Should Freedom Be Edited?
By Kamla Bhatt • Jan 14th, 2008Category: India, Internet and Telecom India, New Delhi, People, Technology
Should blogging be regulated? That was the topic of conversation on Barkha Dutt’s show on NDTV last night (Sunday, January 2008) where the panel included a mix of bloggers, a psychologist, a print media person and a lawyer.
The bloggers included: Jhoomur Bose of What Goes My Father; Meenakshi Madhavan of Compulsive Confessor; Vikram Joshi of Sour Apple Martini; Rajesh Lalwani of Blogworks and I . It was interesting to see how the debate was for the most part focused on bloggers who write about their personal lives, and there was hardly any focus on bloggers who write about business, politics, technology, social, cinema, travel or economic issues. It was also interesting to note that comments that were made by some in the audience like Nikhil Pahwa of Content Sutra did not make it to the final cut.
Should blogging be regulated? My answer was “how do you edit freedom?” And that was the point stressed by Vivek Sood, a lawyer, who was part of the show. Vivek essentially said bloggers cannot be regulated and pointed out (if I recollect correctly) that bloggers are subject to the same rules and laws as other media when it comes to libel and defamation.
My sense after doing the show is that it is incumbent on us to create and spread awareness about blogging and that not all bloggers are focused on writing about their personal lives. Blogging is a powerful and interactive tool that has helped bring about changes around the world. I am thinking Global Voices and the work they do, I am thinking about Jayashree the Bangalore-based blogger who is using the Right to Information Act to fight for her husband’s rights, I am thinking about the number of bloggers who continue to write about censorship in China and how Yahoo! Google, Microsoft and MSN were criticized for their stand in China, I am thinking about those bloggers who helped the tsunami victims. I am also thinking of how last year Indian bloggers came together and rallied together to remove the blog ban. I am thinking about the Committee to Protect Bloggers.
Freedom is a precious thing and every day thousands and thousand around the world fight for their freedom. Can freedom be edited? What do you think? Should blogging be regulated? I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
Technorati tags: fredoom, blogging and regulation, blogging in india, bloggers of india, ndtv, barkha dutt on blogging, meenakshi madhavan, vikram joshi, jhoomur bose, rajesh lalwani, nikhil pahwa, india, global voices, right to information act
[...] Perhaps the saddest thing I heard on the show was something Kamla Bhatt of The Kamla Bhatt show said. Barkha Dutt made a point about serious journalism and blogs in the US to which Kamla instinctively replied, ‘Oh there are some good blogs here too…. ‘ (You can get the exact line from the show) Basically implying that the three bloggers on the show just churn out rubbish. Opinions are free, but instead of standing by it, she backed down immediately when there was a gasp and the other bloggers turned to look at her and Barkha caught on to it. It was quite funny. To see Kamla try and back out of the foot in mouth situation. It’s sad that she feels that way. [...]
Kamla,
Thanks for tipping me off about this TV program. I would most definitely have missed it if you had not alerted me. I don’t watch much TV nowadays. The “breaks” put me off.
So this time, I took special care to get back home on a Sunday evening in time for the 8pm show. I had to watch this due to my interest in this great new activity/hobby/and media phenomenon that goes by the name of blogging.
Though I watched it in full, at the end of it, I felt the program could have be better.
Barkha is a seasoned TV personality and I have seen better programs from her.
Yes, it focused excessively on the private lives of a few well-known bloggers (that quote from Jhoomur’s blog did surprise me! I squirmed a little. Fortunately my wife had left the room to attend to the hissing pressure cooker in the kitchen. Some porn writer is sure to be feel inspired by it).
I had hoped that there would be a more detailed and serious discussion on blogging history, issues/techniques/tools/the entry of regional language bloggers (particularly Hindi and Tamil). I am sure, this program could have been better if planned properly and a few good bloggers had been consulted.
As regards regulating blogging, I am with you. The internet and blogging SHOULD NOT BE REGULATED. Period. In fact the main attracation of blogging and the internet is that it is unregulated. We have enough problems with viruses. The day bureacrats and law enforcers take control of this medium, and censorshop, licenses, permits,registrations, subscriptions, renewals, address proof, identity proof, and verifications make their appearance in blogosphere, it will spell the doom of blogging as a creative outlet for all of us.
I am willing to pay the price for this freedom. Let any one write any rubbish he wants. No one will read him/her after a while or take him/her seriously. The blogger will stop if ignored. Reacting to the rubbish will only spur the blogger on. The worst fears of a blogger are the lack of any readers, lack of comments, feedback and the fact that there is no difference between writing in his personal diary which no one can read and writing on the web which people CAN read but wont. People who use blogging for posting rubbish, will find that their writings end up as graffiti. Instead of the constrained walls of the stinking toilets in our trains, they will be using the limitless walls of the cyberspace. While the toilet walls can’t escape your attention if you travel by train, graffiti in cyberspace is shielded from our eyes unless of course we go looking for it. So let cyber graffiti also exist, as a price to be paid for freedom. We must learn to live with it.
I also agree with the lawyer that the existing libel laws can be used to control intemperate, malicious, and slanderous blogging. Just as one can sue a person for unjustifiably and without proof speaking out in public against another person and maligning him/her, one can also take action against a blogger for scurrilous posts.
However the techinical tools needed to identify the guilty person must be sharpened.
I am horrifed by the news of a Bangalore Techie, who was wrongly identified as the person who posted offensive pictures of Shivaji on the web and was confined in a Pune jail for 50 days based on wrong information about his IP address supplied by his internet service provider. He is now suing everyone involved in this goof up.
What can prevent a mischief-monger from posting undesirable stuff under an assumed name?
What prevents a person from posting undesirable/abusive comments under a false name or under another person’s name?
These must be ironed out before the law can be used against objectionable blogging or commenting. I had hoped for a serious discussion on this in the TV program.
As regards subjects that attract readers, I personally give a wide berth to bloggers who write only about their personal lives or experiences. Those bloggers who devote themselves to events/issues/specific subjects of interest to me, get more of my attention.
I of course don’t mind an occasional digression but unless I feel better informed or educated after reading the post, I don’t visit the site again. I also stay with the regular bloggers. The frequency is not important. They must be dedicated to it. I don’t much care for the casual blogger. Some blogs aim at pure entertainment which I usually ignore. I have other preferences when I am looking for pure entertainment.
Thanks for writing and giving me an opportunity to ruminate on this. Quite a few of my comments did not make it to your blog page and you may have noticed that I had stopped commenting on your blogs. I hope this comment makes it. If it does not, I will e mail it to you. I am writing this off line using my text editor just in case, the comment gets lost in cyber space after I click on “Submit Comment”
Regards
G Vishwanath, JP Nagar, Bengaluru
If you say ‘if blogging is to be regulated then Internet is to be regulated’. Blog is nothing but a smart name given to websites used by people for expressing thoughts.
Are we going China way and put stop to freedom of speech over Internet? I was scared when I read the news about a Chinese blogger beaten to death by city officials.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/11/china.blogger/index.html?iref=hpmostpop
In the human race, every new technology is used and misused. Be it nuclear power or Internet. Leave it to the people. Readers of the blogs are intelligent enough to evaluate the credibility of the news they are reading.
At the risk of contradicting my thoughts in the above lines, I do strongly feel there should be some kind of regulation/laws in place to monitor the harmful and unhealthy content which may hurt the feelings of a person or a community as a whole.
Personally for me, blogging has been a very liberating work and I am able to make new contacts and got to work with few interesting people.
Because few people have written about Mrs.X and Mrs.Y badly, you cannot say blogging is not a very healthy phenomenon and should be regulated. Government has to tighten cyber laws and make the general public aware of these laws.
Kamla, I really liked the point made by you ‘Should Freedom Be Edited?’. If the govt. is going to put regulations then I may stop blogging as I just don’t want to get into any kind of legal obligations. As we all know, its very difficult to understand all those complex clauses written by a bunch of old people who call them lawyers and cyber law experts. If there are going to be any regulations, they should be clearly conveyed to the general public and the bloggers in a language that a mere mortal can understand. I don’t expect to receive a mail from a regulating body to remove a blog post from my blog or may be a notice to stop blogging or they are going to sue me.
Anyways, it was interesting to watch the show and few of the people whose blogs I read to be present in the panel.
Didn’t get to catch the show but I’ve been reading about it
I think the question is, who gets to regulate the internet? And why can’t existing laws, like the lawyer on the show apparently said, be extended to the online world without enacting new laws for it?
[...] At times do our TV anchors feel they can host a show on “any topic” even if they don’t have a clue? Agreed, it is not possible for a TV anchor to know about everything under the sun but this show was expected to have a lot more content. Kamla has summarized the show on her blog, so I will not go into the details. [...]
Kamla
Very well articulated (as always!)
I could not find a link on NDTV to see the clip. If you find it, do post it here or the video on youtube.
Thanks all for your comments. Sorry about the delay in responding to the comments.
Vishwanath: As always a great summary with some fine analysis.
Chandra: Technology has always been Janus-faced: there is the good and the bad side to every technology and how we use it depends on us.
Regulating blogs…there is already a community that has evolved around blogging, who do a pretty effective job of keeping track of things.
Amrita: Yes, the lawyer did say if I recollect correctly that the current laws applies to bloggers also.
Mahesh: Thanks for the summary.
Arzan: Thanks. Hope you got to see the show. If not, Mahesh has the link on his blog.
Thanks all for sharing your feedback.
kamla