Online content censorship up 49%: Google
NEW DELHI: As part of its 'transparency report', Google on Monday said that it had received 101 content removal requests from Indian authorities between July and December last year, asking it to delete 255 items from its websites. Of these, just five requests were made by courts. Google, which runs services like YouTube and Blogger apart from the widely used search engine, said the number marked an increase of 49% in such requests compared with January-June 2011 period. In terms of requests made by the government bodies excluding courts, India topped the list as it sent 96 requests to Google to remove content. However, in terms of number of items that governments wanted to remove, Brazil, US, UK, Germany and Spain were ahead of India. According to the Google data, the company was asked to remove 130 items, including 77 videos on Youtube, because they were deemed defamatory. Another 25 items, including 24 videos, were considered hate speech. The interesting bit was that of the...