India's Techies Angered Over Internet Censorship Plan
India has the world's largest democracy, and one of the most rambunctious. Millions of its young people are cutting edge when it comes to high-tech. Yet the country is still very conservative by Western standards, and a government minister recently said that offensive material on the web should be removed.
The way it was reported in India, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal started the whole row by assembling the heads of social networking sites at a meeting in his office in New Delhi. At the time, he was reported to have asked companies, like Google and Facebook, to devise a system to filter through and edit out objectionable material before it could make its way online. In an interview with the Indian cable channel CNN-IBN, Sibal pointed to offensive religious content that could cause ethnic or inter-communal conflict.