My thoughts: Your original piece essentially boils down to this- the government has managed to figure out how to muzzle the mainstream media. It can't control what the untold millions say on social media, so it introduced S. 66A , with the aim of stifling anything it found objectionable.
This is what S. 66 A says: *66A. Punishment for sending offensive messages through communication service, etc., Any person who sends, by means of a computer resource or a communication device,— (a) any information that is grossly offensive or has menacing character; (b) any information which he knows to be false, but for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will, persistently by making use of such computer resource or a communication device, (c) any electronic mail or electronic mail message for the purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or to mislead the addressee or recipient about the origin of such messages shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years and with fine.* We can discuss this threadbare, but my view is that this section was just badly drafted and without being fully thought through. We're now seeing this play out in real terms, where anyone can go and complain, but the solution is to tighten 66A, stick to part (b) and the second half of part (c), and rationalize the penalty with that prescibed for other offences in the Penal Code. Your original piece on the so-called freedom of the press mentioned holy cows, media not publishing certain articles, and paid "immunity from exposure". None of these have anything to do with government control over the press- these have to do with either a strong sense of self-preservation (don't talk about Man from Matunga, else we'll have a mob outside), or just plain vested interests. In addition, getting to the point where you can expose a story often needs real, solid proof. Printing something based on a conversation over drinks can get you sued for defamation- which is a criminal offence and prescribes upto 2 years imprisonment. If you don't have proof, it makes sense not to say it. I'm not part of the media industry, but my sense is that the media is largely self-censoring because of these reasons. Yes, there will be instances like Tehelka, but I hope these are relatively isolated instances. My view-S. 66A needs to be drafted better, and to actually focus on deliberate and malicious acts. Also- I don't subscribe to the view that this section was put in place to intimidate Facebook users who post inconvenient things. On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 2:24 AM, Mahesh Murthy <mahesh.mur...@gmail.com>wrote: > I thought some of you might be interested in this on-going discussion on > some stuff I wrote in HT, a rejoinder to my article - and my rejoinder to > the rejoinder. > > Most of it is here: http://oh.pn/66D > > > > My $0.02, > > > Mahesh >
