Censorship in Digital Age A Study of Emerging Legal Perspectives in India

Abstract

Censors use various censorship methodologies including suppression, prohibition, formal book banning, pressure not to acquire works, proscription, removal, labializing, suspension of publication, and restriction of access to electronic materials. The use of legislation, lawsuits, licensing, registration requirements, filtering software, or codes of behavior may all constitute methods of censorship. Every society has had, and still has, customs, taboos, or laws by which speech, dress, religious observance, and sexual expression have been regulated. Censorship in India today is a complicated affair due to our ever-changing ideals of acceptability. Although, freedom of expression has often been understood as the heart of social and political intercourse, instead of acting as a barometer of the public opinion, it has now come to be manipulated by the government with little help from the act of censoring in order to paint a picture that sits well according to their agendas. So not only do the Right of freedom of expression and Censorship lie at two extreme ends of the spectrum, but the wrongful yielding of censorship purports to go against its own reasons of being. This paper shall be pivoted around the power struggle between the Right to freedom of expression and Censor board. The debate that goes on between people is whether censorship is good or bad? When in reality the real question must be Who must be in-charge of censoring and under what circumstances? In a span of five chapters, this study shall attempt to show the increasing trend of censorship in the digital age. Right from its historical conception, it traces how censorship has evolved in various forms over the past and especially with regards to the Right of speech and expression. newline