International Law

Google Transparency Report : India Data

By Apar Gupta

Google recently unveiled a new tool called Transparency Report which provides aggregate data on content removal requests and compliances per country. The report takes into account only government requests and not requests by private individuals for Google to take down content. When one looks at the India specific data one can see that an enormous amount of take down requests and orders (court and non-court) have been issued by the Indian government. For the data period of January 2010 till June we rank as number 3 in the number of data requests only to be ranked under United States and Brazil. Incase you are wondering as to where does china figure on the list, the simple answer is, it does not, as such data is legally protected under Chinese law. I think the transparency tool by google is truly admirable. It is not in Google?s interests to aggregate and release such information. It truly goes above and beyond its pure commercial benefits with this feature. I hope with time, we get more detailed information and even copies of these takedown requests. A summary of the  India specific data is pasted below for review.

January 2010 to June 2010

1430 data requests

30 removal requests, for a total of 125 items

53.3% of removal requests fully or partially complied with

• Blogger
  • 2 court orders to remove content
  • 3 non-court order requests to remove content
  • 9 items requested to be removed
• Book Search
  • 1 court orders to remove content
  • 1 items requested to be removed
• orkut
  • 2 court orders to remove content
  • 3 non-court order requests to remove content
  • 5 items requested to be removed
• Web Search
  • 2 court orders to remove content
  • 5 non-court order requests to remove content
  • 13 items requested to be removed
• YouTube
  • 1 court orders to remove content
  • 11 non-court order requests to remove content
  • 97 items requested to be removed

July 2009 to December 2009

1061 data requests

142 removal requests

77.5% of removal requests fully or partially complied with

• Blogger
  • 2 non-court order requests to remove content
• Book Search
  • 1 court orders to remove content
• Geo (except Street View)
  • 2 non-court order requests to remove content
• orkut
  • 119 non-court order requests to remove content
• SMS Channels
  • 1 non-court order requests to remove content
• Web Search
  • 2 non-court order requests to remove content
• YouTube
  • 15 non-court order requests to remove content

Full post as published by India Law & Tech on October 12, 2010 (boomark / email).