What to do about internet content?

Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, has set off a firestorm of protest by demanding that ‘internet intermediaries' — specifically in this round, four social networking giants, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft, which enable hundreds of millions of individual users to publish and share on the worldwide web — remove inflammatory content as well as other text and images that might “offend Indian sensibilities.” As in other battles over free speech, both sides are claiming the moral high ground: Mr. Sibal's supporters, including the Bharatiya Janata Party, don the mantle of defenders of order, decency, and ‘Indian values'; his opponents, led by the bloggers, wear the halo that comes with wanting to protect and expand modern democratic rights.

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