starkravingmad writes:
The Economic Times is running a story on Hindu nationalists in India threatening to wreck internet cafes that don't block parts of Orkut that the vigilantes find offensive. From the article:
"Orkut is used by many destructive elements to spread canards about India, Hindus, our gods and cultural heritage," said Abhijit Phanse, president of Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, the student group.
"We are gently telling Internet cafe owners that it is their responsibility to see that surfers do not use their facility to carry out such hate campaigns," he said.
"Or else, we will have to do that job for them." Last week, dozens of Shiv Sena workers vandalised some Internet centres, saying they were not stopping their customers from accessing Orkut groups involved in sending hate messages.
The campaign is being run by the Shiv Sena, which has, in the past, fought against such threats to Indian society as Valentine's Day, the movie "Fire" which showed a lesbian love affair, and more recently, Richard Gere. They hold power in the Mumbai local government, and in the past have formed governments at the state level and were part of the coalition in the last national government in India.
And just to prove that they are more than an illiterate medieval mob who like to burn things down, they are taking a 21st century approach to censorship this time:
Phanse said his group was developing a special software that Internet service providers could install to block any message containing certain words and phrases such as "I hate" or "I despise". "The software should be ready in 2-3 months"