Delhi Court orders Google, FB to remove objectionable material from Internet

A local Delhi Court has ordered 21 internet companies including Google India, Orkut, Facebook, Yahoo, and Mircosoft Crop. to immediately remove the objectionable religious and social materials from the internet that hurt others' sentiments.

Listening a civil suit in New Delhi district court, the additional Civil Judge Praveen Singh has slammed the 21 web firms who had been given February 06 as the deadline of removing the content on December 24 for not following the direction.

The judge has ordered to remove the blasphemous material within 14 days from the internet and remove all the new objectionable content within 36 hours for which the companies get various protest report or flags.

This petition is filled by a Muslim Mufti Aizaz Arshad Kazmi, who has accused the companies for allegedly hosting material intolerant to religious sentiment.

Another similar sort of petition has also been filled by a Hindu Journalist Vinay Ray which hearing is scheduled to be next month.

Meanwhile, Google India along with Facebook has today morning appeared before the court and informed that they have already complied the court's directive.

Google India has said that it has removed the 'reported' objectionable contents from Google India's database however it is available in its other database.

But, the court is not satisfied with it and slammed Google for not completely following the direction. "Why are you (Google Inc) not coming properly with your reply?" the court asked.

Responding over Google's argument of getting court's document on Friday, the court slammed, "Don't tell me you have been served only on Friday. After all this hullabaloo that has been created in the last few months, you should have been prepared,"

Facebook too has informed the court to compliance the court.

Earlier, last moth, Delhi High Court has asked to Google and Facebook to develop a mechanism similar to that of China that could allow the government to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages or can block all such websites as well as can also track those who uploads such obnoxious materials.

This direction of Delhi High Court came when the Internet companies expressed their disabilities to pre-filter all the uploaded content.

In December, Indian Communications Minister Kapil Sibal has taken a strong line on the issue and asked to companies to remove all objectionable contents of subject to politicians and religion.

He was anger over the morphed photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi roaming on the internet.

In his released statement, he had said, "My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. The companies will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it."