Internet giants join centre in massive ‘porn’ clean-up

New Delhi: NP NEWS 24 ONLINE: On Thursday, Supreme Court quoted that the Centre and Internet giants, including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, were in an agreement that videos of rape, child pornography and objectionable material needed to be “stamped out”.

The bench stated in the order, “So far as the suggestions given by the Union of India as mentioned in the order dated November 28, 2018, are concerned, it appears that each of the different entities has a different reaction to them. Google and YouTube have one reaction. Facebook, Microsoft and WhatsApp each have different reactions.”

The bench including Justices Madan B Lokur and UU Lalit noted that the mediators had ‘different reactions’ to suggestions given earlier by the Centre, which included setting up pro-active monitoring tools for auto-deletion of unlawful content by deploying artificial intelligence based tools.

The bench also explained that everybody has agreed that the child pornography, rape and gang rape videos and objectionable material need to be stamped out and the proposed/draft SOP will be drafted on this premise.

The Centre had last month suggested to the court that the intermediaries should deploy trusted flaggers for identifying and deletion of unlawful content and also set up of the 24X7 mechanism for dealing with requisitions of law enforcement agencies.

It directed that the draft SOP be filed in the Supreme Court on December 10 and its copies be served to the counsel appearing for the Centre, petitioner and the lawyer assisting it as an impartial adviser.