This is just the start!

Internet giants Google Inc and Facebook were forced to remove content from Indian domain websites today after a court order from Delhi was delivered. The court order warned the two giants of the ‘China’ like crackdown if they did not take steps to protect the ‘religious sensibilities’ of its citizens.

In what is most certainly not going to be a first, both Facebook and Google were forced to remove content to block objectionable material after a private petition was entered into the court privately. Admittedly, the removal of ‘objectionable material’ has led to widespread fears over internet censorship. Only last month SOPA was killed thanks to widespread internet protests led by Wikipedia and a flurry of other websites.

While less than one in 10 of the more than 1.2 billion population of India has internet access, it still makes up a significantly large percentage. With the numbers expected to triple in the next three years, India is all set for internet stardom. However, censorships put into place might end up hampering India’s status as the third biggest internet market after China and the United States.

Last year, a landmark law was passed in India where the companies were made responsible for the user-posted content on their web-sites. According to the law the companies had around 36 hours to take down content if there’s a complaint – the companies however, say it is impossible for them to do that.

Google released a statement via it’s spokeswoman, Paroma Chaudry, "(Our) review team has looked at the content and disabled this content from the local domains of search, Youtube and Blogger." Facebook is yet to release a statement in this matter.