Information Madness

Delhi High Court has announced to the Press Trust of India that it can block Google and Facebook like China is planning to do. It has warned the social networking sites, Facebook India and the search engine company, Google India today that it will consider blocking these sites in India if they fail to work out a mechanism to check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages.

Former Additional Solicitor General, Mukul Rohatgi, who is appearing for Google India, informed that it is difficult to monitor or filter postings of obscene, objectionable and defamatory articles. He said that no human interference is possible and it is not feasible to check on such incidents.

Billions of people across the globe post their articles on these websites. It is impossible to check whether an article is defamatory or obscene.  Google India is a subsidiary of Google Inc., USA. It has a separate legal identity. It is not bound by the acts or the offences that are committed by its holding company. Even Google Inc. cannot be held responsible for the acts of the third parties who simply use the websites for posting or publishing objectionable or obscene material.

It is hard to control the minds of the millions. Some are conservative and others are liberal. There is another breed that writes defamatory and obnoxious articles on the web pages. Procedures will have to be worked out in future for getting such material removed.