In a couple of days from now (on December 15) Kapil Sibal is scheduled
to hold a round-table conference with Internet giants Google, Facebook,
Microsoft and maybe some more. Let’s just call these companies ISPs. Sibal’s
stated purpose is have these companies develop new guidelines that will keep
obscene and abusive content off the internet. He also has problems with such
content being posted by anonymous people. CNN-IBN and NDTV through their
interviews with the minister have helped defend his actions and deny that he
had called for “pre-screening” of content, although the whole world is now
quite clear that what he attempted was a grand scheme of ‘political censorship’
mainly to protect Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi from being criticised or made
fun of on the net.
KaranThapar’s ‘massage’ can be read here at the CNN-IBN site. Like I mentioned in my previous post the
Indian media had blacked out news of various meetings Sibal had with the ISPs
and it took the NYT to ‘leak’ the news. Karan Thapar even went to the extent of
asking Sibal if NYT was “getting at him”! Getting at him? Getting at him for
what? Here, a journalist is implying that there might be motives for the NYT
article even when Sibal himself hadn’t suggested it. That’s Indian media for
you. Here’s the answer for Karan Thapar: Reporting news of devious plans of the
govt. is called “news reporting” and reporting it is the only motive. There
need not be other motives to report news as may be the case for some Indian
media outlets and journalists. Heather Timmons who broke the news in NYT seems to have jokingly told Sibal's office they were just keeping them on their toes.Well, that's what media is supposed to do, unlike CNN-IBN which searches for "motives". Thapar further asks if NYT confirmed the story
with Sibal before publishing. That is truly the height of stupidity by Thapar.
Are newspapers supposed to confirm stories with wrong doers when they might
have “reliable sources”? Haven’t the greatest stories come from “reliable sources”?
Importantly, nowhere in the whole interview with Thapar does Sibal deny or
refute the story of NYT. To top it all Kapil Sibal responded stating he doesn’t
want to attribute motives but the “circumstantial evidence” is clear. Aha!
Circumstantial evidence that Sibal was about to commit a major offence was
pretty much exposed.
Here’s another exchange:
Karan Thapar: Let's then come back to what you say was your central focus, blasphemous and offensive content on these Internet platforms. When did you first raise this issue with the Internet platform?Kapil Sibal: Way back on the September 5 we raised this issue and we circulated some of the content that was blasphemous, that you mentioned, and demeaning. They agreed with it and we said let’s start a dialogue and come back to us within four weeks.
Needless to mention, Sibal had started out this venture by showing off
dirty pictures of Sonia Gandhi to the ISP heads and had then turned it around
to dangers of “communal violence” owing to content on the net. Laughable! There
is an important term Sibal uses for which it would be even fair to hang him. He
says he circulated content that was “blasphemous”! Blasphemous? Against whom or
against what religion? India does not have a blasphemy law so how in the world
does Sibal make such statements. Is this some Islamic country? People may be
killed in Pakistan and other Islamic countries but India definitely does not
have blasphemy laws. This is what the honourable minister would like to bring
into India?
Then again, Sibal has a problem with ‘Anonymity’ on the internet for
the objectionable content that he cites. Okay! On the night of June 4 thousands
of innocent protesters were assaulted by the police at the Ramlila grounds in
Delhi. These were not anonymous rodents. These were humans in flesh and blood.
The protesters were neither violent nor threatened violence. Will Sibal answer
why these dissenting voices were dealt with so violently? Karan Thapar did not
ask him that question. This Congress govt simply wants to shut out any kind of dissent.
The attack on Ramlila crowd resulted in the death of an innocent woman. Did any
head roll for it? What happened at Ramlila is symbolic of a govt that wants to
shut out dissent everywhere. It is not pornography or obscenity that really
bothers Kapil Sibal. The fact that people are angry and trashing this govt and
their secretive Gandhis on the net does bother him.
Following the exposure of Sibal’s grand scheme to shut off dissent Outlook magazine published many
of the pics that have floated on the net for quite a while. There might be
more. If you look closely, these pics are humorous and funny rather than
offensive. Sure, one might say some are in ‘bad taste’ but surely, bad taste is
neither illegal nor punishable. The one pic that Outlook missed was “BhrashtAchar”
(Referring to Corruption by politicians with Sonia Gandhi’s image) and that
humorously conveys the corruption that has so become synonymous with the
Congress. And usually such pics and content generally fade away after a few
laughs but Sibal has made sure these will be saved and circulated a lot more
than before. Such is the stupidity of his action. As far as anonymity goes
there is a brilliant post by RealityCheck India, titled “Thank you Google” which completely destroys the
premise on which Sibal partly makes his arguments.
Sibal then talks about child pornography being a serious problem on the
net. I dare him to name even one ISP he met which allows child
pornography. Every ISP has strict rules and guidelines against child
pornography and does not allow such content. If they come across such content
the user is permanently banned. Even regular adult content comes with a warning
of the content being so. So Sibal doesn’t really fool anyone. Even so, in the
US pedophilia is not a free speech issue. In fact, Amazon.com was selling a book titled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct". This was withdrawn due to consumer protest and not
because it broke any law. So Sibal must rest assured people have a better sense
of the limits and what to reject.
Finally, on the issue of porn and anonymity let me assure Sibal that
even porn stars mostly carry screen names and not their real names. Believe it
or not, the title of the first commercially successful feature porn film in the
USA was also involved in a way in bringing down Richard Nixon in the Watergate
scandal. The deep source from the FBI that fed important leaks to Bob Woodward was nicknamed “Deep Throat” by one of his group
editors as he was a deep source and at the time the porn movie of the same name
was commercially doing well. For over three decades that anonymous source was
the greatest secret in the world. It’s only the late W. Mark Felt, former
Deputy Director of FBI himself revealed that he was deep throat. Have a laugh
Mr. Sibal, there might be deep throats in the Congress who are leaking
information to the NYT and other journals. As for the Congress, trying to
silence the Internet won’t help. Honest governance might help!
