Tamil Nadu court issues notice to Google over ‘hot’ content

The first additional district munsif court of Coimbatore has issued notices to internet major Google Inc, its local subsidiary Google India Pvt Ltd, its video wing YouTube and the central government's Indian Computer Emergency Response Team on a complaint alleging the search engines provide links to pornographic and sexually explicit websites even while searching for neutral details. 

In his complaint, city-based software engineer C Ashok Kumar narrated a recent incident in which he searched for "Hotmail" using the Google search engine. 

"As soon as I typed HOT, the search engine started showing links to abusive contents and pornographic videos," he said. "Even at my home, several children are using the internet for completing home work and online-competitive tests. They will be misguided by the search suggestions leading to abusive contents." 

Those who searched for the medical or gender meaning of "sex" would land in highly abusive sites that could spoil children, he said. 

Notices will be served to the internet giant soon and the case will be considered by the court again on June 7. 

According to Kumar's advocate, M Sundara Kadeswaran, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team under the department of information technology was made a party to the defendants since it was the national agency for cyber emergency incidents. "As the single authority for issuing instructions in the context of blocking websites, it has to advise the Department of Telecom to block websites which propagate hate, slander, defamation etc apart from gambling, racism, violence, terrorism and pornography," he said. "But it remains mute in the face of violations by Google."

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/legal-news/item/2439-tamil-nadu-court-issues-notice-to-google-over-%E2%80%98hot%E2%80%99-content.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/legal-news/item/2439-tamil-nadu-court-issues-notice-to-google-over-%E2%80%98hot%E2%80%99-content.html