Privacy 1, Rubbish news 0

An oft repeated statement about social networking sites is that putting up any personal information online is an automatic renunciation of privacy.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously said.

However, using the many benefits of sites that encourage sharing personal information does not automatically translate into non-existent expectations of privacy.

So, I'm glad that there's been a recent ruling that's a definite shot in the arm for privacy in India, especially given recent possible erosions of the same.

Details of the case against TV9 Hyderabad brought in front of the News Broadcasting Standards Authority of India have been explained in detail at that link. To summarise, TV9 accessed the photographs and personal details of members of a networking site for gay men and splashed the same all over the tele in their hour-long report about "rampant gay culture" in Hyderabad, claiming that the information was easily accessible and in the public domain.

The absolutely juicy part of the ruling against their argument:

“While the names, particulars and photographs etc of individuals may be available in the.. members-only section, it cannot be said that such names, particulars and photographs are therefore available in the public domain”

As paraphrased:

Justice Verma seems to be saying, merely because one volunteers to publish information about oneself on a social networking site, one has not thereby foregone all of one’s rights to privacy against the world. Social networking sites are thereby construed as private spaces and decidedly not “public” ones.

Witty, pithy criticism at the click of a mouse - 1

On November 11, Paul Chambers, an accountant from UK, lost an appeal against a conviction and £1000 fine for a flippant comment made on Twitter that the judge thought was a “menace” and a realistic threat.

Taking up against what is definitely a dangerous legal precedent in the exercising of the freedom of speech and expression – heck, even humour or ill-tempered grumbling – online, thousands of Internet users, responded to the “#twitterjoketrial” with, what else, but more flippancy and wit.

A tweet (pictured above) by @christt, one of the many who thought the official decision was more than a little ridiculous, started a tongue-in-cheek movement that was a comment against the state of affairs. Then,

Under the hashtag #IAmSpartacus – a reference to the film in which Spartacus's fellow gladiators show their solidarity with him by each proclaiming "I am Spartacus" – thousands of people have copied Chambers's original message. (The Guardian)  

via Mashable

Everyone who was using the hashtag was courting censure by the authorities, but in their shared indignation, the Internet community was also actively fashioning witty social commentary.

#IAmSpartacus became the latest story of satire on the Internet.

 (There's more coming, when I get around to writing it, which will be later tonight!) 

Tasty journo titbits

A story that provides opportunities for food tasting is always welcome.

Especially if it involves eating Bangalore's famous K.C. Das rossogollas.

I came back in a good mood, and with a matka full of rossogollas. They were polished off, the matka washed and dried, long before the story made it to print. See? Empty.



The story as it appeared in The Hindu, November 25, 2010.

(It's a pity colourful print layouts are lost in the automatic transfer of articles online.)

Coffee and something new

It's taken me a while to post this:

My story, as it appeared in The Hindu, October 14, 2010.

This has been one of my favourite assignments so far. Sunalini Menon, coffee taster, founder of Coffeelabs and, as the article says, "quality control expert" is a charming lady.

Her workshop/ lab was absolutely fascinating as well. Take a peek at the items behind her in the (unfortunately tiny) photo with that article.

A pity both the photographer and I weren't coffee drinkers. I of course, have a 50% success rate of telling coffee from tea, but that's our secret.

To Jezebel, with love

At around 11 p.m. the other night, I chanced upon a Kannada movie shoot.

Murali meets Meera I understand

In the middle of a large ground near home, with elaborate Ganesh pandals in their full shimmering glory in the background, was a small crew filming about 20 seconds worth of a dance sequence.

It was fascinating, because it was so typical. A really pretty, fair heroine, dressed exactly as she is in the picture above, dancing with the dude, surrounded by a lot of porki-dancing sideys who were remarkably sidey.

I may sound like an elitist talking down to the unwashed masses, but they were men with open shirts, lungis, and in desperate need of a shave. I know few women who wouldn't have quickened their step, held their purse closer and readied themselves to hear some lewd remarks at the sight of those loud shirts, banyans and bandanas.

To be fair, there was nothing vulgar about the scene. And the actors may have been perfectly well behaved. But it annoyed me an awful lot.

Once again, here was an example of popular culture engineered to elicit a few whistles from some men in the audience using a frankly detrimental portrayal of women. No, it was not a little harmless fun, and make believe at that - it was just another instance of objectification of women on screen.

Of course, she was dressed in 'Western' wear, which obviously means She Was Asking For It (NO, she NEVER ever is).

Reams have been written about the hypocrisy that characterises the depiction on women on film, given the oppressiveness faced by women in everyday life, (“You’re wearing that and heading out?!”)  and everyone seems to think we should learn to live with it, but we really shouldn’t have to, and cinema like this doesn’t help the cause.

Few people may watch this “harmless” film. It’s not even unique in how it paints women. But the larger issue is not as benign.

It matters how women are shown on screen

I love the seeming empowerment of women in many films and how comfortable a lot of narratives are with female sexuality. But this is few and far between.

In a recent interview on Salon, author Gail Dines talks about the effects of society getting sex education and its understanding of relationships with the opposite sex, through increasingly violent images in the media. (Elsewhere, she's been called an "anti-porn zealot", but I thought these were interesting points.)

She specifically discusses porn, (Should we worry whether porn has hijacked our sexuality, September 11, 2010) but the argument stands for much of the cinema in India. To see women as objects, she says, is to see them (us?) “not as somebody to have relationships with, but as somebody to do something to.”

Like bum pinch them on the street perhaps?

She also talks about the how violent sexual imagery, “takes control of the discourse around sexuality.” I blame the reels of films, which are the often the most accessible means of sex education and information about sexualised behaviour, and having scant respect for the heroines, in part at least, for continuing the categorisation of anyone who doesn’t dress traditionally as lacking in morals and being “indecent”.

“It’s not our culture”? Bollocks. Just an inability to look at women as beyond a shiny commodity.

PS - It was traumatic looking for links and images to movies that would illustrate my points. Even with a moderate search on, it is incredibly insulting, and scary, to see the language that accompanies every video/ photo of an actress that has been posted. 


PPS - This piece doesn't even begin to discuss the problematic depiction of male sexuality in film; sticks only to a very small section of regional cinema; and condemns a movie based on 20 s that could never make it past the edit table. But still.

Aww, she said

If I was still doing the 30 days of music thing, I'd make up a category just to post this one.

I love old people and these ones are especially adorable.

Jamaican octogenarians singing Rehab.

Living cemeteries

I won't lie, I wasn't too pleased at having to visit the cemetery all by myself.

It was for a story for The Hindu, August 12.

I wasn't afraid - Zombies, I was sure, would definitely liven up one's life.

Rather, it was the quiet, and the feeling that I was intruding, that bothered me. And I don't know what Miss. Manners suggested about walking around final resting places.

In retrospect, I needn't have worried so much. A dog fight in the vast grounds of the Indian Christian Cemetery livened things up more than I bargained for; the polished stones turned into lunch tables for some staff members and visitors; a girl with a bright pink umbrella didn't seem to feel out of place in the supposedly sombre mood of the place.

There were a considerable number of people carrying on with their business. Nobody, at least at first glance, seemed to be unduly upset at their surroundings.

Respect for life, more than anything, perhaps.