A Trial Court in India has asked Ministry of Home Affairs to serve summons to executives of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Orkut and Blogspot, asking them to appear in person or through their counsels on September 22nd 2012, reports Dow Jones Newswires. While the report doesn't name the executives, it does mention that India and the US are signatories to an international treaty for mutual legal assistance, which requires summons to companies or individuals facing criminal charges to be sent through diplomatic channels. This is the latest in the case in which Vinay Rai, a senior journalist and editor of Akbari, an Urdu weekly, filed the case last year in December against 21 websites and claimed that content on the websites owned by the companies encouraged defamation, obscenity, and promotion of enmity among different religious and race groups. Why Is This Happening? Well, because Google and Facebook have argued that Google India and Facebook India are not responsible for any content on their platforms. I remember Google India arguing in the Delhi High Court that their Indian operations is just a subsidiary for sales, and have little or nothing to do with content and search results provided by the core business owned by Google Inc. When a complaint has been filed, the court can't put its hands up and say that it can't do anything. This leaves it with two options: - Firstly it can issue summons to the executives of the companies responsible for the content - Google Inc, Facebook Inc…
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