No auto-censorship, self-regulation the key

Interview Sachin Pilot

Hate mail and SMSes have once again brought into sharp focus abuse of social media to create panic in the society.

Employing Internet tool to spread hatred and scare people of the North-East forced the government to block scores of webpages. This also triggered a debate on self regulation by web hosts. Sachin Pilot, Minster of State for Communications and Information
Technology, spoke to B S Arun and Ajith Athrady of Deccan Herald on the way ahead.

Excerpts:

What steps has the government taken to stop spread of misinformation, hate mail and other objectionable content through websites?

Soon after the panic-stricken North-Eastern people started fleeing cities like Bangalore, we found a lot of inflammatory and harmful content/information appearing on the social networking sites. Bulk of the content/information, which contained images and videos, mostly morphed, was aimed at targeting people of North East. Considering the sensitivity and after effects of such inflammatory and harmful content, the Department of Electronics & Information Technology issued an advisory on August 17 to all the intermediaries, including national and international social networking sites, advising them to take necessary action to disable such inflammatory and hateful content on priority basis.
The Government directed intermediaries, including international social networking sites, to block 245 webpages over three days starting August 18, 2012. The initial response from international social networking sites indicated that such content have been hosted from outside the country and to a large extent from a neighbouring country (Pakistan). The proxy servers and Virtual Private Network services, which hide the user identity operating from number of countries, appear to have been used for uploading the content.

What is the Net behaviour you expect of companies?

Social media companies have to operate within the laws of a given country. If there is violation of those laws…then we will have to take action so as to make sure that there is compliance of those laws and regulations. We are working with the Ministry of Home Affairs as well as private companies in this regard. No website should host content that incites communal violence.

Is a ban on social media a likely solution?

No, there is no question of banning any site. On the contrary, the government wants websites to apply self-regulation. The companies should respect the local sentiments and be sensitive towards the law of the land from where they operate.

 They have a responsibility in that they should not become a platform to disrupt social harmony. If social media is used as a tool to disrupt normal life, the government will have to act. We have received complaints of morphed pictures being sent through social media to threaten N-E community of reprisal attacks. We are not indulging in auto-censorship.

Do you recall any instance of any country banning websites or SMSes?

I would like to refer to the riots in London last year. For over 10 hours the government had completely jammed mobiles. The government’s move was accepted by everyone and no one complained.

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