Is it curbing your freedom?
Internet Censorship
A war of words is on between the government and popular search engines and websites on filtering ‘obscene or objectionable’ content in the latter’s domain. 
Meanwhile youngsters are following the fight in the court closely to see who wins and what all could be purged from their popular lingo online and the world of the internet.
The Delhi High Court recently warned 21 search engines and websites like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Facebook and Orkut that they can be “blocked in India like in China if they fail to check and remove objectionable material” from their web pages.
Arguing in the court against any filtering, the counsels for the companies cited that if words like ‘sex’ and ‘virgin’, which could be considered ‘objectionable’ by some, were to be removed from the internet, it would restrict web users from getting vital information from the medical field too.
Metrolife speaks to some youngsters, who form the largest consumer base of these sites, and finds out if this “sanitisation” of content would curtail their freedom of expression.
Ahona Dattagupta, a young film-maker, enquires, “How can anybody tell me what to see on the internet and what not? In the world of internet, everyone’s an adult. Everyone’s free to make their own decisions. Besides, if you try to keep someone away from something so desperately, they are sure to be attracted towards it even more.”
Many call the filtering of words like ‘sex’ and ‘virgin’ a ridiculous idea and there are jokes abound on the internet on which all words would fall prey to this “cleanliness drive”.
Sanya Hashmi, a student of English Honours, says, “Probably, they should rename both the place ‘Virginia’ and the writer ‘Virginia Woolf’ as both won’t show up any results on the internet after this.” She adds that the government should consider banning the Oxford dictionary too, since inquisitive kids often look up to find the meanings of ‘sex’ and ‘virgin’.
Many are drawing parallels between the recent Pakistan government order to ban nearly 1,700 ‘derogatory’ words from usage in mobile text messages, and then this particular move by the Indian government.
“I hope our government hasn’t been inspired by the Pakistan government to do this?” laughs Rajat Choudhary, a software engineer, and adds, “Actually the inspiration must have come from China. That’s why we are building the great firewall of India.”
Most youngsters also dismiss the contention that blocking pornographic sites on the internet will stop those who are looking for it. Rajat says, “There are many options other than the internet for porn seekers.”
