Observing that “India is suffering so much because of its sex ratio,” the Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Internet search engines Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing) to neither advertise nor sponsor pre-natal sex determination advertisements.
In an interim order, a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant ordered the three search engines to “forthwith” withdraw online advertisements, currently being hosted or published, on pre-natal sex determination facilities, clinics or centres in violation of Section 22 of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) or PC-PNDT Act, 1994.
The court directed the search engines to upload this order on their policy page and on the page containing “terms and conditions of service” to warn persons intending to put up such advertisements.
On March 11, the Bench will consider the government’s suggestion that the three search engines provide it with a list of URLs and IP addresses hosting pre-natal sex determination advertisements, so that they can be blocked or filtered.
Referring to an affidavit filed by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar said the government would be able to “stop the presentation of any kind of thing that relates to sex selection and eventual abortion” if the search engines parted with the URLs. Alternatively, he said the search engines could also “effectively or regularly” block key words and advertisement links as they had the “relevant technology and deep-domain knowledge” to do it.
“Either you [search engines] stop it or we will do it ourselves at the gateway if you provide us with the details,” Mr. Kumar submitted in court.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing Google, said the Internet was a “censor-free zone” and the government’s stand amounted to “pre-censorship and information blocking.”
To this Justice Misra countered that “censorship and legal prohibition are two different things”.
Mr. Divan replied that Google had technical and contractual filters which already prevented anyone from posting content offensive to the laws of a particular country.
When Justice Misra orally observed that search engines may play a “propagandistic” role by hosting these ads, Mr. Divan countered that a search engine did not advertise and acted only as a source for debate and discussion on a blizzard of topics.
He argued that blocking keywords on their search engine would amount to a gag on free speech and expression on the Internet. It would even result in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech on female sex ratio getting blocked. The hearing is based on a PIL filed by Sabu Mathew George in 2008 highlighting the use of Internet and popular search engines to promote sex determination technologies in violation of the 1994 Act.
In an interim order, a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant ordered the three search engines to “forthwith” withdraw online advertisements, currently being hosted or published, on pre-natal sex determination facilities, clinics or centres in violation of Section 22 of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) or PC-PNDT Act, 1994.
The court directed the search engines to upload this order on their policy page and on the page containing “terms and conditions of service” to warn persons intending to put up such advertisements.
On March 11, the Bench will consider the government’s suggestion that the three search engines provide it with a list of URLs and IP addresses hosting pre-natal sex determination advertisements, so that they can be blocked or filtered.
Referring to an affidavit filed by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar said the government would be able to “stop the presentation of any kind of thing that relates to sex selection and eventual abortion” if the search engines parted with the URLs. Alternatively, he said the search engines could also “effectively or regularly” block key words and advertisement links as they had the “relevant technology and deep-domain knowledge” to do it.
“Either you [search engines] stop it or we will do it ourselves at the gateway if you provide us with the details,” Mr. Kumar submitted in court.
Senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing Google, said the Internet was a “censor-free zone” and the government’s stand amounted to “pre-censorship and information blocking.”
To this Justice Misra countered that “censorship and legal prohibition are two different things”.
Mr. Divan replied that Google had technical and contractual filters which already prevented anyone from posting content offensive to the laws of a particular country.
When Justice Misra orally observed that search engines may play a “propagandistic” role by hosting these ads, Mr. Divan countered that a search engine did not advertise and acted only as a source for debate and discussion on a blizzard of topics.
He argued that blocking keywords on their search engine would amount to a gag on free speech and expression on the Internet. It would even result in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech on female sex ratio getting blocked. The hearing is based on a PIL filed by Sabu Mathew George in 2008 highlighting the use of Internet and popular search engines to promote sex determination technologies in violation of the 1994 Act.
Source - The Hindu
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