Nerve Endings Firing Away

Hilarious and shocking. Are blogs the most important worry issue in India right now? We have made so much impact!

Ofcourse India is catching up to China when it comes to ‘Authoritarian Stupidities’. The govt is also planning to come with a Photo-Id plan for Cyber Cafes similar to China. They are planning to ammend the Right to Information Act, which helped catch many napping babus and cut red tape. Congress Party is starting to show its true colors, wonder what took them so long?

Pratyush, sadly the awareness is growing at the cost of obfuscating the medium and getting all paranoid. Remember the “evils of MTV”?

Bloghopper, nope! I am complaining against the kind of effect it has on people. I am just worried about the expectation of certain authorities to “behave ourselves”.

Jatin, lets not forget the Emergency! We have been there before sadly haven’t learnt anything.

Oh thats a different question altogether (the authorities I mean)

The point I was driving at is that one has to have certain ethical guidelines by which he/she adheres to while blogging. Just because the blogosphere gives you a cloak of anonimity, you should not go about expressing anything and everything.

You wouldn’t spare a “Rohan Pinto”, beacuse he did something unethical, Right ?

Well, the government is paranoid, and it has reasons for being so. In fact, I’ll interpret this as a cautious measure. If in bringing a code of ethics it is trying to do some right to what was percieved as wrong, I don’t see a problem at all. Nor do I see any reason to get all excited about it.

As for blogs having no history of inciting violence, it’ll be part of history the day it happens! Not to mention there is no way to actually gauge the amount of influence blogs have on a particular incident that may happen tomorrow.

My point — I don’t support censorship either, but I look at this as compliance. Something like the ‘I accept’ checkbox when you signed your flickr account. Only thing is flickr doesn’t give a damn as long as their image is intact/money keeps coming. A government, on the other hand has more responsibility. It can’t afford to say “I told you so”

With the government, your suffrage is your choice!
As for the comparison, you mean if one private company doesn’t allow you to do shit, you’ll try and find other places to do so. My point exactly. If you are willing to hunt for places to do wrong, the government may as well be on the lookout :)

As for the least resistant group, and the part where you said “no history of violence”, as I said I see those as speculations. So are your impressions of the person writing these code of ethics. I am no representer of government, and neither are you speaking for all the bloggers. So I won’t say government is right. I am just saying the intentions are good.

And no, blogs do much more than reporting I am sure. Many a times they have an opinion with no editorial control and an outreach that is fast going up. I’ve seen some pretty vitriolic posts out there. Again, I am not saying abusive posts are wrong. What kind of abuse should not be spread, that is what the “code of ethics” should decide.

With the government, your suffrage is your choice!
As for the comparison, you mean if one private company doesn’t allow you to do shit, you’ll try and find other places to do so. My point exactly. If you are willing to hunt for places to do wrong, the government may as well be on the lookou

Dude, wrong! The government will exist whether i chose to elect it or not. What Patrix meant was that the government has a monopoly unlike say flicker… there is no alternative. Also, government laws are binding, even in a monopoly situation the company cannot force me to do anything say take a cell phone connection but the government can force my hand. That is why the governmental control has to exercised with much caution.

whew!! why is this whole thing veering off to censorship again.. I am against censorship.. but let’s say I am not so skeptical about a “code of ethics”. I would like to see what’s in there before going to lengthy arguments.
That said, confused, I am calling this a cautious measure. In light of recent blasts, when your enemy wears a black mask in the dark, you have to do everything to be safe.

And no I am not making any assumptions. There is no “finishing off” hatred here. The solution to terrorism isn’t going to be a single shot, but a series of steps taken in the right direction. I think education, awareness, and sense of belonging come first, or parallel maybe with some small steps like these.

I kind of agree with your third point. Although, I am not sure what would happen if that particular blogger *censors* those who come to talk sense into his/her mind.

I agree we must be careful, or *very* careful. I just didn’t see this post here as an analysis based on an actual code of ethics, but what could happen if there was one. Well, that’s good too, but after the whole censorship debate, I just thought we aren’t making good use of our time like this.

Non-governmental control under strict transparent guidelines. Let’s say, I am also ok with governmental control under strict transparent guidelines.

Flickr/Cop.. again, you are saying this under the pretext that a local cop will come, or can come to an innocent person’s house. Your argument is based on this event actually happening later. In my case, I think that person may be the culprit.

Sach1tb (pick a easier-to-remember name, please), it will boil down to the issue of censorship because this code of ethics thing originates from that point.

See, let us go through the events. The government bans all of blogspot when they wanted to ban 17 sites; sites which supposedly spread hate. We have no evidence that they incite violence. And now we hear of a “code of ethics” by the government. My concern is, why should the government who seems to have no inkling what blogs are write the code of ethics for bloggers? Whatever the code is, I am sure it will only kill the joy of blogging. In that sense, would you also approve a code of ethics for newspaper journalists? So no more bribery or scandal scoops?

I kind of agree with your third point. Although, I am not sure what would happen if that particular blogger *censors* those who come to talk sense into his/her mind.

Well, I agree too but on the flip side, I am not sure what would happen if the government *censors* a blogger who comes to talk sense into its mind.

Controlling expression is very vague and ambiguous unlike environmental regulation where you can impose quantifiable limits. Imposind a code on any form of creative expression, blogging included is detrimental to the medium.

Sachit, oops! dinn realize you were up all night; thought you were in India. Anyway I hope you got a good night’s sleep. At least I did. Your fears of a blog wielding powers enough to influence financing terrorists might not be completely unfounded. But trying to impose a code on all bloggers is doing a Hanuman (bringing the whole mountain when all you need is a herb).

Now imagine with the code, the government in addition to restricting language that would incite hate against the nation can *also* be used (power corrupts…always) to rein in blogs for say, speaking against Sonia Gandhi lest people who read might vote for BJP.

Anyway, a good civil debate and argument, like this has been, is always welcome here.