Ban of blogs stirs outrage from India to Silicon Valley

[Robbien]

By K. Oanh Ha
Mercury News

Outraged Internet users from New Delhi to Silicon Valley are blasting India's government for shutting off access to millions of blogs, drawing comparisons of the world's largest democracy to the authoritarian censorship of China and Iran.

``A lot of people are saying, `Wait a minute. This can't be happening in India. China, yes. Pakistan, understandable','' said Fremont blogger Sabahat Ashraf, who has several blogs that attract readers from India but now can't be read in India. ``People are startled and distressed.''

Other Silicon Valley bloggers are baffled and angry over India's ban in recent days of blogs hosted by popular services used by Americans. The ban of 17 blogs and Web sites, which the government claimed fanned religious hatred, was unintentionally extended to millions of blogs when some of India's Internet service providers blocked entire domain names, instead of just the specific sites. Banned domains include Google's Blogger, Yahoo's GeoCities and Six Apart's TypePad services.

Limited readership

Surprisingly, almost half of the original sites the Indian government ordered blocked are operated by conservative American bloggers who write about the Mideast and the Iraq war but who don't get much readership in India.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/15080708.htm

[wicket]

1. WTF?!

:wtf:

[SpiralHawk]

2. "It can't happen here." - Frank Zappa

"Who could imagine." - Zappa

[megatherium]

6. Is that quote by any chance from a particular Zappa song?

I'm a big Zappa fan, just curious. (I know that back in the late 1980s, he testified to Congress on behalf of freedom of expression, concerning alleged obscenity in recorded music.)

[William Seger]

8. That's the name of the song, I think

... or actually, one of three "sub-songs" in "Help I'm a Rock."

[megatherium]

12. Thanks! nt

[SpiralHawk]

14. You got it...it can't happen here....

eom

[MrPrax]

3. Why surprising?

Surprisingly, almost half of the original sites the Indian government ordered blocked are operated by conservative American bloggers who write about the Mideast and the Iraq war but who don't get much readership in India.

Why would this be surprising...not everyone in the world thinks attacking Islam and calling it a 'religion of war' and all the other things, is a free speech thing -- only in the West.

In fact most of it's inflammatory and likely to cause offense. In countries with 1.2 billion people, social tolerance is much more important than protecting western-styled 'marketed' speech products which have far more to do with wealth, privilege and access, than basic rights.

[megatherium]

5. I see how little regard you have for my freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is meaningless unless offensive speech is protected. My freedom of speech rights are not a matter of privilege, they're a precious birthright our forebears fought and died for, and I will not give them up just to avoid offending anyone. No government will take my right to free expression away, whether it is rationalized as a means of keeping peace or for any other reason--it really is about control. If you are concerned about incitement to violence or the like, well even in the USA this is not protected speech, and there are consequences for incitement of violence, as recent court cases involving white supremacists or neo-Nazis demonstrate. The situation in India appears to involve not the shutting down of racial incitement, but the shutting down of on-line forums for free speech where incitements allegedly or possibly might happen. The agenda here is not social tolerance, the agenda is control by a ruling party.

on edit: spelling

[MrPrax]

9. Well...

1) your speech isn't being impigned at all

2) India is a foreign country that doesn't use your Constitution

3) why would a foreign country want to defend the right of littlegreefootballs to call their citizens 'Islamo-fascists'

4) most countries have 'hate' laws and offending IPs are blocked routinely and many many IPs are blocked because the customer didn't pay (that's censorship as financial considerations are regularly used to qualify speech and as such an infringement)

5) there is lots of free speech in India--they have far more independent daily papers than the US as well as a large number of political parties (including communist and socialist parties that capture seats in their Congress)...you have 2 federal parties (that's it)

6) What court cases are you talking about? In America? What does this have to do with India, a foreign country?

7) The internet might be a lot of things, but it is also a media product and foreign countries have regularly banned publications, censored movies and controlled foreign influence via media...nothing new

8) "The agenda here is not social tolerance, the agenda is control by a ruling party.? Why then are the blogs in question mostly rightwing American sites? The government in India currently is rightwing, monetarist and despised by the Left there? (sound familar)

9) I missed the part where Indian blogs were being censored by the Indian government which is all free speech means, 'the government can't interfere with your right to speak freely'...nothing in that right about how a foreign national has that same right, since it is ultimately the host government that has to defend it -- how do they defend the right of a foreign national? If the US puts a blogger in jail for 'terror', and if Indians want to read his blog, does the Indian government go to the ICC or something to defend the free speech rights of Indians? nope...and neither does any other country have that RIGHT.

10) US free speech arguments are usually have a commerce motive attached...less concern about free speech (the US doesn't even have that), but more concern about 'exporting' media products under the guise of 'free speech'

[megatherium]

11. Yes, I know we're talking about India, which has a different

constitution than the USA. But I think you misunderstand freedom of speech, if you say that "US free speech arguments are usually have a commerce motive attached." The whole point of freedom of speech in America is to protect political expression. Commercial speech is more regulated in the USA (you cannot use someone else's trademark, for example). But political speech is wide open. In the USA it is correctly understood that the remedy for bad speech is not censorship but instead free speech.

The court case I had in mind, regarding your question 6, was a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center against Tom Metzger, to hold him liable for the murder of an Ethiopian business man in Portland, Oregon. Metzger was alleged to have organized and incited the skinheads who committed this crime. The suit was successful; Metzger's organization was bankrupted and the proceeds provided for the education of the slain man.

But actually, the classic expression of the limits to free speech in the USA is the slogan (which I believe was first used in a Supreme Court ruling): "freedom of speech doesn't give you the right to yell 'fire' in a crowded theatre." So I understand the danger of free speech, and I understand that Indians (or other countries) would find it necessary to prohibit expressions of racial or ethnic prejudice. But banning the annoying web site littlegreenfootballs because they call some Muslims "Islamofacists" is hard for me to understand. Somebody coined that word to express the idea that some militant Muslims wish to impose a totalitarian regime on other people (or at least on their own Muslim communities)--and this is an undeniable fact, some Muslims do wish to impose totalitarianism (in the form of the Muslim Sharia law) on their communities. If you doubt that Sharia is totalitarian, reflect on the fact that in common interpretations of Sharia (as enforced in certain countries today), apostacy from Islam is punishable by death.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[farmbo]

4. See Palast's "Armed Madhouse" All of India's wealth is going to Oligarchs

The supposed Indian economic boom (like the alleged Bush economic boom)has all inured to the benefit of a handful of super-rich factory owners and upper caste government officials. Wages have remained stagnant or have actually plummeted.

Look for the Indian government to begin systematically censoring any voices that might state that increasingly obvious fact to India's teeming working class.

[saigon68]

7. Maybe a "civil war" will end the prevailing boredom of living there

[liberalpragmatist]

15. What are you talking about?

I don't really appreciate your "humor"

[IronLionZion]

10. Proxies, print publications, pirate radio, public speeches, etc.

India has no problem with freedom of expression. Freedom will always find a way. There's really nothing you can do about it.

I'm certainly not justifying the restraint of free speech, but India does have a history of bad people firing up the masses into committing violent pogroms against minorities, especially Muslims. You can probably guess what would happen if the RSS started calling for the mass murder of muslims...again. After the 1993 bombings they burned children alive with petrol on the streets.