Intolerant India ups content removal requests from Google

Google has just released its annual transparency report for the year 2011. Aspreadsheet can be accessed directly from the Google report link given above by signing into your Google accounts.

So how did the Indian government do as far as content removal requests were concerned? Well its not good news as the number of such requests increased by 49% compared to the previous report.

So are governments across the world becoming increasingly intolerant of the content on websites? It would appear so from the report as Google receivedmore than 1,000 requests from governments around the world to take down videos from YouTube, blogposts.

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Is the Indian government getting more touchy about the kind of content that is available online? Yes, according to Google’s description of how India fared:

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We received requests from state and local law enforcement agencies to remove YouTube videos that displayed protests against social leaders or used offensive language in reference to religious leaders. We declined the majority of these requests and only locally restricted videos that appeared to violate local laws prohibiting speech that could incite enmity between communities. In addition, we received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 236 communities and profiles from orkut that were critical of a local politician. We did not comply with this request, since the content did not violate our Community Standards or local law.

The Indian government’s Internet policy has come under fire from netizens especially after the government banned PirateBay and Vimeo following a John Doe order on file sharing sites. But is this trend something merely limited to copyright and privacy?

The Congress party in general- and its President Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in particular - have been the target of much political satire on the web.

Kapil Sibal, India's Minister of Communications and Information Technology went so far as to recommend that social media websites should pre-screen content before it was uploaded. He justified his comments saying that the material online was filthy and mocked religious leaders like Muhammed, and politicians like Sonia Gandhi.

In addition once the sex-tape of Abhishek Manu Singhvi went viral online, much fuss was made by the political class that social media needs to be curbed.

It is easy to dismiss content against politicians as vile, defamatory and vulgar. But it would be more accurate to view the videos and blogposts in the context in which they are created. Currently a large number of Indians view the government as inefficient and corrupt. Thus it is no surprise that political satire is created- some more extreme than others.The all-pervasiveness of the Internet is seen as a threatening force especially to localpoliticiansfor whom an incriminating video on YouTube can do much damage.

Vile content is not the problem. That has always been around, even with print, videocds,etc. The problem online is that its much easier to find.

Google has shown that at times it will not accept government requests especially when they seem unreasonable. Google shut down operations in China after the Chinese government tried to hack into the accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It sent out a clear sign that it would not tolerate web-censorship or give out information that could threaten the lives of those whom the Chinese government viewed as their enemies.

According to the current report, Pakistan also demanded that Google take down YouTube videos which mocked the Pakistani military. On the bizarre side, Canada’s passport office wanted a YouTube video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet removed. Googledid not comply with either of the requests.

The latest transparency report is a wake-up call for the Indian government. It needs to reassess why it is unable to come to terms with online content from its angry citizens.