Google Takes On Indian Parliament

The recommendation of an Indian parliamentary committee threatens to change the wording in proposed legislation that would hold Google and other service providers accountable for content traversing their system.

In the US, interactive computer services and telephone companies are not responsible for the ways in which people use their networks. If two people use email and phone calls to plan a crime, for example, those two people, not the email service provider or the phone company, are held responsible.

Proposed legislation in the Indian Parliament would uphold this principle, except that now the Standing Committee on Information Technology is recommending against wording that removes "intermediaries" from liability:

What is relevant here is that when [the] platform is abused for transmission of allegedly obscene and objectionable contents, the intermediaries/service providers should not be absolved of responsibility.

Google India policy analyst, Rishi Jaitly argues that a small semantic difference could stifle Internet innovation in the country: