Anti-Porn Witch Hunts Are So Creepy When They’re In India

This Boing! Boing! link is fascinating, I think, because it really highlights just what partisan hacks the authors of that particular blog have become.

Here’s the short version — a kid in India uses his cell phone to take video of some girl giving him a blow job. Someone posts a copy of the video for sale on an Indian subsidiary of Ebay.

Here’s where things start to get bizarre — the Indian government arrests the president of the Ebay subsidiary, Avnish Bajaj, and charges him with disseminating obsenity because, (after all, the video was offered for sale on his service.)

One can imagine the well-placed outrage, for example, if the U.S. Justice Department ordered the arrest of the CEO of EBay in this country because someone posted an obscene video for sale.

In the Indian case, it turns out that Bajaj is an American citizen and so the U.S. government is actively intervening on his behalf with the India government. But instead of lauding the government for looking to protect the rights of its citizens, the move is derided by the usual suspects,

Update: Fleshbot picked up an interesting/creepy angle on the story as reported by Agence France-Presse: the incident is
reportedly being followed at the “highest levels” of US government as well. Fleshbot’s editor asks, “Yes, the manager of Baazee.com is an Indian-born US citizen, but still. Is this the sort of case the US State Department usually gets involved in? We’d have thought they were busy with other things, like … oh, war and stuff.” Link

And reader John McCarthy says, “According to todayÂ’s Salon, CondiÂ’s on the trail of the India phone sex scandal.”

[Condoleezza] Rice is understood to have telephoned the U.S. ambassador in India, David Mulford, about the case. The Bush administration’s national security advisor and future secretary of state has let it be known that she is furious about Bajaj’s humiliating treatment. He is, after all, a U.S. citizen.

Again, I can’t imagine Boing! Boing! treating so cavalierly the arrest of a U.S. citizen by the U.S. government for such a tertiary (non-existent actually) role in disseminating obsenity. The obvious comment that comes to mind about the administration’s role is that it is nice to see them defending the rights of Mr. Bajaj, and that hopefully they can start to take the rights of Americans living on U.S. territory as seriously as they take the rights of Americans living in India.

Instead, the U.S. efforts to protect Bajaj are simply (emphasis added)”intersting/creepy.” What the hell is creepy about protecting Bajaj from an anti-porn witch hunt? Oh, that’s right, since John Ashcroft and George W. Bush aren’t leading the witch hunt, the story’s just not the same.

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