A court directive from New Delhi prompted Google (News - Alert), Facebook and 21 other companies to remove content from some Indian domain websites. The court promised a crackdown “like China” if the companies continued to post images offensive to religious groups within the country.

The action taken by the court in India, the world’s most populous democracy, triggered fears of censorship. The court ordered the companies to take down the content and to provide, in writing, the steps they had taken to block “offensive” content. The action took place after a Hindu petitioner took the companies to court over images deemed offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians in the country.

Last year, India passed a law giving companies 36 hours to take down content if a petitioner filed a complaint against the material. In addition to the case brought against them by the Hindu petitioner, the companies face a civil action from in a lower court brought by a Muslim petitioner. Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and Microsoft (News - Alert) have all appealed the ruling to the Delhi High Court. In the meantime, the companies have removed the material concerned.

“[Our] review team has looked at the content and disabled this content from the local domains of search, Youtube and Blogger," stated Google spokeswoman Paroma Roy Chowdhury. Chowdhury declined to comment on what specific material had been removed from the domains. Facebook (News - Alert) offered no immediate comment but said that they would issue a statement later.

Publicly, the government of India has expressed concern for content that promotes religious intolerance and content that is inappropriate for minors. Behind the scenes, though, signs point to a spreading intolerance of material that criticizes the government, as well.

The New York Times reported last December that India’s Union Minister for Information and Technology, Kapil Sibal, called legal representatives from top ISPs and Facebook to his office for a meeting. During the meeting, Sibal pointed out a Facebook page disparaging Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi. Sibal reportedly told the gathering that such material was “unacceptable” and that he expected them to find ways to screen such content. He also told the representatives that companies should use human screeners, not technology, to review and remove potentially volatile content.

Freedom of expression concerning the web has also recently been an area of concern in the United States. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would allow sites to be shut down for even minor copyright infractions, giving lawmakers an easy tool for Internet censorship. Sites like Wikipedia blocked their content for a 24-hour period to illustrate what would happen if SOPA went into effect. The proposed legislation has since been tabled.