Information Society Watch

May 1, 2007, Times of India

The social networking site, Orkut has entered into an informal arrangement with the Mumbai police which will not only block forums and communities which contain inflammatory content, but also provide the IP addresses from which such content has been generated. This agreement termed as 'the priority reporting tool' is apparently aimed at improving communication between Google and the police. Under this arrangement, the existing procedure of sending a request to the central government's computer emergency response team in Delhi will be replaced with the local police getting direct access to mediate in the matter. The Mumbai police is also negotiating with YouTube to agree to a similar arrangement. This move of orkut has spurred requests from other states in India for this arrangement. It will be interesting to see if this translates into state orchestrated censorship or a mechanism to reduce the police response lead time.

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