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Cyber
ChatterED
TRIP
What
You See Is What You Get
New I&B
Minister Sushma Swaraj says she's "determined" to stop "obscenity
on TV". When the business of bandwidth is taken care of it could
as easily mean "obscenity on the Net". The only difference is
the thought police can't make any moves beyond locking up a paedophile
and throwing away the key. Stopping, or regulating, what we see will be
driven by people like you and me. And it's already happening.
Pune
Tackle: At wired.com,
there's a story that is hardly making waves in India yet, about Abhinav,
a Pune law student who has taken rediff.com
to court saying the country's biggest portal has broken the law. Section
292 of the IPC targets pornography, among other things. Abhinav claims
that as rediff.com's search engine provides links to over two million
porn sites, it's liable for prosecution. Rediff.com execs say blocking
sites is against the nature of search engines. So where will it go?
 In
all likelihood, the precedent shown will be the yanking of some porn links
by indiatimes.com
earlier this year, after Delhi Police made a public song and dance about
it. The problem is the absence of clear-cut law and the sheer scope of
the Net. You can take an Indian portal or ISP to court, and even ask a
portal or ISP to block sites that show child porn, for instance. But what
if you shift to a casual search through almost any major search engine,
from Google to HotBot, that offer millions of pages with what would make
Sushma go purple with righteous indignation? Much like quitting smoking
or watching your weight, it will be up to you to choose what you see-and
that's where the battle for the block is headed.
The Future's
Pro-Choice: Portals like 123india.com
have  voluntarily
blocked sex sites. Type "sex" and you get links for business
centres, export houses and hospitals. The portal will tom-tom this as
a family-friendly option, riding on the trend that increasingly popular
"family" ISPs in the US, such as familyclick.com
and lightdog.com
are cresting. Travel to these places, and you will see that the ISPs aggressively
make a USP out of blocking, or "filtering" potentially offensive
material, from pornography and violence to drugs, profanity and suicide.
They also offer instant counselling on chat-room dos and don'ts and special
advisories to tell your child to steer clear of hazard zones. Instead
of downloading NetNanny for $35 (about Rs 1,600) and similar Net "locks",
you have an ISP playing nanny as you sign up. In India, ISPs like Mantra
Online, for instance, use filters.
This trend
is in the same space-time domain as a ruckus in Canada over Net filters,
and the US state of Virginia's failure to block Net porn. Basically, it's
a pro-choice argument. You can still go where you want to. But increasingly,
general portals and ISPs will offer you a choice should you wish to stay
away. A verdict-either way-in Pune will only underscore it.
 Myname.com:
Wipro reclaiming 15 of its trademark domain names (among them, azimpremji.org
and premjifamily.com) last week from a US-based cyber-squatter can
only boost the move. The Bangalore-based it major filed a case through
the World Intellectual Property Organisation's domain name dispute
resolution centre. You can try too. Just type www.wipo.org, get there
and file to reclaim. |
 The
Divide Is Now: If it can happen in the US, think of the havoc
it can wreak here. Gartner Group, a Connecticut-based technology consulting
firm, estimates in a recent report that more than 50 million adults
will be left behind in the next few years due to Net illiteracy. That's
short of a quarter of America's population. This could become a drag
on the economy, warns Gartner in a report prepared for a Senate subcommittee.
It urges the government to offer companies tax breaks to enable employees
to get networked and work from home, if need be. |
DoCoMo
Zap: Japanese WAP-mobile whiz NTT DoCoMo isn't in India yet, but
its mega-success with teens and yuppies in Japan has spawned one early
imitator in India. Mumbai mobile phone service provider Orange is
providing content on an experimental basis for six months for free-to-test
acceptance. It provides news, stock updates, entertainment and navigation
aids, among other things. But chat is what will make it. And DoCoMo?
It has zapped ahead. The company unveiled a wrist-watch shaped phone
cum computer last week.
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CLARIFICATION:
The correct URL of a movie-buff site reviewed two Cyberchatters ago is
upperstall.com. Apologies.
(Please
send your comments to Sudeep Chakravarti at sudeep@intoday.com)
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