Google, Microsoft, Yahoo to auto-block words on gender selection tests

NEW DELHI: Search engines such as Yahoo India, Microsoft and Google have agreed to auto-block a host of words directly or indirectly related to gender selection tests or kits used in search results in India to comply with local laws which ban such tests to prevent female feticide.
These include prefixes such as gender selection, baby selection, pre-natal, sex selection before words such as tests or kits or clinics or techniques or service.

The search engines have also agreed to block other similar offending words within a reasonable time whenever there are complaints to this effect, the court was told. These intermediaries, however, refused to carry an omnibus warning on their websites for fear of alarming viewers.Any warnings would be Indiaspecific, these intermediaries have told the Central government. The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, through Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, informed a bench, comprising Justices Dipak Misra and C. Nagappan, that this auto-block list was, however, not exhaustive.

It would have to be updated every now and then at the government's initiative, the SG said.

The court has been dealing with a PIL which demanded that these search engines either comply with local laws banning such tests or wind up their India operations.

Sanjay Parikh, lawyer for PIL petitioner Sabu George Mathews, has accused these search engines of following the law in countries such as China but refusing to respect Indian laws.

He has demanded they block all such information, including advertisements available freely on their search engines, a demand that the search engines claim was technologically impossible to comply with.

At the court's insistence, these intermediaries have come around to agreeing to auto-block some words essential to such content or advertising.

An auto-block will pop up if any tries to access such content from India after a warning. In other cases in which complaints are made about availability of such content, the search engines would auto-block such content within a reasonable period of time, the government told the court.