arrest over site content at ebay

Filed in archive Global Economy on December 25, 2004

The NYT covers an interesting story - the arrest of ebay's Indian CEO Mr. Avnish Bajaj:

"The arrest of the Indian-born chief of Baazee.com, the unit of eBay that is India's largest Internet auction site, has raised an uproar, prompting calls for clearer laws on whether executives of such sites can be prosecuted because of the material, like pornography, that is offered for sale.

Avnish Bajaj, chief of Baazee, was arrested Friday in a case related to the sale on the Baazee site of a video clip of a teenage couple from an exclusive New Delhi school engaged in a sex act.

...

Experts said that India's laws on electronic crime were ambiguous and needed to be modified. "Should a C.E.O. or a director of a company be held liable in such an incident? There are several such gray areas in the law that should be improved upon," said Vishal Gandhi, an attorney at Gandhi & Associates, a firm that specializes in intellectual property law."

Actually it's interesting that jurisdiction and legal decision have been so consistent all over the world handling user content. While there might be no other alternative it's interesting that a simple disclaimer with a proper controlling system is usually enough a site owner has to do in most industrialized countries. India apparently is still experiementing with this idea...