Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Out-Law News

Directors of Indian portal could face jail for giving access to porn


Six directors of an Indian web portal risk up to 2 years imprisonment for failing to censor pornographic material from the search engine on their site.

The portal’s chairman and an Intel executive are among those who have been been summoned to appear before a court hearing on 30th December for “giving access to pornographic material.”

Rediff.com is said to be India’s leading portal. A law student made a complaint about getting “free and easy” access on the portal to material which is illegal in the country. The complaint led to a police enquiry which concluded that the search engine did not create objectionable material and acknowledged that it was a search engine’s nature to gave access to everything on the internet. However, a judge felt that there was enough evidence against the company for its directors to stand trial, partly on the grounds that rival sites succeed in filtering sex-related material.

The case is similar to one in Germany in 1998 when Compuserve’s managing director was sentenced to two years imprisonment because the ISP unknowingly hosted child pornography. The case was overturned on appeal.

We are processing your request. \n Thank you for your patience. An error occurred. This could be due to inactivity on the page - please try again.