Google Sets Censorship Precedent In India 245
eldavojohn writes "Censorship varies from country to country but India, home to a sixth of the world's population, appears to be shaping up much like China. Not far behind everyone else, Google has increasingly censored websites with an incident where a very popular politician died and Google forcibly deleted and dissolved a group on Orkut where offensive comments about the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh were posted. An official from India's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said, 'If you are doing business here, you should follow the local law, the sentiments of the people, the culture of the country. If somebody starts abusing Lord Rama on a Web site, that could start riots.' The lengthy opinion piece calls attention to the beginnings of a definitive lack of free speech online for Indian citizens. A spokeswoman for the 'Do No Evil' company explained, 'India does value free speech and political speech. But they are weighing the harm of free speech against violence in their streets.'"
Re:Sounds like a culture problem to me... (Score:2, Informative)
It's unfortunately [wikipedia.org] a reality [wikipedia.org] of modern India that far-right [wikipedia.org] "Hindu nationalism [wikipedia.org]" is a common interpretation [wikipedia.org] of Hinduism.
Re:Free? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, prohibition wasn't so much a religious movement, but a pan-belief movement.
There were the religious groups, anti-immigrant groups (they didn't like the beer and alcohol drinking cultures from central, eastern and southern Europe), and the biggest part were was the suffrage movement.
And it wasn't just the US, they did it in 1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union, Canada, Iceland and other non-Islamic states -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Russian_Empire_and_Soviet_Union [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperance_movement#United_States [wikipedia.org]
Re:Now what? (Score:2, Informative)