The Supreme Court Wednesday directed
search engines Google, Microsoft and Yahoo not to advertise, or sponsor any
advertisement, on India-centric sex determination tests that are in breach of
statutory provisions.
"As an interim measure, it is
directed, the respondents, namely, Google, Yahoo
and Microsoft
shall not advertise or sponsor any advertisement which would violate section 22
of the PCPNDT Act, 1994," the bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice
Prafulla C. Pant said in their order.
The court also directed the three
companies to withdraw forthwith if they were carrying any such advertisements.
"If any advertisement is there on
any search engine, the same shall be withdrawn forthwith by the
respondent," said Justice Dipak Misra.
Section 22 of the Pre-conception and
Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994,
prohibits advertisements related to pre-natal determination of sex and provides
for punishment for contravention.
Directing the listing of the matter for
further hearing February 4, the court directed Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to
carry out its order on their respective policy pages and terms of service.
The interim order came during the
hearing of a petition by Sabu Mathew George that sought direction for
prohibiting sex determination test advertisements on the Internet.
The court order came after the central
government said the three search engines have "relevant technology and
deep-domain knowledge and expertise to block/filter the
words/phrases/expressions and sponsored links".
"India is suffering so much
because of the skewed sex ratio, still there is state of antipathy. You must
provide information to government of India," Justice Misra said.
Appearing for Google, counsel Shyam
Divan told the court that the Internet was an uncensored medium and
"ordering the blocking of the information is very dangerous as it amounts
to pre-censorship".
Saying that censorship and legal
provisions were two different things, the court said "anything can take
the colour and flavour of advertisement. Human mind is ingenious and there is a
scope for mischief".
Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar told the
court it could block or filter the information promoting sex selection and
eventual abortion only if the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and IP (Internet
Protocol) address is known.
He said the exact URLs could be
provided by the three search engines to block them at the Internet gateway for
India.
Explaining the difficulties in blocking
or filtering the information based on "key word search result", the
central government urged the court to ask the three search engines to
"provide details of measure adopted by them, so far, to block/filter
keywords and sponsored links violative of PC-PNDT Act and amendments
thereof".
Divan told the court that Google has
already clamped down on such advertisements promoting sex determination
techniques.
He said if some of them slip in, then
they would be removed on specific information.
Counsel Sanjay Parikh, who appeared for
petitioner Mathew George, told the court that throughout the world, the search
engines have been directed to block certain services or information which were
not permissible to be shown in that country despite the issues of jurisdiction
and technical problems being raised.
Parikh told the court that he would
file a convenience volume of such judgments before February 4, the next date of
hearing.
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