Recently, the video of Mahatma Gandhi doing a pole dance on the popular Google-owned video sharing site, Youtube, caused a stir. It was posted by an NRI, Gautam Prasad, and he named the clip ‘time to get sexy’. He did this, realising full well that it could hurt the sentiments of millions of Indians since it concerned the Father of the Nation. Around the same time there was another controversy involving Youtube, which showed a popular model in Brazil who also happened to be footballer Ronaldo’s former wife, being intimate with her banker boyfriend. The Brazilian courts intervened and ordered Youtube to take the video off its site, or face a ban by internet service providers (ISPs) in that country. While action is yet to be taken in the Indian case, Google has withdrawn the Brazilian video.

So how much freedom should there be in cyberspace? It is clearly difficult to draw the right balance. While the internet has invested online speech with a lot of freedom, it has also raised concerns about the possible misuse of the anonymity that cyberspace affords. Youtube has a clearly laid out the terms of use, and it is difficult to certify how diligently each of the almost 65,000 postings made to the website daily follows the usage code.

Under clause 5C(iii) of the Term of Use, nobody should submit material that is unlawful, obscene, defamatory, libellous, threatening, pornographic, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or which encourages conduct that would be considered a criminal offence, give rise to civil liability, violate any law, or is otherwise inappropriate. Definitely the posting on Gandhi is inappropriate. As for the Brazilian video, it is definitely pornographic. Further when any video is flagged inappropriate, then Youtube refers to the above terms but the video is not taken off automatically. But all this does not take the responsibility out of Youtube, or for that matter Google. Google has its marketing activity in India and so there should also be a point of responsibility to address concerns such as this.

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