- (1.)It is submitted by Mr. Sanjay Parikh, learned counsel appearing for the petitioner that despite the legal prohibition, the respondents, namely, Google India, Yahoo India and Mocrosoft Corporation (I) Pvt. Ltd., are still getting things advertised in violation of the legal provisions contained in the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994, as amended from time to time. Learned counsel would submit that the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information and the competent authority of Department of Health and Family Welfare are required to work harmoniously to see to it that the provisions of the 1994 Act are not violated, for that gravely affects the sex ratio in the country which has been seriously viewed by the legislature, as well as by this Court on the basis of legislation made by the Parliament.
(2.)Mr. Shyam Divan, learned senior counsel appearing for the respondent No3, Mr. Anupam Lal Das, learned counsel appearing for the respondent No.4 and Mr. K.V. Vishwanathan, learned senior counsel appearing for the respondent No.5, pray for some time to file their respective replies to the rejoinder affidavit filed by the petitioner.
(3.)Before we proceed to deal with the prayer for grant of time, we think it is obligatory to take note of one aspect. The Group Coordinator, Cyber Laws Formulation and Enforcement Division, Government of India, Department of Information Technology, had filed a counter affidavit on 16th August, 2010. We are compelled to reproduce a part of the said affidavit:
"3(e) While submitting this, it is further to submit that technological limitations pose a difficult task for providers of search engines to filter out/block the information violating the law. It is important to distinguish between two types of results that show up on a search engine.

(i) Organic Search results - When a user enters a query in the search box a list of results that are most relevant to the users query are shown. In generating these results the search engine nearly indexes the information that is publicly available and accessible on the Internet in a purely authomated manner. These search results are merely a list of third party independent website that are beyond the control and management of search engines themselves.

(ii) Sponsored links - Sponsored links referred to the advertisements placed by advertisers after accepting the terms and conditions of use. These links advertise the goods and services offered by any advertiser and upon clicking on the URL, take the user to the parent website of the advertiser where the user can find more information on the particular product or service that he/she is interested in.

(f) The service provider/search engines only provide the carriage, technology for indexing information. The content information is provided by others. Wherever the service provider is providing only the carriage and transmission mechanism and not the contents/information, it is necessary that the distinction needs to be made between a service provider and a content provider. The service provider can only be liable to the extent service provided by him. Wherever the service provider/search engines are providing both carriage as well as contents, it should be their absolute responsibility to filter out/block the violated information and sponsored links.

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(s) The pre-natal sex determination is an offence in India under PC & PNDT Act. However, it may not be an offence in other countries. The information published on the websites is generally aimed at for wider, world wide dissemination and caters to the needs to many countries and may not be for the Indian citizens. Also, most of these websites are hosted outside the country. Blocking of such sites advertising pre-natal sex determination may not be feasible due to their hosting outside the country. Moreover, some of the websites provide good content for medical education and therefore blocking of such websites may not be desirable."