Are you ready for a life without Facebook?

There are about 43 million Facebook users in India and millions of others are active on other major social networking sites such as Orkut and Youtube. Instant connectivity to these social networking sites is a big marketing point for the new smartphones being launched in the Indian markets. Just when the young Indians have started showing how much they are in love with these social platforms, Delhi HC has threatened to ban them all.

About three months back, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal had called representatives from major players in India such as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! and had asked them to evolve ways to screen content before it is posted and to monitor offensive content. But the Internet giants had said that they were unable to do so and that it will take a lot of manpower to make this possible.

Sibal had asked them to find a solution to control distribution of content, and showed them examples of content that he found offensive to Indian sentiments and cultural ethos. These included fake images of politicians and religious deities.

On January 13, a complaint was filed by Vinay Rai under Section 292 (sale of obscene books etc), 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person etc) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC against the distribution of offensive content on social networking sites. The trial court summoned the representatives of 21 major social networking sites and directed them to remove all ‘anti-religious' or ‘anti-social' contents by February 6, 2012.

When the sites moved Delhi HC to stay the criminal proceedings against them, it refused to do so, saying that if they fail to remove defamatory and obscene content, all such sites will be blocked, just like China. Read more about what Delhi HC said.

As reported by NDTV.com, Delhi High Court has asked all 21 companies to appear in court on March 13 while it has asked the Indian government to issue summons to more than 10 companies, including Yahoo!, Facebook and Youtube, which have their headquarters abroad. Read more about the developments on the issue here.

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