Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo Etc Summoned Before Indian Court

There are certain offences against the State that cannot be tried by any court in India till central/state government grants its permission. Such permission is granted under section 196 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), 1973 and once granted certain criminal offense committed against a nation/state can be prosecuted.

Lack of cyber due diligence and weak arguments before the Delhi High court has brought a situation where websites like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc would have to face criminal trial in India. The Indian government has sanctioned prosecution of social networking sites like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo India over objectionable content on their sites and with this the criminal trial process has begun. Even these websites may be blocked in India if they fail to comply with Indian laws.

Meanwhile, the trial court adjourned the matter till March 13, 2012. The trial court has also directed the external affairs ministry to serve the summons issued to foreign-based social networking sites. With this the excuse of being an Indian subsidiary is also gone and now parent companies would have to face the heat.

Indian government, while granting such permission, said “Government of India, after being satisfied that such content are violative of the provisions of the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, and after due application of judicious minds finds it appropriate to grant sanction under section 196 of CrPC to proceed against the accused persons in the aforesaid complaint in national harmony, integration and national interest”. This was said in a report submitted by the department of information technology to the trial court.

According to Praveen Dalal, managing partner of law firm Perry4Law and leading techno legal expert of India, if Websites are “Violating” Laws of India and they have been “Notified” to this effect and still they “do not Remedy the Situation”, then the Safe Harbour Protection under Indian Information Technology Act, 2000 is “Lost” and such Websites/Owners can be Prosecuted in India.

This entire situation could have been avoided by simply removing the offending contents. I do not know why websites failed to consider such request. Even otherwise when such a media rage was raised over the issue, there was nothing that prevented such websites to remove the offending contents on their own. Now these websites cannot even claim that they had no knowledge of such offending contents.

The best option for these websites seems to be to remove the infringing material and report to the concerned courts. The sooner they do it the better it would be to diffuse this tension and situation.

Is Facebook The Most Appalling Spying Machine?

I am no big fan of conspiracy theories but I am a big fan of civil liberties protection in cyberspace. I also believe that when rights are outlawed only outlawed would have rights. If you add e-surveillance to this situation, the plight of civil liberties in cyberspace is well understood.

If a company engages in online profiling and data mining, something is grossly wrong with its policies and intentions. Further, the unilateral websites censorships by sites like Google and accounts censorship by sites like Facebook further adds woes to this situation.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has labelled Facebook as “the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented” although Facebook denied the same. Now Richard Stallman has declared Facebook and Google+ are mistreating their users. Furthermore, he points out Facebook performs massive surveillance with its tracking cookies.

Over the last few months, Facebook was accused multiple times of using cookies to track users even after they log out of the service, though it has since fixed the issues and explained how its system worked. Facebook has also been sued in multiple states for tracking its users even after they logged out of the service. All the lawsuits allege the company violated federal wiretap laws.

Recently 10 consumer and privacy groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Facebook. This is the second request to the FTC for a probe of the social network this week. Even Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate how Facebook’s cookies behave. However, Facebook has denied its recently-granted patent is used for tracking logged-out users. The company says it just describes the Facebook Platform.

A security researcher claims that Facebook alters its tracking cookies the moment you log out, instead of deleting them. Since your uniquely identifying account information is still present in these cookies, Facebook can continue to track you. This means that if you log out of Facebook, you’re not really doing much. If you then head to a website that contains a Facebook plugin, your browser will continue to send personally identifiable information back to Facebook.

Now Facebook is planning to gradually roll out sponsored stories in news feed, beginning next year. From January 2012, sponsored stories or advertisements, which now appear on the right side of the page, will be part of the news feeds of the users - along with other normal updates and posts. Every time a Facebook user clicks on the 'like' button for certain brands or pages, the ad would display the user's name, picture and a line, saying he/she likes the advertiser.

It seems Facebook is well committed to engage in e-surveillance and privacy violations of its users. Further Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Adobe and many other companies also exhaustively track users’ online activities.

It is for the users to adopt privacy protection mechanisms to defeat such attempts of Facebook. Some good options include using plugins like Do Not Track Plus, Ghostery, Adblock Plus, etc. These plugins allow you to have a good control over your browser that sends referrer data through which these companies are misusing users’ data and information.

Do not trust these companies alone for your privacy protection and you must also take some pro active steps to enforce your privacy.

Competition Regime Getting Stronger Worldwide

Anti-competitive practices are a bane to free consumer society. They induce arbitrary elements in the fair business dealing for the personal gain of the some. This has necessitated a competition law regime all over the world.

With the growing use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) all over the World, competition law has been invoked times again to redress consumer’s grievances and to uphold their interests. Even the most powerful and influential ICT services and product providers have to comply with the requirements of competition law regime.

Anti-trust actions have been taken against many ICT giants of the world from time to time. In a recent development, Microsoft has bowed to pressure from the European Commission over the dominance of its web browser product Explorer, making a legally binding promise to give consumers a choice of browsers when installing software to surf on the internet. The company has also pledged to disclose coding information which will make it easier for consumers to use word-processing and spreadsheet products from rival companies on its operating systems.

Efforts have also been taken to strengthen Indian Competition law regime. Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law informs that Indian Parliament has recently passed a Bill to facilitate transfer of anti-competition cases pending before the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) of India to the Competition Appellate Tribunal. While the newly constituted counterpart of MRTPC, known as Competition Commission of India (CCI), has started functioning it has not settled any case. Thus the Tribunal had not been given adequate work, necessitating an ordinance for transfer of work from the MRTPC.

Similarly, the US Federal Trade Commission has recently sued Intel alleging that the computer chip-making giant used anti-competitive practices to maintain its dominance. The suit claimed that Intel coerced computer makers not to buy rival chips and redesigned software to stunt the performance of non-Intel computer processors. Such actions were part of a systematic campaign to "put the brakes on superior competitive products that threatened" Intel's market share, the FTC said.

The move comes just one month after Intel agreed to pay its main rival Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion to settle that company's claims against it. But Intel still faces antitrust complaints from European Union regulators and from New York state.

Although anti trust and anti competition actions are increasing, yet they have to be more rigorous and frequent to advance the rights of the consumers.