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Orkut In Pact With Indian Law Enforcement
Journal written by the100rabh (947158) and posted by
Zonk
on Tue May 01, 2007 10:22 AM
from the watch-your-mouth dept.
from the watch-your-mouth dept.
food4thought writes "The Economic Times reports that Orkut has signed a pact with Indian Cyber Crime Cell. They have now pledged to block any 'defamatory or inflammatory content', or hand over IP address information to police if asked.' Deputy Commissioner of Police (enforcement) Sanjay Mohite said the pact means they do not have to go through the lengthy process of asking the Central government to communicate with Orkut. The practice so far has been to first send a request to the Centre's computer emergency response team in New Delhi. This team processes the request through its channels and even if a forum is finally blocked, the "culprits" still remain untraceable as no IP addresses can be obtained ... "Now we can do away with the process and not just directly ban content but also obtain details of IP addresses and service providers quickly," Mohite said.' How long before we see these 'informal arrangements' elsewhere?"
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Do more profit (Score:5, Funny)
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OTOH, there a lot of sites that moderate their user-created content (if reported/moderated by other users) too. And AFAIK, there has to be some form of moderation in any site regarding "defamatory or inflammatory content." Any site that doesn't do so is just asking to be trolled, vandalized and mutilated till people take their content (forums, vids, pics, etc.) someplace else.
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*Offer only valid in the US, Canada, and Sealand.
Re:India is Unique: India is not a Western nation. (Score:5, Insightful)
India has a strong and independent judiciary, democracy, human rights law (unlike Britain). It is more democratic and free than any other country at its economic level.
Parent
Re:India is Unique: India is not a Western nation. (Score:4, Interesting)
...just a thought, but how do you propose to control a combined 2.4 BILLION [geohive.com] people? Considering the sheer amount of HUMAN'S, I find it implausible to expect that EVERY ONE of them can be fully represented. This isn't to say that they don't DESERVE rights, just that with THAT many people, you have to balance security and freedoms VERY carefully, generally tipping towards the former.
Parent
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Seriously, it's not clear to me why it would be impossible to have a functioning democracy where eve
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I for one will not cower in fear and willingly trade away freedom. I will not willingly bow down even before terrorists. The discussion of trading away freedom bad enough, but your DEFAULT EXPECTATION to tip against freedom, to first and foremost choose to give up freedom, that is appalling. You want to trade away your freedom, oh well. And I'm sure you're thinking in terms of willingly trading away your freedoms.
Orkut? (Score:1)
Thanks.
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I almost spilled my coffee (Score:1)
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"I'm sorry, I can't stop them. That would be cen-sor-ship. All we can do is whitewash this as a "non-story" and completely ignore the fact that Google is willing to censor more and more things in the name of the almighty dollar."
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People really need to stop complaining for the sake of complaining when shit like this happens. Don't like it? Stop using said site. Reduce their ad dollars, and only then will they change their stance. Also, keep in mind that a large majority of these "community based" sites' users tend to be either kids or morons, neither or whic
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Yes, it's a non-story. Any infrastructure that has been set up by the Indian government for political suppression on the Internet is now rendered useless. Nothing like Orkut will ever appear in India again- that is the only social networking site that will ever be available to a billion people or whatever it is down there. In fact all social networking sites around the world will quickly be
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Leave this part and you've hit it. One of the things why I visit orkut once a month and myspace never is that orkut looks more professionals and easier to use. Its actually a good way to meet up with your friends in case they are all there.
Oh dear! (Score:5, Funny)
Fight Fire with Fire.... (Score:3, Funny)
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Sorry, dude. There's already prior art [penny-arcade.com].
Mod up (Score:2)
Good question... (Score:2)
Won't stop the real hackers, just the dumb ACs (Score:3, Interesting)
"The pact, which is actually an "informal arrangement" called the Priority Reporting Tool, comes as a big surprise to internet users as Orkut has succes, just thsfully blocked attempts by various countries to control content."
"Now we can do away with the [old, slow, but govt. controlled] process and not just directly ban content but also obtain details of IP addresses and service providers quickly...the IP addresses will enable the [police] cell to track down people who have posted messages and book them if the need arises, police officials said."
No mention of legal oversight etc.
Mind you, perhaps we'll all gotten too blasé about the supposed freedom & anonymity of the 'net. After all, if you defame someone in traditional print, you can be sued in most places if it's not fair or truthful. Still, as I said, the smart badboys aren't going to be worried about this...plenty of internet cafés and open (or openable) hotspots around..
To the uninitiated (Score:1, Informative)
I'm an Indian..... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the worst sort of intimidation. Bal Thackeray is a politician. If content against him can be censored, we've reached the limit. The government already blocks websites it deems "hateful". Unfortunately, the definition of hateful includes anyone who dares to criticise the communists, or Islam. The current government stays in power because of the support provided by the communist parties, so they can get ridiculous things like this passed.
Simply put, this is the first step in an exercise which promises to put an end to freedom of information on the internet in India as we know it. There was an incident where, some time back, the whole of blogspot was blocked. The government doesn't run a firewall a la China, they just ask ISPs to do it. Because there exists no independent ISP (all private players have to lease bandwidth themselves from the government - it's a state monopoly), they have no choice but to comply.
I am so completely pissed.
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You do know that there are conflicting laws abuot encryption in India? All strong encryption is illegal under one law, and mandatory under another, so whatever happens, you ARE a criminal.
Re:I'm an Indian [If I had a vote] (Score:1)
Damn those inalienable rights... (Score:2)
How are we suppose to protect civilians with those pescky civil rights getting in our way? It will be so much easier to protect people when we lock them up in jail.
</sarcasm>
-Rick
No kissing! (Score:3, Funny)
Orkut? (Score:2)
What if this were in china? (Score:1)
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No judicial oversight either way. (Score:1)
Orkut != everyone (Score:2)
Sounds like old (overblown) news to me! (Score:2, Informative)
Get a Life! (Score:1)
I personally feel that these *social networks* are nothing more than a waste of time.
My friends cite it as a useful resource to keep in touch with old friends... Comm'on. Isn't a mail enough if you *really really* want to be in touch? Communities (though not all) are crap too. The only thing worth on Orkut is the B'day ticker
I'd like to know how many people belong to my category (or I belo
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well for those who dont like it
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Agreed completely. I cannot and will not deny the fact that those scraps are pretty easy and straightforward ways. (Though a "reply" button in your mail interface is quite similar :) )
But what about the trade-off?
Not all, but *most of* the people spend there time moving from one profile to another to another.. looking at the albums, reading their testimonials. That's why the title goes "Get a Life".
It's really funny. I used to meet some people in the day time and
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Several of my friends from school have found me through my myspace page, which I have only because people look there to find people and facebook is a spammer.
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Warning concerning Orkut login (Score:2)
When I tried to access my Orkut account on the morning of April 16th, I got an "Unable to Connect" message. I just assumed that they were having some temporary problems. When I couldn't login on Tuesday, I thought maybe the company had tightened down the firewall, so I tried later that evening from home with the same result. So I did a Google search to see if anything had been reported, and found a Wikipedia entry. Other than that, it seems very few people noticed this security problem.
From Wikipedia: "On
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EVIL (Score:2)
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Yes.
"hate speech" is a matter of definition (Score:2)
A tool that makes it easier for politicians to harass people who don't like them is a censorship tool.