It is conventionally accepted that, among the three institutions of Government in India, the Judiciary is the most respected. But, the recent spate of statements, and judgements in the Judicial section leaves ordinary people like me, extremely disillusioned.
Let us look at certain examples, and try to understand, what exactly is being asked by our governing institutions.
a) Imagine a news vendor, who brings 3 news papers to your house. The choice of these newspapers, has been defined by you. Now, if there is a case, that, a particular article in one of the newspapers, is extremely criminally offensive. Would you actually prosecute, the news stand vendor for this? Let us extend this logic further. Imagine a certain group, which is in charge of all news stand vendors. Based on the same criteria, Will that group be prosecuted?
The reason, is because, There are content creators and disseminators of content. The mistake of a content creator should not essentially lead to the blockage of news.
b) We hear of many incidents of violence across different places in the country in different sources. Now, logically, our Police is responsible , for maintaining law and order. Do we ever have a situation, where the Police force is disbanded because a murder was committed? Now, strictly speaking, law and order is a much bigger and more direct responsibility, than, in analogical terms on the Internet as what is done by Google or Facebook. It does not make sense to ban a product which impacts crores of people's lives and is only growing.
c) Every week, we hear a case of violence , in Indian railways. Now, the crime is committed in the jurisdiction of Indian railways and it's police force. Will IR be criminally liable and completely stopped, because a crime was committed on it.
The crux of the matter here is that, we live in web 2.0 world. When Internet came , it was web 1.0. Content was created by people. and generated an audience, based on it's relevance.
With huge amount of content on the Internet, today, the need for solutions which can curate such data came forward. This is Web 2.0. Google does n0t create the Internet. It just provides a relevant way of working with it. They're your ordinary newspaper wallah , who gives you the newspapers you want. They're just bigger.
Indians are working hard to create their own versions. As is a renowned saying," You can hate the message, but, killing the messanger is neither ethical nor logical, but, albeit counterproductive".
Our regular Media constantly refrains on Press freedom and not Killing the messenger. The truth is that, they create content. Therefore, they're liable.
We have enough laws for defamatory content. They can be used to investigate and prosecute. Killing the Medium is akin to taking us back to the Stone Age.
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