Supreme Court of India.
The Supreme Court on Monday asked Internet giants Google and Yahoo as well as Facebook and WhatsApp to furnish information on complaints it had received from India regarding objectionable content related to child pornography and rape uploaded to the web and action taken by them, if any. A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit directed them to come up with details for the period January 1, 2016, to August 31, 2017.
“We would like the participating companies Google, Google India, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and WhatsApp to place affidavits regarding the number of complaints they have received from India about the objectionable content concerning child pornography, rape and gangrape for the year till August 31 and the action that has been taken on it,” the bench said.
The court directed the Ministry of Home Affairs to apprise it about the number of prosecutions lauched under Sections 19 and 21 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), 2012, for the same period. The court was hearing a matter which rose out of a letter sent to former Chief Justice of India H L Dattu by Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala, along with two rape videos in a pen drive. The top court had on its own taken cognizance of the letter and asked CBI to launch a probe.
On Monday, the bench was informed by a committee of representatives from the Centre and the Internet majors, constituted to explore technical solutions to block such videos, that the companies had some objection to its report being placed in the public domain. Appearing for one of the companies, senior counsel Kapil Sibal said they could give their comments only after seeing the report and requested for a copy. The amicus curiae pointed out the companies which participated in discussions already had a copy.
The bench directed that copies of the proposals and recommendations in the report, minus the discussions, be given to the counsel so as to enable them to draw up their objections to it if any.
