From the Great Firewall to the Myanmar Wide Web, Asia is well-known for its practices in Internet filtering. China has long taken the lead in blocking Web sites, filtering sites across the spectrum - from social to political content, pornography to Internet tools. The OpenNet Initiative (full disclosure: I'm involved) has been studying the Internet in Asia and around the world since 2002, and has just released its latest reports on Internet surveillance and controls in Asia, and specifically in China.

New research from the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) reveals accelerating restrictions on Internet content as Asian governments shift to next generation controls. These new techniques go beyond blocking access to websites and are more informal and fluid, implemented at edges of the network, and are often backed up by increasingly restrictive and broadly interpreted laws.

According to an recent ONI press release:

“Since 2006, many Asian governments have quickly realized the potential benefits of exploiting opportunities for conducting propaganda or public relations strategies over the Internet, even while cracking down on independent and critical voices thriving in these online spaces- an example of the evolution towards next generation controls,” said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto and one of four principal investigators at the ONI.

These controls were evidenced recently in ONI's analysis of China's latest attempt at controlling the flow of information, Green Dam Youth Escort filtering software mandated for pre-installation on PCs sold in China starting July 1. “However, even China's example demonstrates that restrictions on information are far from uniformly effective, and will meet resistance and be contested by the very groups they are intended to silence,” said Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of the SecDev Group and co-founder and principal investigator of ONI and ONI Asia.

The reports for Asia, as well as Burma, China, Pakistan, and South Korea will be featured in a forthcoming MIT Press volume, Access Controlled: The Shaping of Rights, Rule, and Power in Cyberspace, to be published by MIT Press (2010). Access Controlled will include a series of analytical chapters and regional overviews that contribute to the developing discourse around global Internet regulation and censorship raised in the first ONI volume Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, (Cambridge: MIT Press) 2008. ]]> http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/06/17/opennet-initiative-releases-results-on-filtering-in-asia/feed/ 0 http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/06/09/caste-based-communities-on-orkut-mirror-indias-splintered-society/ http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2009/06/09/caste-based-communities-on-orkut-mirror-indias-splintered-society/#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:07:52 +0000 Gaurav Mishra http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/?p=1278 One of the main themes of my research on digital activism is that social technologies are value-agnostic.

At each of the four levels of Content, Collaboration, Community and Collective Intelligence, social technologies can lead to both good and bad outcomes.

I have written before about Shiv Sena's militant approach towards Orkut communities critical of the party, its leader Bal Thakeray, or its Hindutva ideology. Caste-based communities on Orkut are another disturbing example of online communities mirroring the dysfunctions in Indian society.

For instance, there are more than 1000 communities for Brahmins on Orkut. There are 461 Brahmin communities listed under culture and community, 591 under religion and beliefs, 87 under activities and 117 under others.

One of the most popular Brahmin community, with 28, 726 members, randomly claims: “we r clever & hardworking .no one can fool us…” The Brahmans community with 41952 members and the Brahmins of India community with 30588 members are also very popular.

The other popular Brahmin communities are those for the various Brahmin sub-castes like Gawd Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) (12,189 members), Kokanastha Brahmin (4038 members), Deshashtha Brahmin (4083 members), Garhwali Brahmin (3067 members), Daivadnya Brahmin (2654 members) and Gaur Brahmin (2055 members). Another group, Brahmin Culture and Tradition is “dedicated to the purpose of uniting Brahmins to revive, preserve, protect and propagate the Brahmin culture to descendants without intimidation or dilution from anti-Brahminical forces.”

Interestingly, it seems that most of the threads under topics related to Brahmins have to do with defining the different types of Brahmins under various sub-castes.

There are also more than 1000 communities for Yadavs on Orkut, including gems like modern yadav girls and boys (5759 members).

Similarly, there are more than a 1000 Rajput communities on Orkut, including the Rajput the Royal Family community with 35,481 mebers, which asks people to join the group “if your soul justifies that you are Rajput both by soul and by nature.”

Dalits have about 200 mostly small communities on Orkut.

Perhaps, the low number of Dalit communities on Orkut says something about Indian society in general, and Orkut users in particular. Higher, more powerful, castes like Brahmins, Rajputs and Yadavs tend to have more money and easier access to the internet and old disparities are further accentuated by the internet.

Caste-based communities, however, aren't unique to Orkut.

Brahminsamaj.org is “a global platform for the Brahmin Community where you will learn, share and find lot of information, knowledge and fun.” Thambraas Muhurtham wants that “all Brahmins should come forward to marry breaking the sects and subsects within Brahmins, particularly Brahmins of Thamizhnadu.” It also points out that “the entire sects and subsects of South Indian brahmin population are totally vegetarians unlike certain brahmins of other parts of India.” A couple on the homepage of Marry A Brahmin claim that its “focused approach on Brahmin matches helped us find each other as true soul mates.” Brahmin Connections is “proud to present an opportunity and a platform to our young Brahmins and their parents to connect with each other across the world for the matrimonial purpose.” Brahmins Matrimony says that “it is the right place to search for your life partner!”

There are dedicated websites for sub-castes as well. Sakhdwipi aims “to provide a common forum for the Shakdwipis to know each other and interact with each other.” KeralaIyers aims “to delve into the history, trace the roots, portray the life of modern day Kerala Iyers, and chronicle the achievements of this community.” iKalyanam claims to be “the only exclusive site for Iyer matrimonials.” Shivalli Brahmins wishes “to bring together all Shivalli Brahmins residing in different parts of the world, through meaningful discussions about their traditions.” GSBMatch is a matrimonial website for the Gowd and Saraswat Brahmin community. ModhBrahmin.org and BrahmanSamaj.org claim that “history proves that the people of Modh Brahmin Samaj are very enterprising and very resourceful” and aims to “bring all brothers and sisters of Samaj close.” Jangid Brahmin Samaj is a community for Jangid Brahmins. RSBNet is “a single stop source of information regarding the origin, customs, culture, history of Rajapur Saraswath Brahmins.”

Similarly, there are dedicated websites for other castes as well.

Kayastha Matrimonial is a matrimonial website for the Kayastha community. Rajput Samaj is “presently predominately taking care of the Rajputs of Rajasthan” but in near future aims to be “taking care of the Rajputs living in India, Pakistan and abroad.” JatLand, “the online home for the Jats” is especially proud of its wiki.

The Dalit community is fairly active on the internet, even though it's miniiscule on Orkut. The International Dalit Solidarity Network, which has the most sophisticated of all these websites, “works on a global level for the elimination of caste discrimination.” Dalit Solidarity Network “brings together organizations and individuals in the UK who are concerned with caste-based discrimination.” Dalit India has “papers on various specific issues of the Dalits of India living in India and abroad.” Dalit Freedom Network “partners with the Dalits in their quest for religious freedom, social justice, and human rights by mobilizing human, informational, and financial resources.” Dalit Solidarity is “committed to the principles of justice and equality for all Indians, regardless of caste, race, gender or religion.” Dalit Voice claims that India is “the original home of racism” as Dalits and Tribals, who “constitute the core of India's original inhabitants”, are kept enslaved by “alien Aryans”. Dalit Education aims to “transform lives and communities through the Christian message.” Indian Dalit Muslims Voice is a platform to discuss issues concerning Indian Dalit Muslims. Rohit Chopra has written about the tension between the elite Hindu nationalists and the disadvantaged Dalits on the internet.

In terms of content, the majority of these websites are focused on matrimonial match-making, but several of them seek to build international communities based on caste affiliations and offer tools like directories, bulletin boards and forums to their members. I have also noticed a tendency to establish a rather embellished history of the caste, with detailed biographies of the important personalities belonging to the caste. Ashok Kumar at Express India has a great description of the common features on these caste based websites.

Not surprisingly, Facebook has only 46 small Brahmin groups, 60 small Yadav groups, 126 smal Rajput groups and 41 small Dalit groups. The absence of caste based groups from Facebook is in line with its cosmopolitan user base. Orkut, on the other hand, should be a little concerned about its tendency to attract loonies of all types.

In the end, however, the cosmopolitanism of Facebook is an anomaly, and Orkut's crude caste communities merely mirror India's splintered society.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

In this video I interviewed, Gaurav Mishra, our colleague at Global Voices and the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University, about the role of social media and digital activism in India.

From the right-wing Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena's Orkut Campaign to the more liberal Pink Chaddi Facebook Campaign, Gaurav explores in this interview how problems of religious conflicts are being reflected online, in a country where caste, class and religious divides remain very strong despite the secular nature of the state.

Credit for the 3D animated graphic that introduces each video goes to my friend Astrubal from Tunisia.

The 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections have come to an end and so has version 1.0 of Vote Report India.

We have had our successes and failures and I have talked about some of them before.

I think we did a lot of things well –

- We were able to get the website up within a week, thank to some great work by the Ushahidi and eMoksha teams.

- We were able to build a number of important relationship, with civil society organizations (like Jaago Re/ One Billion Voters, National Network for India, Liberty Institute, Citizens for Justice and Peace, and Women’s Political Forum), traditional media organizations (like Al Jazeera) and new media organizations (like Global Voices, Indipepal, Desipundit, BlogAdda, NGO Post and Digital Democracy). In fact, our partnerships page looks like a literal who's who of the important players working on the Indian elections.

- We were able to generate a lot of buzz for Vote Report India, on blogs, on Twitter, and in mainstream media within a very short time.

- We have been able to build a vibrant Vote Report India community that has been active in supporting us on both the technical and outreach side.

Here are some things that have not gone well –

- We haven't been able to establish a relationship with any big Indian media organizations on one hand, and National election Watch and the Election Commission on the other hand, in spite of some serious discussions.

- We haven't been able to integrate the Swift functionality into Vote Report India (aggregating feeds from multiple sources and crowdsourcing the tagging etc.) on our original timelines.

- We haven't been able to get users to submit reports in large numbers. We have a little more than 200 reports in the system, which isn't bad. However, we would have needed many more reports to capture the complexity of the 2009 Indian elections.

- The voter turnout in all four phases has been low, putting a question mark on the effectiveness of all digital civil society campaigns like Vote Report India.

Here are some lessons from Vote Report India version 1.0 –

- It's still difficult to build a grassroots movement in India exclusively on the internet. Even online campaigns need to be supported by mainstream media for reach and SMS for the feedback loop. We had SMS, but we didn't have the resources to advertise on mainstream media.

- In a country like India, which has a free and noisy news eco-system, transparency initiatives like Vote Report India need to not only get original reports from users but also aggregate reports from mainstream media.

- Transparency, in terms of availability of information in a usable format, is not a big enough incentive for Indian users. Users expected Vote Report India to closeloop the issues and give them feedback, and we were not set up to do that.

On the whole, I think that we did quite well, given our time and resource constraints.

Our biggest achievement, I think, was being able to build a vibrant community around Vote Report India and we are grateful to all the people who contributed to the project.

As I said, this was only version 1.0 of Vote Report India. We will take a short break and then relaunch Vote Report India as a platform to crowd-source the performance monitoring of our elected members of parliament, using the Ushahidi/ Swift engines. We will move the present homepage to 2009.votereport.in and start new pages like 2014.votereport.in for new elections, including local assembly elections.

Selvam and I, along with the other members of the core team, will continue to devote a substantial part of our time to Vote Report India. We are looking to expand our team, so do write to us at votereportindia@gmail.com, if you would like to become involved in a significant way.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Background: I'm sure that many of you are familiar with Alltop. It creates destination pages for topics of interest by aggregating them on a dashboard that displays the five latest headlines from each feed. The items can be previewed by doing a rollover on the headlines and read by clicking on the headline. If you haven't checked out Alltop yet, the Social Media, Social Entrepreneurship, Non-Profit, Good, and Human Rights pages might be a good place to start.

For some advocacy projects, it might be useful to build an Alltop-like dashboard that aggregates relevant content related to the cause on one page. So far, I had thought that it wasn't really possible, without some serious coding.

Then, I built the Indian Election Dashboard for Vote Report India in two hours, and realized how simple it was.

Tool: The trick was to discover the wonderful OneNews theme for Wordpress, which is especially designed to build Alltop clones.

Using a special template, the theme converts a page into a collection of widgets, which can be arranged to form the dashboard. The widgets support text, photo, video and search feeds, and can also be used for entering PHP or HTML code, to add elements not built into the theme.

The theme supports an unlimited number of dashboards on a single Wordpress install, as each page can be converted into a dashboard.

So, apart from the Indian Election Dashboard I hacked together for Vote Report India, I also built a Indian Bloggers Dashboard for Global Voices (please note that Global Voices hasn't yet endorsed the dashboard).

The theme also supports blog posts, apart from pages/ dashboards. The blog posts have a RSS feed, like a normal blog, but aren't displayed in the usual reverse chronological order on any single page.

The theme is built on Wordpress, so almost all the features native to Wordpress, like support for multiple languages, should be available for the theme. Also, all the hacks that can be done on any Wordpress theme should also be possible here.

Here is a hack that converts the Alltop-like dashboard view to a Techmeme-like river view, using the same OneNews theme.

The OneNews theme is available for $49 for a single use license and $199 for a multiple use license. Based on my experience, it is a small investment worth making for an appropriate project.

Application: While I won't encourage you to make a dashboard just because you can, I can see many applications for such dashboards.

The first application is to build a destination news micro-site for an important event. This is what I have done with the Indian Election Dashboard.

Another application is to aggregate content for a community or a topic of interest. This is what I have done with the Indian Bloggers Dashboard.

Yet another application will be to aggregate conversations around your advocacy project, to showcase the buzz and the impact on one page.

I would caution, however, that such dashboards might not be very useful on a standalone basis. They would work best when used as part of a bigger project, to showcase everything else you are doing on the project.

What other applications of this tool can you think of?

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

I have written before about the brilliant Pink Chaddi Campaign and highlighted the important role played by Facebook in helping the campaign go viral.

Briefly, journalist Nisha Susan set up The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women on Facebook and urged women to gift pink panties to Pramod Mutalik, the head of the ultra-conservative Hindu group Shri Ram Sena, in order to shame him into backing down from his threats to disrupt Valentine’s Day celebrations.

The campaign has become one of the best Indian examples of how a grassroots community can come together, collaborate and take collective action using social media tools.

The Pink Chaddi Facebook Group has been getting hacked throughout last month, and, instead of dealing with the hackers, Facebook suspended both the group and Nisha's account last week.

Before the group was suspended, the hackers changed the name of the group to ‘A Good Bong is a Dead Bong’ and posted vulgar and violent messages on the group. Over the month, the hackers had used names like ‘Nathuram Godse Appreciation Society', ‘Dara Singh Appreciation Group' and other vulgar names.

In an open letter to Facebook posted on Kafila, Nisha wondered if the first rule of Facebook activism is to not use Facebook.

In an update on the Pink Chaddi blog, Nisha warned her supporters against joining a fake Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women group created by the hackers.

In fact, several groups supporting and impersonating the Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women have sprung up on Facebook.

While Facebook activism has become an important part of any activist's technology toolkit, it comes with its own perils.

To begin with, Facebook allows you very little flexibility in changing the design of your cause, group, page or event. Each of these options come with in-built limitations and once you have chosen one, you are wedded to it.

Facebook also gives you very little control over the content created by you or your supporters. For instance, you can't highlight wall messages as important or sticky and you can't export them.

Most importantly, you can't export the names or contact details of your supporters, so the support base you build within Facebook stays within Facebook.

Then, there is the question of the involvement of your Facebook supporters. Ethan Zuckerman has wondered if Facebook protests are glorified petitions that attract serial activists. Beth Kanter has written about the difficulty of moving casual Facebook activists to higher levels of engagement.

We have also seen in the case of Egypt's April 6 Youth Movement that Facebook activism groups come together for a specific protest, but lose the momentum thereafter.

Finally, there are serious security concerns associated with Facebook protests which have become all too clear in the case of the Pink Chaddi campaign.

Facebook groups can be hacked into, in spite of reasonable security measures, and the Facebook team is often not responsive to pleas of redressal. The FACThai Blog had written about the possibility of such attacks on the Pink Chaddi group last month and now, the attacks have really gone out of control.

Beyond the threat of hacking, detractors or even well meaning supporters can create duplicate groups, pages, causes, or events with similar sounding names, leading to confusion and a dilution of message.

So, if you are an activist, do leverage the virality of Facebook, but use it with an eye on its many limitations.

By all means, use Facebook as part of your campaign but don't build your campaign around it. Use all the social media tools at your disposal and interlink them to increase their virality. In the US, it would mean using Facebook with MySpace, YouTube and Twitter. In India it would mean using at least Orkut, apart from Facebook.

Whichever tool you use, have a plan to transition your supporters to a traditional mailing list, so that you have more control over how you communicate with them. If you have been able to build a large and vibrant community, it might even make sense to move to a proprietary social network built on Drupal or Ning. I'm not implying that such a transition will be easy, or even successful, but it's definitely worth a try.

Finally, do take basic security precautions like using strong passwords and changing them often, logging out of public computers after using them, and having more than one admin so that the group is not orphaned if your account gets hacked.

If your Facebook account, and your group, does get hacked, I guess the first step will be to try the Forgot Your Password? link, which will send the new password to your email ID, unless the hacker has already changed it.

If that doesn't work, your next resort should be the Login Problems Help Page,which will lead you to one of two forms based on whether you have or don't have access to your login email.

If you are lucky, the Facebook support team will respond quickly, otherwise you would do well to quickly move on to step three, and start an online campaign to put pressure on Facebook to restore your access.

Coming back to the Pink Chaddi Campaign, Nisha Susan has taken all these three steps and still doesn't have access to her Facebook group.

If you know a way to help Nisha regain control of the Facebook group and avoid such hacking attacks in the future, do leave a comment below.

I'm convinced that someone should write a blog post titled “three steps to get your hacked Facebook activism group back”. Perhaps, we can write that post together here.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

This is a long and winding story, so let me first give you the quick short version.

I'm honored to be part of the wonderful team that launched Vote Report India yesterday.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-powered election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.

Basically, users contribute direct SMS, email, and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct (PDF). The platform will then aggregate these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.

We are hoping that Vote Report India will not only increase transparency and accountability in the Indian election process, but also provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the elections.

So, that was the short version of what Vote Report India does. Here is the long story behind how Vote Report India came into being.

Ushahidi, as many of you know, was started last year by a group of Kenyan bloggers led by Erik Hersman, to track post election violence in Kenya. Over time, it has become a robust crisis reporting platform, with a vibrant ecosystem around it, and partnerships like the one with Al Jazeera during the Gaza conflict.

After the November 26 Mumbai terrorist attack, two members of the Ushahidi ecosystem, Chris Blow and Kaushal Jhalla, started thinking about building a platform called SwiftRiver, which would manage much higher volumes of data than Ushahidi, by partly automating and partly crowd-sourcing the filter.

As some of you know, I have been thinking about how to use a Ushahidi-like tool in the Indian elections. What you might not know is that Kaushal and I have been in touch with each other, on an on-and-off basis, ever since the Mumbai terrorist attack.

It all came together last week in a series of happy coincidences.

First, Ushahidi's strategy meeting on March 21 led to the decision to build SwiftReport by combining features from Ushahidi and VoteReport, with the help of Andrew Turner.

On March 29, I asked the Ushahidi folks if they would be interested in doing an Ushaidi/ SwiftRiver installation for the Indian elections, and fresh off the meeting, they not only agreed but put all their energy into customizing the platform for Vote Report India.

On April 4, we realized that Selvam Velmurugan and Munish Sivagurunath had put together another installation of Ushahidi at Free Fair Elections. We decided to pool our resources together and launched Vote Report India on April 6, within 10 days of the first email.

So, an idea that started off with the Mumbai terrorist attack has come full circle to be realized during the Lok Sabha elections.

We are far from done, however. On the technical side, there is some serious work to be done on integrating the SwiftRiver functionality into Ushahidi, and Andrew and Selvam are hard at work on it. On the deployment side, Anant Trivedi, Gautam John and Satchit Balsari are reaching out to media and civil society organizations in India. I'm somewhere in the middle, trying to put it all together, on time, and wondering how I ended up working with such super-smart rockstars.

We need another series of happy coincidences to make Vote Report India work, and we can use all the help we can get.

I would encourage you to spend some time at our website and project wiki to get a sense of what we are doing. If you like what we are doing, please join the Vote Report India community at Twitter (@votereportindia), Facebook, Orkut, SMSGupShup or Google Groups and subscribe to our blog. If you have a blog or a website, please consider writing about Vote Report India and displaying our banners (200X200 and 150X150).

If possible, consider volunteering for one of our open work streams. But, most importantly, do use and encourage others to use the Vote Report India platform, and help us make the election process more transparent.

You'll be hearing more from Vote Report India soon.

Also see: Great posts by Erik Hersman and Nancy Scola on how Vote Report India came together. Plus, my earlier posts on how political parties, civil society organizations and corporates are using digital media in the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

The Indian blogosphere is abuzz with discussions on freedom of expression after the Supreme Court refused to throw out Shiv Sena's defamation case against 19 year old computer science student Ajith D (TOI).

However, the Indian blogosphere's reactions to the controversy are mostly based on reports on the incident in Indian media and the quality of this reporting has been very mediocre, with few details and little background information. As a result, bloggers are reacting to incomplete information. As a result, bloggers are reacting to incomplete information.

So, before I do a roundup of the Indian blogosphere's reactions to the story and share my own views, let me first present the basic facts.

Shiv Sena's Tradition of Violent Protests

Let's start with Shiv Sena itself. Shiv Sena is a far right political party in Maharashtra that built a strong base amongst the Marathi community in the sixties based on its militant ideology that Maharashtra belonged to the Marathi community and migrants from other Indian states should be thrown out. Starting from the mid-seventies, the Shiv Sena shifted its focus to a strong pro-Hindutva (and anti-Muslim) ideology, a shift that solidified in the mid nineties, when it became an integral part of right wing alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The Shiv Sena has often been accused of being involved in coordinated political violence against against non-Marathis and non-Hindus. It is widely acknowledged that Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackery, who is revered amongst its supporters, has been instrumental in inciting such violence on many occasions. The Shiv Sena also has a long and well-documented history of violent protests against journalists, writers and artists who speak against its extremist ideologies (see BBC 1, BBC 2, BBC 3, BBC 4, NYT 1, NYT 2, NYT 3, NYT 4, Guardian 1, Guardian 2).

It's important that we look at Shiv Sena's ire against Orkut in the context of its long history of ideological intolerance and violent protests.

Shiv Sena's Unholy Nexus With Orkut

The story started in November 2006, when Shiv Sena activists stumbled across an anti-Shivaji community on Orkut. Shivaji is a 16th century Maratha warrior, who is revered by the Marathi community. Pune police asked cyber cafe owners to block the anti-Shivaji community after violence by Shiv Sena. A public interest litigation was also filed in Bombay High Court to ban Orkut for hosting the anti-Shivaji community (TOI 1, TOI 2, Rediff 1, Rediff 2, NDTV, Financial Express).

In January 2007, the Maharashtra government requested the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), a Delhi-based regulatory body under the Ministry of Information and Technology, to remove the offensive content. According to Indian law, the CERT is responsible for investigating requests to block websites from notified officers of the Union government or the state governments. If it finds the website objectionable, it communicate its decision to the licensing and regulations cell of the department of telecommunications for passing the order to the internet service providers to block the website (Indian Express, Live Mint).

The Shiv Sena also asked its supporters to flag these communities on Orkut, so that they could be banned (Orkut discussion thread 1, Orkut discussion thread 2). This resulted in a flagging war on Orkut, where users who were part of pro-Sena and anti-Sena communities flagged each other's communities. For a short while, many pro-Sena and anti-Sena communities were banned by Google, but many of them were quickly reinstated (Orkut discussion thread).

The Shiv Sena also sent letters to Google and internet service providers in India to block these communities and even met up with Google officials, along with Maharashtra government and Mumbai police officials.

In January 2007, Google decided to cooperate with the Mumbai police and instituted an informal arrangement called the Priority Reporting Tool which enabled Mumbai police to directly report objectionable content to Google and also ask it for details of IP addresses and service providers. Based on the recommendation of Mumbai Police, Google deleted communities against Shivaji, Bal Thackeray and dalit leader B R Ambedkar (TOI, IHT, Indian Express).

However, even as Google banned some communities that contained defamatory content, it initially refused to ban several other communities that were against Shiv Sena's leaders or ideologies. As a result, Abhijit Phanse, the president of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student wing of Shiv Sena, took matters in his own hands and led a violent campaign against Orkut.

In May 2007, the Sena sent letters to internet cafes threatening attacks against their establishments, if they didn't stop their customers from accessing these Orkut communities. In June 2006, it followed up on its threats by ransacking several internet cafes in Mumbai and physically abusing cafe owners and customers. The Mumbai police also instructed internet cafe owners in Mumbai and Thane to prohibit their customers from accessing Orkut. As a result, cyber cafes in Mumbai registered a drop in traffic and were forced to put up notices asking their customers not to visit Orkut.

The Sena even announced that it was developing a special software that internet service providers could install to block any message containing certain words and phrases such as “I hate” or “I despise”.

These incidents were widely documented in Indian media (see Reuters 1, Rediff 1, Rediff 2, IBN Live, NDTV, Indian Express 1, Indian Express 2, Indian Express 3, Indian Express 4, Indian Express 5, Economic Times, Business Standard 1, Business Standard 2, TOI) and debated in the Indian blogosphere and Orkut community (The Hindu). It's especially worthwhile to see two opinion pieces by Amit Varma in LiveMint and Sevathi Ninan in The Hindu criticizing these trends.

The news stories don't give details about CERT's decision on banning Orkut, or the final settlement between Shiv Sena and Orkut, but several anti-Shiv Sena communities have been banned since then.

The Mumbai and Pune police have also put their arrangement with Google to good use since then.

In September/ October 2007, the Pune police arrested four Bangalore based software engineers — 25 year old Lakshmana Kailash, 23 year old Manjunath Betegowda, 23 year old Harish Shetty and 22 year old Kiran Reddy — for posting an obscene profile of Shivaji on Orkut, in which he was shown clad in female innerwear (Economic Times, TOI). It was later found that the arrest of Lakshmana Kailash, who was detained for 50 days, was based on wrong IP addresses provided by Bharti Airtel (TOI 1, TOI 2, TOI 3, The Hindu, Rediff). Lakshmana then sued Airtel, Maharashtra government and Mumbai police and demanded Rs 20 crore in damages (IBN Live, TOI). The status of his case isn't clear from the news reports.

In August 2008, the Mumbai Police arrested Ghaziabad based computer engineer Adarsh Sinha for posting death threats against Bal Thackeray using a fake email identity in the name of Faizab Farooqi. They also arrested Mumbai resident Suresh Shetty, a moderator of this community. (TOI)

Shiv Sena's Case Against Ajith D

Ajith D, a 19 year computer science student from Kerala, started a community called ‘I Hate Shiv Sena' on Orkut. One of the anonymous commentators on the website posted a death threat to Bal Thackeray. It seems from news reports the Mumbai police has charged Ajith for both criminal intimidation and hurting religious sentiments.

Mumbai police tracked Ajith's Orkut and GMail accounts for a week to ascertain his address and sent a team to his hometown in Cherthala, in August 2008, to nab him. However, television channels flashed news of their arrival, helping Ajith to escape and the police team could only confiscate the hard disk of his computer. The team also said that they were observing the Orkut postings and Internet activities of around 50 other members of the community (Hindu).

Subsequently, Ajith got anticipatory bail from Kerala High Court and moved the Supreme Court through counsel Jogy Scaria seeking quashing of the criminal complaint based on the ground that he hadn't posted the death threat and the community itself wasn't defamatory. The Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice P Sathasivam, however, refused to protect him and said: “if someone files a criminal action on the basis of the content, then you will have to face the case. You have to go before the court and explain your conduct.” (TOI, The Guardian, The Hindu).

Roundup of Blog Discussions on the Ajith D Case

As I mentioned above, several bloggers have reacted strongly to the Supreme Court judgment, often based on partial information (CXOToday).

Lawyer Lawrence Liang at Kafila writes a detailed post on whether a defamation case should be settled under civil law or criminal law and delineates a history of defamation cases against Indian bloggers. He also makes a pertinent point in the Ajith D case –

When organizations like the Shiv Sena and the Sri Ram Sene start using defamation laws, it smacks of chutzpah to me. The definition of Chutzpah is a person who kills his parents, and then claims clemency on the grounds that he is an orphan. What other way can we describe the bizarre situation of the violence prone macho men, who suddenly run around screaming about the violation of their legal rights and the slurring of their reputation?

Patrix thinks that the Indian legal system is biased against freedom of speech –

As you see, anything under the sun can be categorized as an restriction to your freedom of speech. If I say something innocuous and that leads to couple of weirdos smashing shop windows in the town, all it does to get me into trouble is the weirdos saying that my words made them do it. My freedom of speech will be curtailed under “public order” or “incitement to an offense” restrictions. Shouldn’t actions be punished instead of words?

Marshall Kirkpatrick at RWW thinks that the Supreme Court judgement has repercussions for bloggers in all democratic societies –

It's a good idea for us as individual web users to remember that even as new internet technology sets so much information and so many voices free, even in a celebrated democracy - online freedom may be one repressive legal ruling away from being put at serious risk. No matter where you might live - do you trust that your local judiciary would understand the issues in a case like this? We don't.

Nikhil Moro from Civic & Citizen Journalism Interest Group thinks that freedom of expression lost a case in India –

Historically India's courts have accorded a high place for expression in the hierarchy of freedoms, but as Mr. Ajit's unfortunate affair shows, social media activists should expect the state to use a myriad of laws other than libel.

Sanjukta thinks that the Supreme Court decision is good for Indian blogging –

This would help clean up a lot of #@%$ that goes around the blogsphere, will help us become more responsible and mature writers thereby establishing credibility for bloggers’ opinion and most importantly it would kill the terrible habit of writing all kinds of indecent, uncivilized, abusive things anonymously in the comments thread. This would also compel the blog owner or community discussion board owner to keep the discussion clean and abuse free. It will enforce the dicipline of self regulation on bloggers, isn’t that a great thing to achieve.

2s at Mutiny warns against a simplistic discussion on freedom of expression –

The laws of the land must find better ways to control what is being written or said in a public forum than restricting and threatening bloggers with action. Bloggers in India must together call for what I think is a more mature approach and law towards dealing with public defamatory comments on the internet. Bloggers are, after all, not “public” figures like political leaders are and to judge both by the same yardstick might not necessarily be the best method. Besides, is this restricted to just blog posts? What about comments on these posts? What about tweets?

Pramit Singh believes that the SC judgment shouldn't scare bloggers in India –

Some might think the days of free-for-all Orkut groups are over. Others will say they are in fear of treading against people with might - the politicians, big business, virtually anyone with an army of lawyers, who, in this case are trying to put fear of appearing in courts for God knows how many times and thus choosing to ‘write wisely'.

However, I have faith in our Justice system. Bloggers are not going to face a million lawsuits in India.

Dhananjay Nene thinks that the Supreme Court's judgment isn't a conclusive blow to bloggers' rights –

One important aspect which is perhaps easy to lose sight of in this debate is that the Supreme Court did not weigh in on the guilt or lack of it in this case, but on the fact that the person could not shy away from the responsibility to face the charges in a court.

Lawyer Praveen Dalal also says that we should not read too much in the Supreme Court's judgment –

With the Constitutional Protections on the side of Bloggers there must be very strong reasons to book a person for Defamation or disturbing Religious Harmony. The case is before the lower court that is also a fact finding authority. It is only after the lower court comes to a conclusion that we can proceed either to convict or acquit the accused Blogger. The Supreme Court of India did not found reasons to “Quash” the criminal proceeding against the accused and in the absence of the complete facts of the case as well as the copy of the judgment, it is very difficult to judge the correctness or incorrectness of the same. However, in all probability the accused would be either acquitted or released after admonition.

In an email reproduced in Vijay Mohanty's post, senior blogger-journalist Prem Panicker also thinks that the Supreme Court verdict is no big deal –

The SC only said that it cannot, suo moto, quash a criminal prosecution.

It did not say the case is well-founded — that is for the court to decide on the basis of existing law.

Conclusion: The Limits to Freedom of Expression in an Intolerant India

As for me, I see the Ajith D case as part of a larger trend, which operates at many levels.

At the very least, we should see this case as part of Mumbai and Pune police's crusade against inflammatory Orkut communities. Sixteen Orkut users have been arrested in the last two years on charges of criminal intimidation and hurting religious sentiments (Indian Express), and one of them spent 50 days in police custody based on a mistake in identifying an IP address! It's a serious crusade that will only become more intense in the foreseeable future and it raises several important questions.

To begin with, do we really want to defend a blogger, or a community owner, or a commentator, who has posted death threats against a common citizen or a public figure, or allowed these comments to be posted and then refused to remove them?

Going beyond that, should the Indian legal system apply the same standards for defamation for a common citizen and a public figure, especially a public figure as controversial as Bal Thackeray?

How can we allow a political party like Shiv Sena, which has set unprecedented standards in inflammatory religious speech (and violent action to back it up), to complain about blog posts or community comments hurting religious sentiments?

And, finally, given Google's willingness to short-circuit the Indian legal system and share Orkut and GMail personal data with Mumbai and Pune police, how comfortable should we feel in building our entire online presence on Google's services?

At another level, we should see this case as part of a trend, in India and in democratic countries internationally, where traditional institutions are fighting back against the internet and trying to limit its freedoms.

Barkha Dutt and NDTV threatening to sue blogger Chetan Kunte for defamation is a part of this trend. Shri Ram Sena beating up women in a Mangalore pub and then threatening to sue the organizers of the Pink Chaddi Campaign is a part of this trend. US senators refusing to believe that child predators aren't a big threat on the internet is part of this trend. US, UK, Australian and Indian governments introducing tough censorship and cyber crime laws are also a part of this trend.

All these actions, individually and collectively, curtail our personal and public freedoms and also our ability to fight for these freedoms. By threatening to sue a blogger NDTV has curtailed Indian media's ability to question violations of freedom of speech in India. Similarly, by closing down the internet in their own countries, US, UK, Australia and India have curtailed their ability to question violations of freedom of speech in Iran or China.

So, what happens in the case of Ajith D is important in itself, but it is also important as part of what's happening with the internet itself. It's critical that we force ourselves to open our eyes and see the bigger picture before it's too late.

The post was deleted from Chyetanya's blog, and on 26th of January, 2009 he posted this apology confirming unconditional withdrawal of the post. This has sparked anger and strong condemnations in the Indian blogosphere.

Gaurav Sabnis at Vantage point predicts:

It does not take a PhD in reading between the lines to guess what happened. NDTV probably sent Kunte a legal notice, asking him to pull the post down, apologize, never write about them again, and pay an absurdly massive amount of money.

Retributions confirms quoting Barkha Dutts's Facebook message that Chyetanya Kunte was indeed served with a legal notice on 3rd of January. She apparently wrote:

Just because some random bloke can sit at a computer and make up stuff doesn't mean he or others like him need to be dignified with responding to their utter and total rubbish. rubbish is what it is. And as already mentioned. Mr. Kunte has been served a legal notice for libel by NDTV. That should give you some indication of where we and I stand. The freedom afforded by the Internet cannot be used to fling allegations at individuals or groups in the hope that they will then respond to things that aren't worthy of engagement.

Gaurav Mishra at Gauravonomics Blog compiles a roundup of condemnations by Indian bloggers for silencing Chyetanya. He also reveals:

Chyetanya sent me an email on January 25th, requesting me to take down the link to his post in my roundup of reactions to media coverage of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack. I haven’t taken down the link and excerpt yet, but I have refrained from blogging about the issue so far out of concern for complicating Chyetanya’s and, perhaps, my own legal situation.

The fact is that Chyetanya wasn't the only one criticizing NDTV. According to Gaurav:

Bloggers were scathing in their criticism of Barkha Dutt’s sensationalistic coverage of the 11/26 Mumbai terror attack, accusing her of broadcasting sensitive information about the position of hostages and security troops, sensationalizing the news coverage, and being borderline hysterical, in general.

Nanopolitan tells NDTV in the post “congratulations NDTV“:

The apology you extracted reminds us of re-education programs that totalitarian regimes impose on dissidents. Or of re-induction rituals in third rate gangster movies.

Gargi at POV writes:

Amongst the institutions that has rapidly lost my trust, especially in the last two years, is the broadcast news media. Between the Prince episode, the Arushi Murder Case, running recorded footage with live bugs, with the 26/11 coverage - i have stopped watching TV news. I read magazines, i read newspapers and I read blogs. I do these because i have far more faith in the credibility of those who write - than the credibility of those who produce and package news on TV.

Updates of the Indian bloggers' reactions can be found at Desipundit. Blogbharti posts an appeal:

We urge all bloggers to send us their views on this issue. And to protest NDTV’s highhanded efforts to curb our freedom of speech.

As tech news website IndiaServer puts it:

This arrest was made because of complaint made by a Congress worker in Pune who had noticed these messages on Orkut recently. The police are now on a lookout for everybody who had posted some obscene content about Sonia Gandhi. However, the person who created the community has not been charged for hating a famous personality or having opinion which is illegal in India.

The law enforcement agency had asked Google, who is the owner of Orkut to provide the details of Vaid and it obliged. Google said that the police authorities had asked for the details of the boy and they gave them the IP address information. Till the time India has some strict laws regarding cyber crimes like the US, it is always better to avoid joining such communities or to join them after paying proper attention to it.

For your average 22 year-old IT worker, though, is simply avoiding sensitive online discussion a practical or even desirable solution? As other Orkut users are now asking, what happened to India's constitution?

As seen in similar cases involving Yahoo!'s operations in China, American ethical standards for corporate behavior don't always apply in other countries. While American law appears to be moving toward making it illegal for domestic companies like Google to enable foreign governments to suppress online speech, as Cyndy Aleo-Carreira reminds us in a post linked to by Global Voices Online editor Neha Viswanathan, these same companies' overseas operations ultimately have local laws to worry about:

The prevailing mentality in the U.S. is that U.S. laws are the One True Law and the rest of the world should abide by them in some form of global agreement. I'm sure that given the U.S. government's tendency to reinterpret even the U.S. Constitution (Gitmo), there are many countries out there who are more than happy that they aren't subject to the laws of the U.S.

At least Vaid will be given a trial; and as Aleo-Carreira mentions further down in the comments of her post, the role that Indian law has played in his arrest is still what's most relevant:

According to the complaint, the individual in question crossed a similar line as it applies to Indian law. If it was a matter of simply expressing himself, then don’t you think others, including the group’s creator, would also have been charged? There is this quick jump to judgment by Americans over anything “furrin” when our own adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn’t exactly stellar at the moment.

The complaint against Vaid goes back to December last year. What remains to be seen is how scrutiny and opposition has been aimed at the IT Act on a local level, particularly regarding the sections used against him, as well as what exactly it was Vaid put online.

For reference, Google defends its filtering of search results in China by saying that its presence alone does more for free speech than if it had no presence in China at all. Following Vaid's arrest, a number of groups have been set up on Orkut and hundreds of comments have been posted weighing heavily in Vaid's support.