Google bows down to court orders

By Ruchi Shrimali

In compliance with the court's order, Google India has removed certain webpages that had offensive content from the internet. Earlier, the court had directed Google and 21 other social networking sites to remove obscene, anti-religious and anti-social content from their websites. Read more about what court had directed...

Facebook India, however, said that since it does not control or operate the US servers that host the concerned websites, it cannot do anything about them. It has also filed an application to get its name deleted from the parties in the civil complaint saying that there is no legal entity in India with the name of ‘Facebook' in India. The correct name would be ‘Facebook India Online Services Pvt Ltd. Moreover, it is not a necessary party to the complaint.

Yahoo! India and Microsoft India said that they have just been clubbed together with other prominent social networking sites but no allegations have been leveled against them about promoting any objectionable content. Hence, they sought to get their names deleted from the civil complaint too. The court has ordered them to file a compliance report within 15 days from the date of the order and will again hear the case on March 1, 2012.

The judge also asked the counsel for the petitioner that whether companies that offer blog services can also be made a party for the case. It means that soon, blog websites can too come under scrutiny for objectionable or offensive content.

At the time when the court has threatened to ban Facebook and Twitter in India, an interesting study has proved that they are more addictive than alcohol or tobacco. According to a week-long study in Germany conducted by the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, social media is more addictive than alcohol or tobacco as it is easily available and does not cost much. Read on...

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