PR discussions: Re: [prpoint] Kapil Sibal initiates a debate on social media

What Mr Narendra is true, but to a limited extent only. The damage if any caused by print media is much less than the one which the electronic media or the Net is capable of doing. The question of having more stringent laws or powers needs a larger debate. Any amount of censorship or even a milder version of self-regulatory discipline surely has a larger ramification. There is no denying the fact that the government needs stronger teeth, a stringent law to put an end to the menace of obscenity in Facebook, derogatory or lascivious material in google or in Yahoo! etc. But that is what CERT-In has just been empowered w.e.f. 27 Oct 2009. How many sites have been monitored, how much traffic has been monitored how many intercepted and how many blocked with the powers vested on it, by CERT-In so far? What is the HR adequacy and technical capability and administrative infrastructure given to CERT-In? Do the people (or even the Police) know that CERT-In has got these powers? Not that Kapil Sibal does not know these. Working straight under his Ministry, he certainly knows the powers vested with CERT-In.

There is a reasonably justified fear that if the government gets any new powers (to block or otherwise restrict) the objectionable websites, how much of such powers will be used, misused and abused? Can anyone guarantee that the proposed leaks by Wikileaks (scheduled for sometime early 2012) of the foreign invested black money details, will not be blocked by the government taking cover under some such authorities?

Powers certainly are required, but with due procedures in law and under proper supervision. Let that be strengthened and be made effective. I am sure, self-discipline will NOT work in India. We see that no traffic signal is obeyed when there is no traffic cop around. And these foreign players like Microsoft, Google etc. (who have met Kapil Sibal yesterday) are not known for their obedience.

V Rajendran
Advocate and Cyber Law Consultant
+91-44-22473849; 9444073849

--- On Wed, 12/7/11, S. Narendra <sunarendra@gmail.com> wrote:

From: S. Narendra <sunarendra@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [prpoint] Kapil Sibal initiates a debate on social media
To: prpoint@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2011, 9:39 PM

Dear Srinivasan:

The net is free.In US the regulation prescribes that you notify a defamatory/derogatory/obscene/ post,and such a post and it is withdrawn.
Netizens are sometimes mischievous,indiscreet,malevolent.

The technology has found it difficult to police the net. WIPO is trying to grapple with this problem of regulation of net but thus far has not found a solution.

Minister Sibal has only called the attention of major net facilitators to some content he finds distasteful and how they can monitor and prevent circulation.

There is famous story of Barbara Streisand threatening to sue Google if they photographed her house while Google was photographing the California coastline for its Google map project.Google halted the project.But thousands of people on hearing about this took photos of the actress's house on mobiles and shared it on the net.Streisand's lawyers found it impossible to prosecute the thousands scattered over the globe.

Minister Sibal is facing the dilemma of Streisand's law firm.
China could gag Google,Rupert Murdoch and get away.Can India ape China?
Sibal as a lawyer should have approached WIPO that is looking into this problem.

BY having a high profile meeting,Minister Sibal may ahve contributed to wider circulation of the content that has made him and the boss unhappy.
Prof.P.N.Dhar.who was Principal Secretary to Mrs Gandhi told the then Media Adviser to PM,when the latter was concerned about a scurrilous column in print media: " Donot Elevate the column to the status of the Government by recognizing it or rebutting or blocking its circulation'.

Anything 'banned' will gain more audience.
In 1991,I&B Ministry was searching for technology to jam trans border satellite broadcasting coming to India!

In 1974,when India acquired STD technology, international broadcasters and wire agencies used it to transmit news and visuals the government found them difficult to face.The Govt could not stop the flow.My advice to Govt then was stop snooping on media feeds

Narendra
.

On 6 December 2011 06:47, Prime Point Srinivasan <prpoint@gmail.com> wrote:

hi all

All the electronic media are now discussing about the latest announcement by Kapil Sibal on social media monitoring. All TV media are debating 'emotionally' about this announcement, This announcement is branded as an attack on freedom of expression. As one of the persons using social media for the past 14 years aggressively, i share some of my observations. I invite members to share their views.

Excitement to minor offenses

1. In the past three or four years, after the aggressive emergence of facebook, I find more than 90 percent of the information shared there are either trash or of only excitement. I also get lot of feedback from various quarters about the misuse of information and data, There are lot of reports about the middle class children indulging in minor offenses in the name of excitement. When they are detected, these children get into psychological problems. Such instances put parents and children in an embarrassing situation, before others.

Messages violate the law of the land

2. I find lot of messages with vulgarity, anti national, hate messages against other religion or caste, or person etc. They cannot be defended in terms of 'freedom of expression' or 'excitement'. IPC definite some criteria for all materials for open publication. As per Indian Law, whatever the law applies to print and electronic media also equally applies to all other publications. As the famous saying goes, " your right of swinging a stick ends when other man's nose begins'. That is freedom of expression should not infringe on privacy of others or should not be against the law of the land. No citizen of this country can claim immunity from the law, for publications. Facebook and other social media are open publications and are governed by these IPC. This is in addition to the cyber law.

Abundant information encourages culprits

3. Last week, we had cyber security workshop organised by the Cyber Society of India. One of the speakers, involved in investigation of crimes shared an interesting information.

A house was burgled and based on the complaint from the owner, police arrested the culprit. During the enquiry, the cultprit told the police that he identified the house for burglary, based on the information in facebook. The owner of the house had given an advance information in his facebook about his planned trip to a health resort with family. After reaching the resort, the person had also confirmed his visit with the photographs in the facebook status. The culprit who was closely watching the facebook, leisurely visited the house and committed burglary. Since the owner had given the schedule of his return, etc., the culprit visited the same house next day also to complete the burglary properly.

Many of the hackers of email and online banking depend on the information freely available in the facebook and other social media sites.

Though, I personally feel that monitoring by the operators may be technically difficult, we need to create more and more awareness about this among the parents, teachers and the students to avoid misuse of social media, leading to offence.

Such negative use of social media happens, because of the lack of knowledge by the users on the real strength of social media. Social Media can be used for more useful things, than merely as an excitement media to post trash messages and for sharing information, leading to cyber crimes.

Kapil Sibal has done a good job by generating a national debate on the social media, to understand the strength and weakness of this media. The members can debate as to (a) whether a separate regulation may be needed or not and (b) what are the contents that can be treated as objectionable, without infringing on freedom of expression. .

K. Srinivasan
Prime Point
9176650273