The Constitution of India guarantees the right to freedom of speech and expression, which extends to speech on the internet and other electronic media, but reserves the authority to impose reasonable restrictions in the interests of sovereignty and integrity of India, state security, foreign relations, public order, decency, or morality, defamation, or incitement to an offence. Growing levels of internet penetration, the increased reach of social networking sites and other social media leading to wider access to information has made this task increasingly difficult. In this context, the concept of Internet Censorship (“IC”) is important to be understood.

IC is not a new concept in India and has been discussed time and again. There seems to be no specific point in time from when it can be said that IC in India really started; however, happening of a few incidences in the recent past can be considered as the genesis of this concept. Wikipedia defines IC as control or suppression of the publishing or access to information on the internet which maybe carried out by governments or by private organizations at the behest of governments or on their own initiative. Individuals and organizations may also engage in self-censorship on their own or due to intimidation and fear.

Until the late 1990s, the Indian Government had control over all aspects of the telecommunications sector – policy, regulation and operations. The New Internet Policy introduced in 1998 brought liberalisation and in the year 2000, the Indian Parliament created the Information Technology Act (“IT Act”) to provide a legal framework to regulate internet use and commerce, including digital signatures, security and hacking. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (“CERT-IN”) was set up by the Department of Information Technology under the IT Act to implement India’s filtering regime. By stretching the prohibition against publishing obscene content to include the filtering of Web sites, CERT-IN was empowered in 2003 to review complaints and act as the sole authority for issuing blocking instructions to the Department of Telecommunications.

The IT Act enacted in 2000 was a very basic law that dealt mostly with the recognition of electronic documents, digital signatures and cyber crime and itspunishment. This Act was significantly amended in 2008, when it was expanded to bring under its purview acts of cyberterrorism and information security and conferred upon the Government wide powers to censor and monitor digital content on the internet and mobile networks. This was recently supplemented by various new rules notified by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology under Section 79 of the IT Act, which set restrictions on user-generated content on online forums and social networking sites deemed to be offensive or inflammatory and set guidelines for operation of internet cafés. The new rules relating to reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information, intermediaries guidelines, guidelines for cyber cafes etc lay down certain specific conditions on the websites and the endusers such as, the websites shall inform the users not to publish any posts that are blasphemous, incite hatred, are ethnically objectionable, infringe patents, threaten India’s unity or public order. Websites will have to remove any content within 36 hours if a complainant terms it as blasphemous, inciting violence, harming him or national security in any way. As per these rules, legal action can be taken against the website owner if the content is not removed within the specified time frame.

On the one hand, the implementation of these rules is a welcome change as far as the regulation of the content posted on the internet/websites etc is concerned, but on the other hand, these new Rules are also being criticised on various issues. One of the major criticisms is that they will increase the cost of compliance for internet firms that will now have to keep largeteams to monitor and remove blasphemous content. Organizations such as the Internet and Mobile Association of India have expressed that the implementation of the rules will be detrimental to the growth of social media in India. Their fear is that these rules may harm the right of the citizens to freedom of speech and expression on the internet. The rules place control over who can access the internet in public places. All internet cafes must maintain records of all customers for an entire year. Users might also face problems of access without an identification card and minors must be accompanied by an adult. The cubicles of such cafes must face the open area of the café and there is also a restriction on how high their walls can be.

It is understandable that freedom of speech must come with certain caveats and in that light, censoring of the content being posted on the internet seems correct but it must also be kept in mind that the internet has always been seen as a means of communication. Thus, what is needed is a very fine balance between both these ends of the same spectrum. The internet is a vast space and is one of the greatest sources of information for one and all thus what is needed is a controlled and channelized flow of content and information.