The Indian Constitution guarantees right to freedom of speech and expression. But it also gives the State the power to impose “reasonable restrictions” on the exercise of this right in the interests of “public order, decency or morality”. That, in turn, has formed the basis for official censorship, extending occasionally to outright muzzling of the media, or selective persecution of those not presenting ruling regimes in the most favourable light. Given this background, it is not surprising to find cynical reactions to the Government recently granting sanction to prosecute Google, Facebook, Yahoo and 18 other Web sites. Their alleged offence: Hosting content that could “promote enmity between classes and causing prejudice to national integration”.
On the face of it, this would seem yet another instance of the Government using the thin veil of “reasonable restrictions” to curb the right to freely hold, receive and disseminate one's views. Proceeding against social networking sites becomes even more complicated because the views being expressed there are not really their own or amenable to control. Newspapers or TV news channels have their own reporters and editors, which makes self-regulation in generation of content possible. No such in-house mechanism exists in the case of a Facebook, which claims to have more than 800 million active users, who generate the ‘content' that is uploaded. The Government, only recently, wanted the networking sites to actually manually pre-screen user content and weed out ‘incendiary material' before they get posted online. When that was found to be unworkable, it has now sought to proceed against them for not removing already-posted content deemed as offending religious sentiments.
Given their nature as destinations for spontaneous outpourings of users and the culture of co-creating content it implies, managers of social networking sites cannot be made responsible for pre-filtering of online content. There is legal recognition of this principle, though once any offensive material is brought to their notice the intermediaries are required to disable it within 36 hours. It is also a well-settled principle that even in free societies some form of censorship is inevitable for the larger good and prosperity. But mere suspicion that something might offend sensibilities cannot be a pretext for clampdown. That would be giving too much powers to the State, which already holds a legal monopoly on violence, both physical and moral. On the other hand, the potential for misuse of social networking sites to incite violence, as was recognised during the London riots in August, cannot be ignored. The social media sites don't always have to agree with the Government on what they consider as offensive. But they must also subject themselves to the process of legal action and, if found guilty, be prepared to face penal consequences under Indian laws. One's courage of conviction demands nothing less.