Government moves to remove documentary "India's Daughter" from online channels

NEW DELHI: The controversial documentary "India's Daughter", was available online within hours of it being screened by the British Broadcasting Corportion on its channel BBC4 on Wednesday, and the government is considering a way to get it blocked.

The YouTube documentary showed a "URL blocked" message for a few minutes around 2:30 pm on Thursday, but the documentary was still available for viewing a few minutes later. Official sources said they were trying their best to ensure that the banned "content is blocked within a few hours".

The Ministries of External Affairs, Home and Information and Broadcasting are in talks with several stakeholders, including BBC and Google to enforce the ban, said people familiar with the matter.

The government on Wednesday secured a court injunction to stop the airing of the documentary across all media platforms in India. However, it was uploaded on Youtube by a user within hours of being screened, and social media websites were abuzz with people commenting on the content of the documentary.

"The court order from the Delhi Chief Metropolitan Magistrate is based mostly on IPC provisions - it will be difficult to prove the makers 'intended' to breach the peace or cause mischief through their documentary, and the ban could presumably be lifted by a higher court," said Arun Mohan Sukumar, senior fellow at the Centre for Communication Governance, National Law University.

"While we believe that access to information is the foundation of a free society, and that services like YouTube help people express themselves and share different points of view, we continue to remove content that is illegal or violates our community guidelines, once notified," said a YouTube spokesperson.

Law enforcement agencies are required to notify intermediaries such as Google with specific URLs to be taken down.

"There are two ways in which the government can move if it intends to enforce the ban on 'India's Daughter', asking online content providers like YouTube to take down the documentary or blocking websites that air it at the level of ISPs. Neither method is effective, there are a whole host of ways in which such restrictions can be circumvented - so it seems improbable that the ban will work," added Sukumar.