Figure A: Bing India filters out results that contain adult content
Figure B: Yahoo India won’t let you turn off Safe Search
Figure C: Google India lets you control Safe Search settings
If you search for the word "sex" on Bing from a computer in India, you won’t get any results . You can of course bypass this block by switching to the US version of Bing but by default, Bing in India doesn’t return pages for search queries that don’t pass the "Safe Search" criteria.
Yahoo India has taken a similar step. They have permanently enabled Safe Search for all users in India (based on the IP addresses) but, like Bing, you can also turn off the Safe Search filter in Yahoo! by switching to their US edition.
Google India on the other hand has no such restrictions in place and users in India can enable or disable "safe search" in Google at will by using a simple drop-down.
So why are search engines doing this? Maybe to minimize legal risks.
Supreme Court lawyer Pawan Duggal earlier told Content Sutra that web companies are filtering out adult content from search results in India in order to comply with the Information Technology Act that says:
"Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest.. shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to one lakh rupees."
We can’t therefore put the blame on search engines here but these stone-age IT laws of India seriously need some fixing.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/search-engines-in-india-over-cautious/11976/
Tags: Archives, bing, google, opinion, Search, sex, yahoo, Internet
Reader Comments
Well, I wonder why you would call these IT laws “Stone age.” The issue is one of public morality. IT laws such as these makes it far more difficult for children and youth to misuse the Internet. As you yourself have shown, it is easy to bypass the intent of these laws and still use the search engines the way you want to. So, I would argue, that these laws are not stone-age, but rather ice-age which are melting under the heat of “personal choice.”
Written by Venkatesh on 12.23.09
It’s really like herding every sheep with the same stick. There are so many such words being filtered out by Bing and now Yahoo also joined the game. Real fair.
PS: In the 2nd para, there’s a typo “They have permanently ENABLED Safe Search for all users in India”. It should be ‘disabled’.
Written by Jal on 12.23.09
I don’t understand the logic of turning on safe search in order to adhere to some vague IT law. Internet users can easily to switch to a US Bing or Yahoo, so I guess it’s pretty much useless to turn it on. If you really have kids at home, you should of course use some kind of ‘censorship’ (e.g K9 Web protection is a good and free software) for your internet, but to block en-masse is definitely not very smart. Imagine a student of gynaecology or doctor who needs to search info about sex diseases etc – will info be blocked as well?
Written by Zai on 12.23.09
Dear Amit
The reason for calling india still a developing country is this only, not only these many things that people need to change then only laws will change and when laws will change country will change
In india a person with computer is a literate and a person with out computer is also literate but what we need to see is the mentality and professionality of the people
Sai Pothuri
Written by saipothuri on 12.23.09
The end conclusion is that Indians need to ‘pay’ some more clicks to view such content .. by default .. :P
enjoy :)
Written by Bindass Delhiites on 12.24.09