India Chairman Justice Markandey Katju talks about disciplining the media. He wants the govt to arm the PCI with powers such as imposition of fine, denial of govt ads, suspension or cancellation of registration of newspapers and accreditation of journalists
• 2011: Govt. notifies the IT Rules, allowing blocking of content on the Internet. If there is a valid complaint against the content that is “disparaging” or “harassing”, then “intermediaries,” like Facebook, Google and Yahoo, must take down the offensive information within 36 hours
• 2011: A Delhi court, on 24 December, directs Internet companies to remove objectionable content. The compliance reports are to be filed by 6 February