Sibal vows to stop offensive content on internet sites

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday vowed to stop offensive and defamatory content on internet sites as a controversy raged over government's move to monitor content in cyber space.

Maintaining that the government does not want to interfere with the freedom of the press, he said if the social networking sites are not willing to cooperate with the government on stopping incendiary material "then it is the duty of the government to think of steps that we need."

"This government does not believe in censorship and does not believe either directly or indirectly interefering in the freedom of the press. We have demonstrated that time and again," he said.

Sibal's hurriedly-called press conference came against backdrop of government's meetings with the officials from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo over last few weeks after offensive material particularly against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was put on the net.

He said his request for cooperation from them fell on "deaf ears" and "we will not allow intermediaries to say that the throw up our hands and we cannot do anything about it."

Facebook in its reaction said it will cooperate in removing any content that violates its terms which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service.

Google said it will abide by local law and take any material if it violates its policies but asserted that it will not remove any content just because it is controversial.