Restrict Orkut

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Restrict Google, HC tells Maharashtra Aurangabad: In a move aimed at restricting untrammelled chatter and expression in cyberspace, the Aurangabad bench of Bombay High Court has asked Maharashtra government to issue notice to Google for alleged spread of hatred about India by its social network service ‘Orkut’. The order was issued by Justices A P Deshpande and R M Borde on Monday in response to a PIL filed by local advocate Yugant R Marlapalle. A picture of a burning national tricolour, bearing an anti-india message, has been put on www.orkut.com and a community ‘We hate India’ has been created on the site, the petition said. It has also appealed to the government to appoint a controller under the Information Technology Act, 2000, to regulate all such communities being in operation on the Net. Orkut, which is Google’s social networking site, is an online community launched two years ago that connects people through a network of friends. The website provides an online meeting place to socialise, make new acquaintances and find others with common interests. The common interests could well include shared animosity towards a person, nation, object or even a subject like mathematics. A search through the communities on Orkut showed that there were at least 1,475 of them with the word “hate” in their names. An exact count could not be got, since the search stops at 1,000 hits. There were 475 communities with “we hate” in their name and over 1,000 with “I hate” in theirs. It is not clear how the petitioner expects any agency in India to regulate the formation of communities on the Net. That is assuming that such regulation is desirable at all, an extremely contentious assumption. Source : TOI