Monday 17 September 2012

Appropriate regime soon for the regulation of social media and cyberspace, says Government

The government has taken a decision to bring an appropriate regime about blocking content on the Internet, especially social media in an efficient and timely manner. The meeting took place on August 27 in the Prime Minister’s Office and was attended by high level officials including heads of all intelligence agencies, representatives from the ministries of home, telecom and IT and representatives from the ministries of home, telecom and IT. The details of the meeting were accessed by a business newspaper which said there would be an effective cyber monitoring system and the perpetrators would be penalized as well. 
The regime would also have a legal arm where the existing gaps in the IT Act would also be plugged so the malicious use of the internet and social media can be effectively deterred. 

The mandate and structure of the new regime would be worked out by the ministries of home and information technology. 
The need for the prevention of malicious use of the internet was realized after the rumours were spread through mobile phone text messages and on social networking sites. As a result, there was large scale panic and exodus among Northeastern migrants living in other states. To address the situation, the government had to block about 20 Twitter accounts and about 310 other web pages with YouTube videos and Facebook pages other websites. 
The Internet service providers and telecom operators were asked by the home ministry to block Twitter in Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh August 23. The telecom operators said they didn’t have the requisite technology to block the websites on a specific state-by-state basis. 
"This will introduce predictability with regard to what kind of content is liable to be regulated and for how long, the structure and process of such regulation, proactive dissemination of information to counter false propaganda, as well as a system of graded response and graded penalty to perpetrators," the minutes of the meet said and the Delhi based business newspaper quotes.

Source:
http://cablequest.org/news/government-news/item/1581-appropriate-regime-soon-for-the-regulation-of-social-media-and-cyberspace,-says-government.html

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