The Supreme Court on Wednesday constituted a committee comprising representatives from the Union government and internet majors to explore a technical solution to block videos of sexual offences on social networking sites.
A bench of Justices M B Lokur and U U Lalit gave the nominees of Google India, Microsoft India, Yahoo India, Facebook and other internet intermediaries 15 days to meet and come up with a solution.
The top court asked representatives of all the stakeholders to participate in the meetings and inform it about the outcome on April 20, the next date of hearing.
Earlier, officials from the cyber security, who function under the CBI, told the bench that internet was a “wild highway” and blocking objectionable content at the source was a technical challenge for which clear guidelines needed to be issued to stop circulation of such material.
They had told the top court that 50 countries have set up hotlines to stop child abuse in their jurisdiction but India was yet to start such a service.
The officials had said they were taking assistance of the INTERPOL to stop child pornography, and whenever any complaint was received, the internet service providers were asked to block the objectionable content.
The Centre had earlier informed the court that it would set up a specialised agency to block and curb sharing of sexual offence videos on social networking platforms.
The court was hearing a letter sent to then Chief Justice of India H L Dattu by Hyderabad-based NGO Prajwala along with two rape videos in a pen drive.
It had taken suo motu cognizance of the letter about posting of those videos on WhatsApp and asked CBI to launch a probe with immediate effect to apprehend the culprits.
(Feature image source: PTI)
