In
India, Facebook, Google and several other American technology companies are in
court on charges that they failed to block “objectionable” material that showed
up on their sites. In a country with a rapidly expanding Internet market, the
case is an important test of whether and how Internet companies should police
the user-generated content that appears on their sites. In Pakistan, the
government’s open call for
global companies to provide Web filtering technology has met with a bizarre
civil society campaign. A group based in Pakistan that calls itself “Bolo Bhi”
wrote to eight companies that make a variety of security products, asking them
not to satisfy Pakistan’s demand for a firewall that would censor the Web. In
less than a month, five of those eight companies have said they will not
respond to Pakistan’s request for proposals, known as an RFP. McAfee was the
latest company to do so, with a message on Twitter
on Monday afternoon: “McAfee has confirmed that it is not pursuing the Pakistan
Firewall RFP.”
The
fact that social networking sites like Facebook and big websites like Google are
the causes of these charges really shows how technology is taking over the
world and how small it is making it. It is very interesting to see how
something that is normal for us here in America is so “objectionable” in other
places around the world such as India and Pakistan.
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