Madras High Court’s TikTok order has government in a bind ‘It Encourages ’: Madras High Court Asks Government to Ban Video App TikTokNews

Yesterday it was reported that the Madras High Court has asked the government to ban Chinese video app TikTok, saying it was "encouraging pornography". Speaking to Reuters in February, the IT minister of Tamil Nadu described some of its more suggestive dance content as "unbearable", while a rightwing group close to the has called for the app to be banned.

Taking matters seriously, the China-based company has released a statement as a response to yesterday's development. "At TikTok, we are committed to abiding by local laws and regulations. We fully comply with the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011. We are currently awaiting the official order by the Honourable High Court of Madras and once received, we will review and take appropriate action regarding this matter. Maintaining a safe and positive in-app environment at TikTok is our priority. We have robust measures to protect users against misuse, protect their privacy and digital wellbeing. This includes easy reporting mechanisms that enable users and law enforcement to report content that violates our terms of use and comprehensive Community Guidelines. In order to better coordinate with law enforcement agencies, we have appointed a Chief Nodal Officer based out of India

The centre has been asked by the Madras High Court to ban popular Chinese video app TikTok, saying it was "encouraging pornography". The order also directs the media from telecasting videos made using the app.
TikTok, an app that allows users to create and share short videos with special effects, has over 54 million monthly active users in India.

The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court, which has been hearing a petition against the app, on Wednesday said children who were using TikTok were vulnerable to exposure to sexual predators.

The petition was filed by a Madurai-based senior lawyer-cum-social activist Muthu Kumar. Citing pornography, cultural degradation, child abuse, suicides, he had requested the court to direct a ban on TikTok.

The judges, Justices N Kirubakaran and SS Sundar, have also directed the central government to respond before April 16 if it would enact regulations such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act in the US to prevent children becoming online victims.

"We are happy about the interim order," said Neelamegam, the petitioner's lawyer.

A TikTok spokesman told news agency Reuters the company was committed to abiding by local laws and was awaiting a copy of the court's order, following which it would take appropriate action.
"Maintaining a safe and positive in-app environment ... is our priority," he said.

The court said the "dangerous aspect" of  TikTok is the "inappropriate" content. It also said "there is a possibility of the children contacting strangers directly".

The order also observed that pranks made using the app could violate privacy.

A few months, AIADMK legislator Thamimun Ansari, on the floor of the Tamil Nadu assembly,  had demanded ban on TikTok citing what he called cultural degradation. The state IT Minister Manikanandan had said he would take it up with the centre.

TikTok, which was launched in 2019, is a social video app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Co. It reached the one billion download mark in February. It was the fourth most-downloaded non-game app in 2018.

TikTok was among the internet companies that recently agreed to come up with a model code document for themselves on the lines of the model code of conduct for the upcoming national election and for the future, in an attempt to curb fake news on social media.

(With inputs from Reuters)
Get the latest election news, live updates and election schedule for Lok Sabha Elections 2019 on ndtv.com/elections. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates from each of the 543 parliamentary seats for the 2019 Indian general elections.

The court issued the directive following concerns that children were becoming addicted to the app, which allows content of less than 60 seconds to be created and shared with millions of users.
The government is studying the ruling by the Madras High Court that asked the Centre to stop downloads of TikTok, the Chinese app popular among teenagers in the country, people familiar with the development said.
Officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) said the order, issued on Wednesday by the Madurai bench of the high court, is very hard to implement and instead of the government, the affected party should appeal.
“We are yet to go through the order in detail, but it appears to be unimplementable,” a senior government official told ET on condition of anonymity. “Rather than the government getting involved at this stage, it would be appropriate for the affected party to appeal the matter

Madras High Court’s TikTok order has government in a bind ‘It Encourages ’: Madras High Court Asks Government to Ban Video App TikTok News
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How Google AdSense Pays in India

one of the most popular monetization techniques used by bloggers, is always confusing for new users. Despite its easy-to-use dashboard and its help pages, there are always questions related to sign up, account approval, account ban, optimization and many others.

It is true that AdSense is a plug-and-play advertising network, but it is important that you  learn all you can about it so that you can take full advantage of the opportunity it presents, making a lot of money as opposed to pennies.

This is a question from Adithya:

“Can you tell me how AdSense Pays in India? Do they pay by cheque or through local bank transfer or EFT”?

AdSense Payment in India:
AdSense has different payment options for different countries. They support EFT transfer, Cheque facility and pay by Western Union Quick Cash. Especially in countries like India and Pakistan, getting an AdSense account is not as easy as it is in countries like the U.S., U.K. and Australia. This is mostly due to issues of spam and fake AdSense accounts in India.

In India, at the time of the writing of this post (June 2014), AdSense offers payment via Cheque and EFT, and they convert your earnings into INR and then make the payment. Usually, the AdSense USD to INR conversion rate is high, so you might not find this to be an issue. However, an AdSense cheque takes time to reach India (10-15 days), and it takes another few days for clearance.

The AdSense team is increasing payment options in many countries, and they have already added EFT payment for Indian publishers.

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Google News Russians attempt to topple Google in Vietnam

Vietnam's booming Internet scene is littered with failed startups that tried to take on Google and other entrenched U.S web companies. That's not deterring a newly launched Russian-Vietnamese outfit which believes it can unseat the American search engine in this fast-growing Asian market and also contend with a jittery, authoritarian government seeking to clamp down on freedom of expression online.
Like Google rivals elsewhere, Coc Coc, or "Knock Knock" in English, believes the ubiquitous search engine doesn't get the nuances of the local language. It says its algorithms make for a better, quicker search in Vietnamese, while its local knowledge means the information served will be more relevant - and hence more valuable.

Coc Coc also flags another possible vulnerability: Google has no office or staff in Vietnam. The company, whose code of conduct includes the phrase "Don't be evil", is concerned about the liability it faces over content hosted on its servers and having to cooperate with censorship requests by Vietnam's authoritarian, one-party government.

Unlike other past hopefuls, Coc Coc is not short of cash

The company has so far spent $10 million, hired 300 staff - including 30 foreigners, mostly Russians - and spread itself out over four floors of a downtown office block in the Vietnamese capital. According to Coc Coc's founders, its investors have $100 million over the next five years to try and get a chunk of the 97 percent of Vietnamese web surfers who currently use Google to switch. They declined to name the investors.

"When I came here, I had some understanding why Vietnam was a good market to beat Google," said Mikhail Kostin, the company's chief search expert and like others in Coc Coc, a veteran at Russia's largest Internet company, Mail.Ru. "But after living here for one year, I understand the language and market much more deeply. I'm sure it's right

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Latest Google AdSense news Yahoo announces online ad alliance with Google

Yahoo! on Wednesday announced an advertising alliance with Google, the company that dethroned the pioneering Internet firm in the world of Internet search.
Google will use its online ad targeting skills at some Yahoo! properties, stepping in to put relevant marketing messages in available spaces, according to Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo!.

Yahoo! gave the example of someone online shopping for boots being shown an ad for something completely unrelated because no advertisements for footwear were available in inventory.

"If you see an ad for boots, that's instantly going to pique your attention more than an ad for, say, a car battery," Yahoo! said.

That's better for users. This is why contextual advertising is such a powerful tool."

The large stocks of ads at Google AdSense and Admob increase opportunities to present Yahoo! website users with marketing messages they will click on, generating revenue.

By adding Google to our list of world-class contextual ads partners, we'll be able to expand our network, which means we can serve users with ads that are even more meaningful," Yahoo! said.

"For our users, there won't be a noticeable difference in how or where ads appear."

The move comes amid turn-around efforts by Yahoo! chief executive Marissa Mayer, who was a high-level Google executive before taking the Yahoo! helm in July.

Yahoo! has been trying to reinvent itself since the once-flowering Internet search service found itself withering in Google's shadow.

"We work with a number of top publishers to help them monetize their content through AdSense for Content and AdMob," a Google spokesman said in response to an AFP inquiry. "We're thrilled to now include Yahoo!.

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Google goes on the offensive against online news aggregators

Google's imprint on daily life is hard to ignore in Europe, where it reportedly has 93 percent of the Internet search market, more than in the United States. Yet when it comes to its lobbying of lawmakers, Google prefers a low profile.

That all changed this week when Google fired a rare public broadside against a proposal that would force it and other online aggregators of news content to pay German newspaper and magazine publishers to display snippets of news in Web searches.

The proposed ancillary copyright law, which is to have its first reading Friday in the lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag, has ignited a storm of hyperbole pitting Google and local Web advocates against powerful publishers including Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bild and Die Welt.

Google took off the gloves Tuesday when it opened a campaign urging German users to e-mail members of the Bundestag with their concerns. Google said the proposal would shrink the free flow of information on the Internet in Germany, perhaps even forcing it to display blank links to German references.

The issue is also being debated in other European capitals. In October, President François Hollande of France asked the Google executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, to have a representative meet with a government mediator to resolve the issue. The company complied. The implicit threat was that if no solution were found, France might pursue a legislative option.

Christoph Keese, the senior vice president of Axel Springer, publisher of Bild and Die Welt, two of the largest-circulation newspapers in Germany, said lawmakers in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal and Spain were considering similar measures. Google said that conversely, new laws passed in Canada, and proposals that could soon be adopted in Britain and the Netherlands, would further loosen copyright restrictions and free up new kinds of Internet sharing.

The German proposal "would make it much more difficult to find the information that you seek in the Internet," Google warned in its campaign, which it titled "Defend Your Internet."

The unusually public salvos from Google caught many German lawmakers by surprise. Chancellor Angela Merkel raised the issue at a working dinner Tuesday with a group of lawmakers from her party, the Christian Democratic Union, including Peter Beyer, a member of the Bundestag from Ratingen, a town near Düsseldorf.

"She asked us how many e-mails we'd received and we told her," he said Wednesday during an interview, adding that he had received fewer than 10 from Google supporters. "Most of use had only received a few, three or four. She and the rest of the C.D.U. are still behind this law. I have no doubts that it will pass."

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