New Delhi, Oct 3: A group of lawyers today moved the Delhi High Court seeking a direction to Centre to ensure that Google India removes from You Tube trailers of a controversial film deemed offensive to Islam that has sparked protests in several parts of the world.
Responding to the plea, Government's counsel Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Rajeev Mehra submitted that various courts in India have also passed orders on the same issue and the government has taken action against the websites.
“The government has already blocked 157 URLs and let the petitioner give the link, we would take action,” the senior law officer said.
A division bench of Chief Justice D Murugesan and Justice Rajiv Shakdher reserved the order after hearing the parties.
Alleging that the film was “anti-Islam”, the PIL said “direction against the respondents (Centre, Google India and You Tube) to completely remove and blocks the links of the entire movie/trailers.... and all the clips emanating from the movie up-loaded on You Tube owned by Google and shown in India.”
The petitioners sought removal of 13 minutes video clip/trailer from You Tube.
Appearing for the petitioners, senior advocate Kirti Uppal assisted by Sarfraz Khan argued that countries like Brazil, Argentina and Russia have banned the film and removed the video clips from the site.
According to petitioners, the Internet companies should have taken a pro-active approach in disbanding such content and alleged that such sites “have no code of conduct and behave irresponsibly.”
