India courts order Net firms to filter content

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By Robert Daniel, MarketWatch TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) – Nearly two dozen companies with Internet-related operations have been ordered by Indian courts to remove anti-religious and otherwise objectionable content from their sites, weekend media reports say. The companies must update their progress on the effort within two weeks, a court in New Delhi ordered on Saturday, the reports say. The firms include Facebook Inc., Google Inc., /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG +0.55% Â* Microsoft Corp. /quotes/zigman/20493/quotes/nls/msft MSFT +0.85% Â* and Yahoo Inc., /quotes/zigman/59898/quotes/nls/yhoo YHOO +1.19% the reports say. Earlier, another Indian court summoned the Internet companies to stand trial for showing such content, the reports say. The companies <a href="http://www.louisvuittonukbagsuk.com"><strong>Louis Vuitton UK</strong></a> "are selling, publicly exhibiting and have put into circulation obscene, lascivious content [that] tends to deprave and corrupt the persons who are likely to read, see or hear the same," media reports quoted the court in the latest case as saying. Google on Saturday told The Wall Street Journal in an emailed statement that it complies with court orders where possible but couldn't comment <a href="http://www.louisvuittonoutletstoresonlines.com"><strong>L ouis Vuitton</strong></a> on the current case since it hadn't received the details of the order. The petition against the sites in the latest case had been filed by Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi, founder of fatwaonline.com, media reports say. Media reports say India is pressing major Internet firms to filter out what the government considers unacceptable material, including religiously sensitive images and altered images of politicians. The Journal quoted the country's federal minister of communications and IT, Kapil Sibal, as saying earlier this month that the government and Internet companies failed to agree on the idea that the companies should themselves censor content on their sites. Robert Daniel is MarketWatch's Middle East bureau chief, based in Tel Aviv.