When Anjith D started a community on Orkut, Google social networking site, he did not know that in the end he would be facing a lawsuit that would see him in India’s supreme court.

Anjith started the community called ‘I hate Shiv Shena’, Shiv Shena is a right wing political party in India,¬† as the community got larger mant people would leave comments on the page, one such being threat against Shiv Shena’ functionaries seems they were pleased with this and the party’s youth wing state secretary filing a case with the authorities which led to Anjith being charged with ‘hurting public sentiment.’

Anjith then went to the Supreme Court seek orders that would in effect end the charges but the Court told him that he is fair game for prosecution.  In effect the court said that whatever is posted in communities online is content that the group owner can face charges about regardless of whether the comments are anonymous or not.

In all this, the fact that Orkut did not see anything wrong with sharing Anjith’s email and ip addresses is particularly galling, we have written before about complicity corporates and it is sad to see this trend continuing.¬† It seems to company’s profits is the end all in everything they do. The repercussion of this ruling remains to be seen.

We wish Anjith the best and we will bring you information as the situation unfolds.

H/T fractalenlightenment