{"id":11964,"date":"2012-01-12T18:01:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T18:01:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-01-12T18:01:12","modified_gmt":"2012-01-12T18:01:12","slug":"India-pursues-Web-giants-over-obscene-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11964","title":{"rendered":"India pursues Web giants over obscene content"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>India&#8217;s government authorized the prosecution of 21 Internet firms including Facebook, Yahoo! and Google in a case over obscene content posted online.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The approval could lead to company directors being called to a trial court in New Delhi to answer serious charges such as fomenting religious hatred and spreading social discord, an official and a lawyer said.<\/p>\n<p>A criminal case against the Web titans was first filed in a lower court by local journalist Vinay Rai who complained that the sites were responsible for obscene and offensive material posted by users.<\/p>\n<p>He also claimed that they had broken laws designed to maintain religious harmony and &#8220;national integration&#8221; in India, serious offenses that require government approval to be admitted in court.<\/p>\n<p>The Internet companies targeted have already filed a petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to have the lower court&#8217;s case against them stayed. The hearing of the petition is to resume on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier Friday, the lower court ordered that summonses be served on the companies, including US giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and YouTube among 10-foreign-based ones.<\/p>\n<p>The government&#8217;s sanction to prosecute represents an escalation of a recent tussle between social networks and the government, in particular Communications Minister Kapil Sibal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The minister stressed that the government supported free speech and was against censorship but that some material on the Internet was so offensive that no one would find it acceptable.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Source AFP<\/em><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>India&#8217;s government authorized the prosecution of 21 Internet firms including Facebook, Yahoo! and Google in a case over obscene content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"India&#8217;s government authorized the prosecution of 21 Internet firms including Facebook, Yahoo! and Google in a case over obscene content","magazineBlocksPostCategories":[],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":133,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}