10 facts about Google and Facebook's legal troubles

By NDTV Correspondent | Updated: 6 June 2012 11:07 IST

Highlights

Companies like Google and Yahoo are caught in a legal mess in India - they face civil and criminal cases for allegedly hosting objectionable content.

Companies like Google and Yahoo are caught in a legal mess in India - they face civil and criminal cases for allegedly hosting objectionable content.

Here are 10 big developments in the story:

In court today, Google said that it has already deleted content that was pointed out as objectionable at a hearing in December in a civil suit against 22 internet firms.
Last week, Google announced that in order to comply with local laws, their blogger platform is being modified to redirect users to that country's domain. For example, people visiting blogname.blogspot.com from India are being automatically redirected to blogname.blogspot.in. A statement from Google explains, "content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers." Essentially, if a blog is removed in India, it will still be visible in other parts of the world where its content is not considered illegal.
Google Search, Orkut and Google Plus, YouTube remain unaffected by this measure. Google Plus in India has the maximum number of users in the world after the US.
The announcement comes on the heels of Twitter's announcement that it now has the technology to selectively block tweets by country.
The move comes weeks after the Delhi High Court had threatened that like China, India can block internet sites.
Google has argued in court that it cannot be held responsible for sites that are accessed through its searches. The judge questioned that logic in a hearing on January 16. "Are you not a beneficiary of Google Inc's business? If some illegal activity is being carried out by a tenant and the landlord is a beneficiary, then how can the landlord not know what's happening?" he asked Google's lawyers.
Last month Google's Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora told NDTV, "You are asking not just censor the Web in India, you are asking to censor the entire world wide web. The web has no borders." (Watch)
Executives from 22 companies including Google have been asked to appear in a Delhi court in person on March 13. That criminal suit accuses them of charges like conspiracy.
The next date of hearing for the civil suit has been fixed for March 1. The petitioner has been asked to share with the concerned 22 companies all the content shortlisted as objectionable. The firms have been given 15 days to explain what action they've taken to delete this content.
Minister of State for Information Technology Mr. Sachin Pilot repeated today that the government is not interested in censorship, but expects companies to "abide by the law."

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