Recently, an Indian national living in New York posted a video on YouTube of himself doing a (rather unfunny) skit where he dressed-up like Gandhi and did a strip-tease involving a poll. (The video is still up, the the comedian/clown/yoga instructor has posted an explanation).
There was much shock and anger in India and even some small riots. Gandhi's great grandson weighed in...
"Some action must be taken on this. The Father of the Nation is being shown disrespect here. Gautam's act is reprehensible, crude and offensive. If the government doesn't take action against the website YouTube, it will just prove its incompetence. Freedom of expression should be accompanied with responsibility."
India West noted yesterday that the Economic Times has reported:
India's Department of Information Technology has asked YouTube to pull out the offensive clips and is also trying to rope in the Indian embassy in Washington to initiate action.
"So far, however, the government's requests have cut little ice with YouTube, which is owned by Google," the paper wrote. "Despite the fact that about 36 hours have elapsed since the DIT fired the salvo at YouTube, the objectionable clips are running openly on the site and, in fact, attracting more eyeballs. The controversial pole dance clip has now attracted 9,600 page views and the number is increasing as we write."
To give you a sense of how big of a deal this is, to some, in India. The president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India is so fed up that he is calling for regulation and/or government action to deal with objectionable content. In an op-ed that appeared yesterday on the Financial Express site, he says...
In view of the present scene on the internet, we feel that if we are not successful in imposing the self-regulations, then any other responsible body should come forward to take this responsibility very seriously to decide about regulating the comments and videos on the internet. Earlier, it was my opinion that before making compulsion or mandating any thing to the citizen, it should be the duty of the government to educate about the subject very thoroughly and then impose regulations on to them.
But what we are observing is that this leniency is being taken very lightly and even making a joke of our patience. An example that is in front of us is that of the Orkut community ‘Hate India’ and a video on YouTube of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the nation, surprisingly posted by an NRI.
We always find that Western countries are demanding a level playing field in IT as well as in other sectors from our government. Any harmful material for them is being taken very seriously and through their agencies, they want to get rid of that issue at the earliest. On the contrary, issues related to the Indian community are not taken seriously.
Obviously, there is plenty of "harmful material" pointed at the US and nearly every other Western nation on the Web and probably in video form (including those developed in non-Western nations). But, perception becomes reality pretty fast when you start lining up long-cultivated cultural norms versus new, foreign-based (so-called) intrusions.
An Indian Supreme Court attorney also weighs in with an op-ed in the Financial Express. He concludes:
The nation is confronted with the task to request YouTube to remove the obnoxious content. In addition, if the website so desires, the said person or computer could be blacklisted from the website. There is a need to actually incorporate provisions in the IT Act 2000 to provide for more effective redress mechanisms. We don’t have any direct provisions to control the spread of the scenario at present but there is a crying need to update our cyberlaws to have relevant provisions to regulate undesirable third party content on websites.
For the sake of the online video industry, let's hope we can get create appropriate mechanisms that ensure the free-flow of creative content world-wide but that have "awareness" of said crying needs.
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