Hold the Sites Responsible

I was on a train from Gaya to Koderma in Bihar recently, when some local passengers started discussing the Abhishek Manu Singhvi sex CD scandal. As expected, some said the CD was fake and some said it was genuine, but what caught my ears was when someone men oned that he could get such CDS made for `200 in his town. All that is needed is a photograph of the person whom you want to make famous overnight on Youtube.

There should have been no reason for me to be surprised but this is surely a serious ma er! Not everybody is an Abhishek Manu Singhvi to get courts to order networking sites to pull down such content, and something like this can easily destroy someone’s life and career. Some months back there was a lot of heated debate around the role and responsibility of social media sites regarding hos ng such content. There are lots among us who believe that asking social media sites to ensure such content is not put up is akin to draconian censorship.

My take on this is simple. We should not be misguided by people who mix up doctored and fake sex videos with content rela ng to issues like civil rights, poli cal dissent, bribery, religion or race related hate, and so on. Sex and pornography content is a different league altogether. Laws and security systems that monitor and control that should be very stringent.

I would place bribery, corrup on, and religion/race related hate stuff in the next category—a level less. And no person in the right senses will want curb or censorship on issues like civil rights and poli cal dissent. There can be different views on this but I believe such classifica on should be possible and should be done.

I recommend that very clear message should go to these sites—wherever in the world they come from or their servers are hosted—if fake sex content is found on their site, they will be held responsible. And the penalty will be severe. Whether the site was hacked or content loaded in a country with very ‘liberal’ pornography laws, the Indian police and judiciary should come down very harshly on the site owners.

One appreciates the business angle of websites—the more the traffic visi ng your site, the more you charge your sponsors and adver sers—but doing that at the cost of ruining people’s lives is just not acceptable.

All along we have seen and believed that the ICT industry has done so well without the interference and interven on of the government. Let us ensure that we do not give the government a chance to jump in. Our industry did a great job when it came to building its business—i am sure it can set great systems and processes for ensuring the aam aadmi’s well being.