New Delhi: It is not possible to prevent uploading of sexual contents on internet but it is possible to remove them within a few days of uploading, the search engines informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
On February 1, the court had asked the search engines like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, besides social media networks Facebook and Whatsapp to come up with a “firewall” similar to the one developed in China to automatically prevent uploading of any explicit sexual content on the social medium.
During the resumed hearing on Tuesday before a Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Uday Lalit, it was pointed out that in Youtube alone 4½ hours of videos are uploaded every minute and it would require lakhs of employees to scrutinise every content to prevent them from being uploaded.
Rs 195-crore allocated for cyber cell
It was submitted that since uploading takes place across the country, it will be impossible to prevent them. However, the contents can be removed if there is a nodal agency to receive complaints and direct search engines to remove the objectionable contents. Earlier counsel Ms Aparna Bhat for the petitioner NGO Prajwala pointed out that China had evolved successfully a “firewall” to prevent any offensive material on the Internet. No wonder she said the technology had gained the sobriquet “Great Firewall of China.”
On behalf of the Centre, additional solicitor general Maninder Singh informed the court that the Central government had decided to allocate Rs 195.83 crore towards setting up of an dedicated “Cyber Crime Prevention Against Women and Children” cell to combat the menace of such horrendous crimes against women and children. The amount has been earmarked for three years and the nodal agency will be put in place soon.
