Delhi HC quashes charges against Microsoft India

The Delhi High Court Monday quashed charges of hosting objectionable content against Microsoft India and set aside a trial court order for initiating criminal proceedings against the company.

Justice Suresh Kait accepted the company's plea that Microsoft was not providing a platform to people to interact with each other and post or publish their views, but one engaged in developments and sale of software and computing solutions.

The company's counsel told the court that no defamatory material was posted on its websites.

The move came as Microsoft India approached the high court, challenging the trial court's order initiating criminal proceedings against it for hosting "obscene and derogatory content".

The high court also gave the complainant Vinay Rai liberty to file a fresh complaint if any credible piece of evidence was found against the company.

Rai had approached the trial court to remove objectionable content from 21 websites, including Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Yahoo and YouTube. Among these, 12 websites are of companies based abroad.

Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar had summoned the companies to face trial for allegedly committing offences punishable under the Indian Penal Code sections 292 (sale of obscene books and material) and 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person).

The trial court observed that the material submitted by the complainant contained obscene pictures and derogatory articles pertaining to Hindu deities, Prophet Mohammad and Jesus Christ.

Indian cities dominate 'sex' search online in Google

Given the size of our population, one would have thought Indians get enough sex.

But that still doesn't stop us searching for more. Data collected by Google through its search engine shows that in 2011, seven Indian cities featured in the list of top 10 cities worldwide where the "sex" query was particularly popular.

The rankings might come as a bit of a surprise. Lucknow and Kolkata - cities which pride themselves on their high cultural values -- came in at No. 2 and 3, respectively. Pune was at No. 5, New Delhi at 6, Bangalore at 7, Chennai at 8 and Mumbai at 9. The only non-Indian cities in the list were Colombo, which topped the chart, Lahore at No. 4 and Hanoi at 10. In short, every single city in the top 10 was from Asia. Expect the demographic dividend to last for a while. The famed Indo-Pak rivalry spilled over to this sphere as well, with Pakistan emerging as the country from where Google received the maximum number of search queries for "sex" in 2011. Pakistan had topped the list in 2010 as well.

The data, which is part of Google's Trends application, also reveals that Pakistan tops the all-time list - which maps the period ever since the search engine started collecting the data - while India comes in third behind Vietnam.

Though Google says "Trends provides insights into broad search patterns" and "several approximations are used when computing these results," the data mirrors the volume of actual search queries. To rank regions and cities, the web firm "calculates the ratio of searches for the term coming from each city, divided by total Google searches coming from the same city."

The Trends data is not the only indication that people in India and Pakistan have sex on their mind. A few weeks ago Google had released its Zeitgeist report, which takes a look at the top search queries of the year.

In India, "How to kiss" topped the list of the most popular "how to..." searches. The same query topped the list in 2010 as well. "How to flirt" and "how to love" were the 10th and 11th most popular queries. The "how to kiss" query was equally popular in Pakistan in 2011. India and Pakistan share some basic intincts - which could add a whole new dimension to the phrase, "Make love, not war".

Court ordered to websites, delete derogatory content by Feb 06

An Indian court ordered websites on Saturday to remove derogatory contents by February 06.

According to reports, the court has also ordered 21 defendant companies to submit order of compliance by the same date. 

On Friday US companies Facebook, Google, Yahoo and other Internet firms, were ordered by a court to remove material considered religiously offensive.

This news of screening web content comes amidst recent controversy sparked off by Union Minister Kapil Sibal, who had urged Facebook, Twitter, Google and others to remove offensive material, unleashing a storm of criticism from internet users complaining of censorship.

A court in Delhi on Friday had issued summons to 19 companies to stand trial for offences relating to distributing obscene material to minors, after being shown images it said were offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians, a news agency said.

India has generally unrestricted access to the Internet for those of its 1.2 billion people who can afford it and are on the electrical and telephone grids.

So far only about a tenth of the population uses the Web, but with the number of connections growing fast in the religiously conservative society, concerns about the nature of web content are growing in some quarters, including senior government officials.

Another Delhi court earlier this week told the websites to remove photographs, videos or text which might hurt religious sentiments.

Despite rules to remove offensive content, India's internet access is largely free when compared with tight controls in fellow Asian economic powerhouse China. But in line with many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly nervous about the power of social media.

India has 100 million internet users, the third-largest user base behind China and the United States which is forecast to grow to 300 million users in the next three years.

Katrina most searched person online, Anna Hazare second

Leaving behind anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare, Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif has emerged as the most searched person online in the country this year, says a report by search engine giant Google.

The report released by Google on Friday has come up with the topics and persons that Internet users in the country searched the most in 2011.

Katrina Kaif topped the chart in the category of 'Top Searched People' online. Hazare came second.

Hazare was at the top position in the category of 'Fastest Rising People', which is the list of people that have gained interest of Internet users. Strip-fame model Poonam Pandey is second in this list.

Among the news items, cricket league IPL tops the chart while the current hot topic in Indian news media 'Lokpal Bill' is the fifth most searched subject online.

In sports, Cricket World Cup 2011 emerged as the most searched sporting event, while Sachin Tendulkar was the most searched sports person.

Ironically, competitor Facebook is at the top of 'Top Searches' on Google, followed by its own video-sharing service YouTube.

Interestingly, the report noticed that for the first time Internet moved out of the realm of the metros, which was the trend until last year.

"Over 70 per cent of search happened in non-metros and a lot of Internet usage moved to mobile phones," Google India Head of Products Lalitesh Katrgadda said.