Delhi High Court to hear Facebook and Google’s petition

The Delhi High Court will hear the petition filed by Google and Facebook challenging the trial court’s order to prosecute them for objectionable content. Google, Facebook and 19 other social networking sites faced legal action for offences of promoting enmity between classes after Kapil Sibal led govt. team granted sanction to prosecute them on Friday.

The government is threatening to block Google and Facebook like in china if the companies fail to comply.

Like China, we will block all such websites, they need to check on offensive and objectionable material and remove such content from their web pages

-Justice Suresh Kait

The trial court had earlier summoned representatives from 21 of the internet based companies including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Youtube. A legal complaint has been filed under Section 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC. The court ordered the sites to remove all “anti-religious” or “anti-social” contents by February 6, 2012.

Google India, senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi talking against this matter said

Billions of people across the globe, post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene but cannot be checked, The US-based Google Inc is the service provider and not me (Google India) and hence, we are not liable for the action of my holding company. Moreover, it is criminal case where a vicarious liability cannot be fastened on a company which has no role, whatsoever, in the alleged offence.

-Mukul Rohatgi 

The govt. countered this statement by stating that the Indian Office can ask the US office to then remove such content.