Search engines capable of blocking contents mocking Indian laws: centre tells top court

Refuting the stance adopted by Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, the centre yesterday informed the Supreme Court that these search engines were capable of blocking all contents mocking Indian laws, including those related to pre-natal sex determination technologies, The Indian Express reported.

The affidavit by the ministry of communications and technology stated that the ''search engines have the relevant technology and deep-domain knowledge and expertise to block / filter the words / phrases / expressions and sponsored links, which are violative of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act.''

The Act prohibits sex determination of a foetus.

According to the ministry, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were intermediaries, as defined under the Information Technology Act, and hence they had statutory obligations to perform due diligence and block all contents that breached Indian laws.

The ministry further pointed out that the search engines used algorithms to rank search results on web pages and that it was used as a marketing technique for the entities to gain higher page ranking against a key word search.

Due to the limited technical knowhow in the country to decode such algorithm and disable search of contentious key words, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology faced considerable difficulty in blocking the information based on the key word search results, which could include unlawful information.

''Such blocking / filtering on keywords or advertisements can be effectively and regularly done only by the search engines as they have access to their respective mathematical algorithms all the time,'' claimed the ministry

Meanwhile, The Financial Express reported that the affidavit had been filed in response to a PIL by Sabu Mathew George, who said the search engines violated Indian laws by displaying pre-natal sex determination ads.

The ministry's reply demolishes the search engines' argument that blocking the contents uploaded by a third party was not ''technically feasible'', and it was also unfair and illegal to expect that they could block all contents that could be reached through its search engine.

The ministry had been requested by the court to direct the search engines to submit the details of monetary gains they had made by providing URLs and sponsored links on the same web page showing keyword search results violative of the Act.

The PIL would likely come up for hearing in the last week of January.