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Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said on Tuesday the companies were given time to come up with solution to prevent posting of such material, including hurting of religious sentiments, but they remained non-committal, forcing the government to activate itself to formulate a mechanism.
"We will not allow this kind of material. It is certain," Kapil Sibal told reporters at a press conference here.
He was particularly referring to some images spotted on Sept 5 that were against one particular religion.
"I believe that no reasonable person aware of sensibilites of large communities in this country would wish to see this content in the public domain," he said referring to the images which he said he informally showed several journalists.
He said the government "does not believe in censorship or directly or indirectly curbing the freedom of press", but they were forced to act when the companies (Facebook, Google, Microsoft) refused to respond to their request to ensure that such contents did not find place on their sites.
He said they asked the companies running the sites to come up with solution "which you think are appropriate and reasonable."
He said when the offensive contents were shown to them the representatives of these companies agreed that they were disparaging but they did not take any action.
"So we kept sending them reminders," he said, adding that despite so, the firms did not take the government seriously.
"We prepared a draft framework for disablement of information. We discussed with representatives of Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and orally they agreed to many of them," he said.
He said he had asked them on Nov 29 to come to him in writing but on Dec 5 they said they cannot do anything.
The companies said they are applying the community standards of the
"This is a matter of great concern to us. We have to protect the sensibilities and cultural ethos and we will not allow the religious sentiments of large communities to be hurt," Sibal said.
Sibal said these firms are not even cooperative in providing information about terrorists using their platforms.
Sibal also refuted charges that his government was acting to curb the online onslaught of the Anna Hazare group or that they were particularly angry over morphed images of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Meanwhile, Sibal's attempt to rein in free flowing comments on Facebook, Google by pre-screening of the postings by the companies has drawn angry reactions of netizens.
Some of the social networking and micro-blogging site members even posted comments like "
"All Facebook posts to have 'Kapil Sibal likes this' by default," goes a headline in Faking News. -- NNN-IBNS
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