In the U.S., 68% of social media users are "joiners," which means they maintain a profile on a social networking site and visit social networks. 73% are "spectators," or users who mostly just read blogs, online forums, customer ratings/reviews and tweets, listen to podcasts and watch videos. This number is strikingly similar in Europe (EU-7 countries, to be specific), with 69% of users classified as spectators and 50% as joiners.

Only 24% of U.S. users are content creators and 36% are conversationalists. Those numbers are quite similar in the EU, with 23% classified as "content creators" and 26% as "conversationalists."

In Asia, these numbers look drastically different. Seventy-five percent of online adults in metropolitan China and India create content, which includes publishing blogs and web pages, uploading video and audio/music they made and posting articles or stories that they wrote.

Japanese social media users do not follow the same patterns as Chinese and Indian social networkers. A mere 28% of Japanese users visit social networking sites at least once a month. Only 13% of online Japanese adults visit Facebook on a regular monthly basis. Instead, they prefer sites like mixi or Twitter, which fit their preference for online anonymity.

Emerging Social Mobile Markets: China and Africa

Another Forrester report proved that China and other Asia-Pacific countries led the pack in mobile adoption, including mobile social usage and work usage. They were also more likely to own multiple devices. This report showed that in metropolitan China, 33% accessed social networks via mobile, whereas only 25% of U.S. users and 11% of European users did the same. Forrester's report revealed that Chinese users accessed social sites the most, calling them "super connecteds."

This study does not include social network usage in Africa, which is only second to China. Toward the end of last year, Facebook partnered with French cell operator Orange to bring inexpensive cellphones armed with Facebook to Africa and Europe.

Facebook is available in 70 languages, and more than 75% of its users are located outside the U.S.

It's the kind of move that, in theory, the political Left can support because of its impact on transparency and government accountability and the political Right can support because it puts government in a role that emphasizes facilitating innovation and economic development. It sounds like a very smart way to deal with the declining financial support for Data.gov itself. It could be a big win for developers everywhere and for the people who love to use the apps they make.

"The U.S. and India are working together to produce an open source version available for implementation by countries globally, encouraging governments around the word to stand up open data sites that promote transparency, improve citizen engagement, and engage application developers in continuously improving these efforts," wrote US Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel and Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra in a post on the White House blog this morning. Independent Government 2.0 watchers appear to be cautiously optimistic about the move.

As part of the US Government's joining the Open Government Partnership in September, along with seven other national governments from around the world, the US issued a plan that included the creation of an open source version of the United States' Data.gov data portal and India's India.gov.in document portal.

The first code offered is from Data.gov and provides a mechanism for similar sites to ingest data sets uploaded by users. That code is available on independent commercial code repository Github and is being watched by 26 developers at press time. The project team says the next release will be from the Indian side of the partnership and will concern website infrastructure. A complete package of source code will formally launch in early 2012 according to the program's schedule.

Right: US Federal CIO and platform lover Steven VanRoekel.

Hopefully, open government data websites will spring up like weeds all over the world, at different levels of government and with meaningful support from government representatives. Other government developers and independent developers will then be able to access new sets of data programmatically that can serve as foundation or augmentation of new application development.

The Hope

Adriel Hampton, founder of Gov 2.0 Radio and lead organizer for CityCampSF, calls the partnership between the US and India groundbreaking.

"The partnership on open government technical infrastructure between the U.S. and India is groundbreaking in that it will help create data standards for governments of all levels. In the Gov 2.0 community, we've seen that increasing access to standardized data not only spurs business innovation, but it can greatly reduce the cost of research for NGOs and other third-sector groups working on issues like global warming, urban poverty and public education.

"I'm hopeful that this open source partnership at the federal level between two of the world's economic powers will spur increased adoption of open data infrastructure and standards by cities both small and large. This is the major step towards benefits like consumer applications that interact well with government services whether in Hyderabad, Mexico City or Los Angeles, and in increased effectiveness of both government and private sector social spending."

The Concern

Code alone is not enough, though, says O'Reilly Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent Alex Howard.

"I'm cautiously optimistic about what this news means for the world, particularly for the further validation of open source in open government.

"To rehash an old but important principle, Gov 2.0 is not about launching new 'websites' or 'portals' -- it's about Web services and an emerging global ecosystem of big data. There's a growing international movement afoot worldwide to open up government data and make something useful with it. Civic apps based upon open data are emerging that genuinely serve citizens in a beneficial ways that officials may have not been able to deliver, particularly without significant time or increased expense.

"In this context, Gov 2.0 isn't simply about setting up social media accounts, moving to grid computing or adopting open standards: it's about systems thinking, where open data is used both by, for and with the people. If you look at what the Department of Health and Human Sevices is trying to do to revolutionize healthcare with open government data in the United States, that approach may become a bit clearer.

"For that to happen, countries, states and cities have to stand up open government data platforms. There are bedrock issues for open government around the globe that no technology solution in of itself will address. Simply opening up data and standing up a platform is not a replacement for a Constitution that enforces a rule of law, free and fair elections, an effective judiciary, decent schools, basic regulatory bodies or civil society, particularly if the data does not relate to meaningful aspects of society.

"With this step forward from the U.S. and India, however, the prospects for stimulating more economic activity, civic utility and accountability under a global open government partnership is now brighter."

Representatives of the Nuevo Laredo En Vivo forum denied the person was one of their moderators. One of the previous victims was a moderator there.

Popular Egyptian blogger's appeal denied, two 15-day detentions. After denying Alaa Abdel Fattah his freedom, and his demand to be tried in civilian court, the Egyptian military decreed two back-to-back detentions of 15 days each. He remains incarcerated on charges of inciting violence of the military. His mother has started a hunger strike to protest his detainment.

Brazil's "cybercrime" bill will inhibit free expression. This bill, currently in the country's House of Representatives, could make it possible for the courts to "apply criminal penalties to activities like file sharing, peer-to-peer communications, and the fair use of copyrighted works."

Anonymous uses DDoS against El Salvador. The Salvadoran government took its Justice Department website offline in response to an attack by the hacker collective Anonymous

DARPA requests hacker help. The government research agency has issued a call for American hackers to help shore up its cyber-security defenses.

FBI shuts down botnet. With "Operation Ghost Click," the FBI has shut down Esthost, the largest botnet in existence, operating out of Estonia.

Facebook to settle with FTC. The social network is nearing an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission over its misleading shift in privacy settings.

Israeli Knesset bills threaten free speech. The bills defund and otherwise limit the operations of non-governmental organizations in the country, including those that are critical of the government.

Use of Twitter by elite frees foreign reporter in Kyrgizstan. American photographer Nic Tanner was released from detention in Kyrgizstan through a combination of friends, friends of friends and Twitter.

"This is not a story of Twitter's ability to galvanize grassroots protests and marshal ordinary citizens to defend just causes. Kyrgyzstan is a place where high-tech social networks meet old-fashioned patronage networks. All those who got in touch were people we knew personally, and people with some clout. "

U.S. government seizes Twitter info without warrant. Adding to its previous warrantless seizure of Google information on Anonymous volunteer Jacob Appelbaum and others, its latest action did the same to Twitter information.

Salman Rushdie vs. Facebook. Facebook buckled in the face of a high-profile campaign by the Anglo-Indian writer to be allowed to use the name by which he is commonly known on his own Facebook account.

Delhi policy seek preemptive online taps. India, a standout in the crowd of democracies not terribly fond of hearing their own people speak, have come slightly closer to making certain they don't have to. They have proposed setting up a spy agency to eavesdrop on people's Internet and mobile traffic. You know. In case they commit a crime. That should shut 'em up.

U.S. House Judiciary Committee reviews SOPA. The legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, is often called the Stop Online Privacy Act by its detractors. A Hollywood-pushed bill, it will make it possible to block whole websites for accidentally hosting copyrighted material. In short, it gives an excess of power to government and law enforcement, which would result in rampant over-reaction and wind up limiting how Americans use the Internet - quite apart from copyright issues. It would also defy precedent and make everyone from ISPs to forum moderators responsible for copyright infringement.

Occupy Wall Street news shared via Storify. Early on in Monday night's raids to shut down the Occupy camp in New York, mainstream media outlets began reporting that the police were barring their reporters from entering the park. Social media, Storify in particular, picked up where the professional media left off.

The use of social media by Syrian protesters. Syria's is among the most violent of the Arab Spring uprisings, the government intractable and the political culture controlled. Syrians are using social media to skirt the suppression of the free flow of information, including mobile.

Overpass photo by Elliot Brown, Colombo photo by Bri

The government of Rajasthan, one of the largest states in India, is building out extensive infrastructure for Information and Communication Technology resources and training, with the collaboration of multiple international agencies including the World Economic Forum.

Next month, the state's information technology department plans on launching its own education social network: like Facebook, for learning. According to coverage in The Economic Times of India and elsewhere, the site will include all the standard features of social networking (photos, games) but will be focused primarily on educational collaboration and will include topic experts jumping in to answer questions raised by users.

From Virginia Heffernan's NYT Editorial this weekend, Education Needs a Digital-Age UpgradeThe Indian tech economy has a long history of leadership in e-learning, and so building an official social network to augment other educational efforts sounds like a smart next step to explore. Many have tried before; let's see what the government can do. Given the massive adoption of mobile devices in India (second most data consumption in the world), it will be interesting to see what kind of mobile component the effort will have.

Can a state-built social network prove compelling to young users? That will probably be easier said than done, but it sounds like there are enough resources behind the project to expect meaningful investment in research and design. The responsible department's own website doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, though.

Pluggd.in, a leading blog about technology startups in India, calls both the country's school management software and its education system in general "archaic."

Right: From the Education for Education rural computer literacy project, Rukmini Banerji:

"...in the center of the room we could see two laptops. Four young people sat with the computers - two to one computer - with the computer instructor right next to them. She was young - not more than 20 or 22. Her students were also probably the same age. They were learning how to make PowerPoint presentations. I sat quietly behind this group for a long time. The instructor spoke and the students did what she said. It was the best lesson on making PowerPoint presentations that I had ever witnessed. Apart from a quick welcome, neither the students nor the instructor paid any attention to me. They concentrated on the work they were doing. I later learned that the electricity supply in the village is unreliable, so while there is electricity, they don't waste time and they maximize what they can do on the laptops."

The urban/rural digital divide in India is severe, but efforts to change that are underway. (The national literacy rate is 63% and only 3% of homes own personal computers.) Yahoo India, for example, announced a nation-wide program in June to educate rural young people about how to use email, search and other parts of the Internet. Another government program was launched in 2009 and used downloadable educational materials to increase literacy among women.

In April, the Indian national government passed a law recognizing the United Nations declaration that education is a universal human right. Only Belgium and Holland have joined India in doing so. Unfortunately, the Indian government is also apt to pass laws permitting censorship of online communications.

There's a legacy of struggle to capture the benefits of the Internet for educational purposes in India, just as there is everywhere. Ten years ago, Pramod Khera wrote the following in a column in India Today (via educator Stephen Downes):

"E-learning today is facing the same dilemma and acceptance problems that other Net applications are encountering. The Net has grown at an incredible speed in the past decade mainly because of unreasonably high expectations created by Internet and dotcom enthusiasts and protagonists. In their eagerness, they created applications without really analysing and understanding the fundamentals of these applications. They did a good job of populating the Web with enormous content and faulty applications. As a result, customers experienced serious shortcomings, lacunae and inefficiencies in their (applications') delivery. The story of e-learning is no different."

Those same words could have been written about online education anywhere, ten years ago, if not today. It will be very interesting to see what the government of Rajasthan launches next month.

There has been a long history of conflict between Pakistan and India, with the most recent being Indian anger at the alleged Pakistani involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left over 100 dead and over 300 wounded.

A number of additional sites appear to have also been attacked since then.

Prior to this, the group has hacked the Indian railway and security bureau.

As the Internet becomes a more common ground for conflict, the activities of both official organizations, semi-official and unofficial groups will continue to mount.

Under the new rules, anyone who objects to content online will be able to effect that content's immediate removal. The justifications for removal are so extensive and so vague that virtually anything will qualify for removal.

Photographers killed in Libya. Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros were killed in Misrata, Libya, covering the uprising there. They were only two of the 192 who have died in the line of duty since 1992.

Syria. In addition to widespread casualties during the ongoing uprising in the streets, the battles against the Assad regime have been active online as well. This report from Global Voices outlines the high- and low-lights.

Sri Lanka photo by Bertrand Hüe

Under the new rules, anyone who objects to content online will be able to effect that content's immediate removal. The justifications for removal are so extensive and so vague that virtually anything will qualify for removal.

Here are the many, many grounds upon which a disgruntled person may now compel the censorship of online content in India.

That content...

(a) belongs to another person and to which the user does not have any right to; (b) is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever; (c) harm minors in any way; (d) infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights; (e) violates any law for the time being in force; (f) deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of such messages or communicates any information which is grossly offensive or menacing in nature; (g) impersonate another person; (h) contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource; 13 (i) threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation.

My favorite is "harm minors in any way." In any way, mind you.

Some are more equal than others.

This law will allow anyone - let's be reasonable, anyone with money or power - to shut down any critic, journalist, blogger, satirist, religious or ethnic minority, woman, gay person, union member, attorney, activist, loud-mouthed poor person or smart aleck.

Theoretically, the law is open to anyone. In other words, a poor farmer could demand a rich software CEO take down a blog post. That, of course, won't happen. However, should the farmer start a blog criticizing the CEO for riding around on an American software tycoon's cigarette boat while his employees go without health care, that executive could demand the blog be censored because it interferes with "friendly relations with foreign states."

"Intermediaries," such as ISPs and Internet cafes, are also liable for any such criminal act. So, the small Internet cafe our farmer uses would also be charged with breaking the law.

This sort of "law" is common in highly repressive, authoritarian, non-democractic countries. India deserves better.

This law is, plain and simple, a tool of control, one that doesn't belong in a democracy. Of course, given India's authoritarian decisions regarding everything from the Blackberry to national ID cards, the term "democracy" in this context seems a little inexact.

Yahoo Bangalore photo by Eirik Refsdahl | farm photo by Parag Purandare | other source: New York Times

By partnering with Virgin Mobile India, GetJar is actually making its second foray into the Indian market. In April of this year, the San Mateo-based company joined forces with Reliance Communications, India's largest CDMA and GSM service provider, to create India's largest mobile app store. GetJar further tightens its grip on the large Indian mobile market with today's announcement.

Younger users make up a large percentage of feature phone and mobile app users, so it makes sense that GetJar would partner with a youth-centric carrier like Virgin. "We look forward to garnering a significant mindshare amongst the youth with this alliance," says GetJar CEO and founder Ilja Laurs.

"Mobile applications and games garner a significant share of time spent on the phone by the youth today," says Virgin Mobile India CEO M. A. Madhusudan. "This alliance with GetJar is an initiative in line with our strategy to engage and enthrall the youth with the latest innovative cutting-edge content on the move."

Last month we mentioned how GetJar's CMO Patrick Mork predicted 50 billion app downloads across all mobile app stores by 2012 - a number twice that of market research predictions for 2015. Whichever estimation is more accurate, the mobile app market is certainly booming, and at 3 million downloads per day, GetJar is a major player flying under many people's radars.

Not so, Indian news sources are reporting now. "BlackBerry maker RIM denies knowledge of accord with India," reports the Hindustan Times, and the Times of India is reporting that the Indian government is bypassing RIM altogether - "Yank BlackBerry services, govt tells telecom firms."

The Indian government wants to monitor the communication for security reasons, it has said. The government fears the phone could be used by terrorists to plan attacks.

The telecom operators don't have the ability to intercept encrypted email and SMS sent via BlackBerries and would have to resort to a blackout, the Times reported.

Today American news media reportedRIM said it would allow the government to intercept "partial access" to its messenger services by September 1 and "complete access" by December; however it made no offer regarding its corporate email service. Shares of RIM fell 4.8% today, the most in a month.

BlackBerry's Messenger, e-mail and Web browsing services will be suspended starting in October in the United Arab Emirates. "Blackberry data is immediately exported off-shore, where it is managed by a foreign, commercial organization. Blackberry data services are currently the only data services operating in the UAE where this is the case," the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said when it announced the ban.

The Indonesian and Saudi Arabian governments have also expressed interest in monitoring BlackBerry data.

UI is working to replace two pipelines leading from Lake Tansa to Mumbai. This is an important water source for this immense city. In order to make the project happen, Unity must employ a very large number of contract employees. If any significant number of these employees fail to show, it could effect the timeline and that could result in steep fines for the company; not to mention Unity will have to pay the employment companies providing the workers unless they can prove they were absent.

Since most of the workers employed on the project are day-laborers, the information on each worker's tag will be matched to the information in the database each evening as they line up to be paid. Only a combination of RFID evidence and physical presence can elicit an employee's daily payment.

Mumbai skyline photo by Bluesmoon

Cuba arrests blogger Diana Virgen García. Garcia, who covers issues of free speech in Cuba, and supports the Ladies in White movement, was arrested on April 22. The next day she was "sentenced" to a year and eight months in prison for unannounced "charges."

Twitter takes down a Tweet. Responding to a U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice, Twitter eliminated a user's post on a leaked music album.

Chávez starts a Twitter account. After frothing about how Twitter is terrorism, primarily because opposition members use it to good effect, Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, has started his own account.

China institutes yet another repressive online law. The law is nothing new. It merely "legitimizes" the gun-barrel instructions the state's law enforcement agencies issue to ISPs and others to cooperate with state secrets issues.

Brazil objects to Google government request data being published. Google published government requests and Brazil "won," making the most data requests of any country, 3,663, and the most removal requests, 291. They claimed the number was accounted for by child porn investigations, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Nay Phone Latt, imprisoned Burmese blogger, honored by PEN. The PEN writing group honored the young blogger who is serving a 20-year sentenced after blogging about the 2007 Saffron rebellion in Burma.

Tunisia blocks Flickr. On the 28th, Tunisia added Flickr, the photo-sharing site, to its list of blocked services and sites. Chief among these are individual blogs critical of the government and video-sharing sites.

United Arab Emirates plan to monitor cybercafe users. The country's Interior Ministry plans to require cataloging of cybercafe users under the guise of child porn. "The move to keep Internet-users under observation comes at the same time as a population census is being held in the countries of the UAE along with a standardisation of ID cards for all citizens."

Belarus seizes journalists' emails. A senior Belarus police officer allowed police computer experts to access the email and Skype accounts of independent journalists as part of an investigation for a defamation suit by a former KGB official.

Thailand arrests Facebook user. One of Thailand's favorite tools to stifle dissent is "lese majeste," the law that makes it a crime to criticize leaders, in this case the royal family. Unfortunately, there is no proof that Wipas Raksakultha did any such thing when he was arrested on the 29th.

India arrests man for fake Facebook profile. The unidentified man was arrested by the Dehli police for allegedly creating a fake profile of parliamentarian Rajiv Pratap Rudy. This is reminiscent of the arrest and imprisonment of Fouad Mourtada for doing the same thing for a prince of Morocco in 2008. The same questions needs to be asked now as then: what role did Facebook play in providing law enforcement with private user information? Or is there such a thing any more when it comes to Facebook?

United States Senators fault Facebook. Sens. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter to Facebook questioning the company after it made a huge change in its site that enforced a site-wide change in privacy. Schumer also sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission calling on them to enact clearer privacy guidelines for social networks.

Egypt indicts videographer and blogger Wael Abbas. Abbas, who is most famous for posting videos of police abuse, including rape, of arrested citizens, is being pursued by the Egyptian courts. His appeal opened yesterday in Cairo on charges of selling communications services without a license. "Neither he nor his lawyers were informed of his trial on these charges and he was sentenced to six months in prison and fined 500 Egyptian pounds (65 euros) in his absence."

Kazhakstan ISP blocks news sites. State-owned Kazakhtelecom has been blocking two news sites that are critical of government corruption.

Top photo by Andrian van Leen
García photo from World Women International
Abbas photo by Elijah Zarwan

The Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation and the Federation of Indian Publishers and these 15 individuals join a panoply of international entities who have objected to Google's ambitious and controversial plan to scan as many books as possible throughout the world. Though the search and Web app giant's scheme would create a vast online library, it may also infringe on the rights of content creators and has created a lengthy international legal battle.

In the past, Google's book-scanning project has come under the scrutiny of the US Department of Justice as well as the governments of Germany and France. Federal judge Danny Chin is currently presiding over the case, which involves a class-action lawsuit and a settlement of more than $100 million for copyright holders whose works had been reproduced without their consent.

The Indian authors and publishers have submitted their objections to the settlement to Chin, who has decided to hold a final hearing on Feb. 18, 2010 to determine whether the Google Books Settlement is fair, adequate and reasonable.

Check out ReadWriteWeb's archive of articles on the Google Books Settlement for more information.

You'd expect me to say something more like, "Start driving away from the library and take the second right just after the McDonald's." Google Maps India has just launched a hybridized version of directions that give geographically accurate distances and directions as well as landmarks most humans would also recognize. We can imagine this coming to the rural U.S. and Google telling us to "follow that-there little jog in the road where the big oak tree used to be before Jimmy Ray hit it with his daddy's combine, bless his heart, for 2.3 miles."

How many times has someone told you on the phone to "keep going straight until you pass the shopping center" or something of that sort, and it saved you a missed turn as well as a general sense of anxiety? In the words of UX Googler Olga Khroustaleva, "We found that using landmarks in directions helps for two simple reasons: they are easier to see than street signs and they are easier to remember than street names... Sometimes there are simply too many signs to look at, and the street sign drowns in the visual noise. A good landmark always stands out."

The point of the whole experiment was to give drivers a sense of confidence when exploring new territory. Ultimately, the Google team found that a combination of street names and distances as well as landmarks gave the best results and best satisfied users.

Sree Unnikrishnan and Manik Gupta wrote on the Google India blog, "This effort was possible thanks to the large amount of landmark data that users like you contributed through Google Map Maker. Our new algorithm determines from available signals, which of these landmarks are most useful for navigation, based on importance and closeness to the turns that you're making."

Here's a look at the Google Maps directions design we all know:

And here's a version Google Maps India tried that added landmarks to other data to confirm directions:

Finally, here's what Indian travellers will see moving forward:

Looks pretty sweet to us! What do you folks think? Would you like to see more Map Maker landmark data for driving directions all over the world, too? Let us know in the comments.

Apparently, earlier today Facebook users in India were greeted with a new message upon logging in: Facebook is now available in Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. As of 2001, (the latest numbers available) those languages had a combined 770 million speakers. Facebook has just over 200 million users, so this could be a huge opportunity for growth if the company can pull off more than just interface translation.

We expect Facebook will make an announcement about the availability of these six Indian languages sometime very soon - we were told about it by reader Nimish Adani, of Workosaur.com. Adani's take on the news? "This move isn't necessarily going to multiply Facebook's usage as most people here would continue to use Facebook in English," he says. "Usage of regional languages (in the online space and in the professional world in India) isn't as popular as is the case with countries like Russia, China or those in Europe.

"I'd see this development as a move to woo those from the smaller towns and cities of India who are currently on Orkut. The more urban and suave English-speaking audience have already moved from Orkut to Facebook. MySpace (despite having an office in India) is a complete non-entity in India. Bebo has also come in recently but again its a non-starter."

What do you think?

Indians around the internet are condemning the ruling as a blow against freedom of speech and democracy. It certainly appears to be a dangerous misunderstanding of the nature of the internet on the part of the court and a bad precedent in the most populous democracy in the world.

We're not sure what the number of potential readers has to do with anything and we find it pretty frightening that a court that would say "you're a computer student so you know how many people use the internet" had any say at all in such matters.

According to reports the comments in question were left by anonymous users and the group's owner claimed they were legitimate exercises of free speech. The youth arm of the political party facing criticism apparently filed suit under a law pertaining to "hurting public sentiment."

There are more than 1,000 groups on Orkut that show up in a search for "Shiv Sena," some for and some very much against the party. We're writing based on relatively light local reporting, so it's possible that the group started by Ajith D was particularly heinous. On principle, though, we presume that the young man should not face legal charges for anonymous comments left by others - no matter what those comments were.

Late last year Facebook shut down a group on that site that appeared to be celebrating acts of genocide against Bosnian Muslims. People lost their Facebook accounts and the group was closed due to violation of the site's Terms of Service against advocating violence - but filing legal charges against the group's admin would have been an entirely different matter.

India's Supreme Court ruling that the Orkut group owner could be sued for anonymous comments sounds like a terrible ruling to us and the kind of thing that web users all around the world should be concerned about. India is the world's second most populous country and its largest democracy. It's a large and complicated country, though. While the recent rise of the Indian middle class and tech sectors have received substantial attention, the country still has one of the highest child malnutrition rates in the world - twice that of Sub Saharan Africa according to the World Bank.

Democracies are complicated; the United States has one of the highest rates of imprisonment of any industrialized countries in the world, holds a shockingly disproportionate number of its young black men in prison and was founded on an experiment in ethnic cleansing. Who has the moral high ground?

While big picture questions are important, this particular case is as well. Will Google intervene in defense of Ajith D's use of its website? Will the US government, now more than ever advocating the use of free-flowing information technology to advance human well being, have anything to say about this potentially terrible precedent being set? We suspect neither will occur.

It's a good idea for us as individual web users to remember that even as new internet technology sets so much information and so many voices free, even in a celebrated democracy - online freedom may be one repressive legal ruling away from being put at serious risk. No matter where you might live - do you trust that your local judiciary would understand the issues in a case like this? We don't.