NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday warned social networking site Facebook India and search engine Google India that websites can be “blocked” the way China did, if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove obscene material from their web pages.
“Like China, we will block all such websites,” Justice Suresh Kait threatened while asking the counsel for Facebook and Google India to develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove “offensive and objectionable” material from their
pages.
Justice Kait, however, did not stay the proceedings against the two websites before the trial court. Senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Google India, said that the postings of “the obscene, objectionable and defamatory” articles and other things cannot be “filtered” .
“No human interference is possible and moreover, it won’t be possible to check such incidents. Billions of people across the world, post their articles on the website. Yes, they may be defamatory, obscene but cannot be checked,” he said.
“Google Inc is the service provider and not me (Google India) and we are not liable for the action of my holding company.
“We cannot control a billion minds. Some are conservative while some are liberal and some write all the defamatory articles on the web pages,” he said.
Additional Solicitor General A S Chandhiok, appearing for the Centre, said the US-based Google Inc has sufficient mechanism to know what constitutes offending material.