Google Succumbs To Censorship Order From Indian Court

Google Inc has removed all content deemed objectionable by a New Delhi court from its Indian domains after being slapped with legal charges in December last year for carrying “offensive and objectionable” material.

Google Inc has removed all content deemed objectionable by a New Delhi court from its Indian domains after being slapped with legal charges in December last year for carrying “offensive and objectionable” material.

The tech company blocked all such content from its India search results on Tuesday, along with other “offensive” material that were hosted by its subsidiary websites including YouTube, Blogger and Orkut. In addition, content listed on domains from .in and .co.in were permanently deleted from its results, though they remained accessible from other countries.

[quote]“This step is in accordance with Google’s long-standing policy of responding to court orders,” said the company in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg.[/quote]

While the company has refused to elaborate on the exact content that had been removed, it is understood that numerous of such material included anti-government and anti-religious messages.

Related: Facebook, Google Among Websites Charged In India For “Offensive & Objectionable” Content

During a court case held earlier this year, one of the images brought up showed an illustration of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi in a compromising position, while another image showed pigs running through the Islamic holy city of Mecca.

Despite this, the company appeared reluctant at that time to remove the content.

“When content is legal and doesn’t violate our policies, we won’t remove it just because it’s controversial, as we believe that people’s differing views, so long as they’re legal, should be respected and protected,” wrote a company statement just a month back.

But the threat of further legal action appeared to have changed the company’s stance, with Google India’s spokesman Gaurav Bhaskar now claiming the content was illegal after all.

“We believe that access to information is the foundation of a free and prosperous society…where content is illegal or breaks our terms of service, we will continue to remove it,” he said.

But despite Google’s actions, the other companies –including Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo – involved in the same lawsuit chose not to remove the “offensive” content just yet, taking the position that they could not control any content that was deemed objectionable.

Related: Is Censorship Ever Welcomed? Well, China and Thailand Fully Endorse Twitter’s New Censorship Policy

“Upon perusal… defendant No. 1 (Facebook India) finds that the images and videos do not contain any URL to indicate that the source of the downloaded material is facebook.com. Moreover, defendant No. 1 does not control or operate the servers that host the website available at facebook.com, which are located in the United States,” wrote Facebook India in its affidavit to the court.