India: connectivity good, but not all content acceptable!
■"India Arrests Head Of eBay Division In Obscenity Case," by Mylen Mangalindan and Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, 20 December 2004, p. A3.
The government of India arrests the local head (Indian born, but a U.S. citizen) of eBay (actually a local division called Baazee) for allowing a pornographic tape featuring Indian teenagers to be sold inside the country. Got him under the Information Technology Act, which forbids trafficking in porn through the Internet.
eBay removed the tape once it came to its attention, and sent the employee from Mumbai to New Delhi to assist police in their investigation, so they're more than a little bit pissed with the outcome (so far). The police already nabbed the seller and are working to locate the teens featured in the video, but weren't satisfied with that. In effect, they arrested the eBay employee as though he was a fence who knowingly trafficked in illegal goods.
Of course, eBay's response is going to be, "we pulled it off as soon as we found out and we can only be held responsible for so much," which is fair enough and I bet the charges will be dropped (if they ever get levied). Still, as the article states, "The incident demonstrates the risks that U.S. companies and executives face when they do business in other countries under different legal standards.
In my vernacular, this incident just proves that while everyone wants connectivity, not everyone wants all the content that ensues, so the differences in national law that matter most will be primarily those revolving around acceptable and unacceptable content flows.
… oh, and the question of liability that results from transgression!
Heads up for eBay: it's called Bollywood, not Hollywood. Remember the difference, cause it mostly comes down to how you portray sex.