A teenage boy who auctioned a video of himself and his girlfriend in a sex act provoked the arrest of himself and the owner Indian shopping portal Baazee.com. The latter arrest provoked in turn an uproar from the U.S. State Department and eBay, which owns Baazee.com.
eBay expressed outrage over the arrest of Baazee.com chief executive Avnish Bajaj, while the State Department said Washington has “high level” interest in the case, in which Bajaj was put into jail without bail for a week starting December 18. India’s laws include the 2000 IT Act, which calls sex videos obscene and bans “publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form, which is obscene.”
"The video clip itself was not shown on the site; the seller offered to email the clip to the buyer directly,” eBay said in a formal statement. “The listing violated Baazee.com's policies and user agreement and was removed from the site once it was discovered."
Bajaj had gone to New Delhi to cooperate with a police probe in the incident and was arrested at that point, according to several reports, which in turn provoked eBay to call the arrest “completely unwarranted.”
The IT Act, however, is under fire since Bajaj’s arrest, with various information technology officials and legal experts telling the Indian and other media that it’s time for the government to clarify the IT Act, which they denounce as too vague and ambiguous.
The law also says network service providers or Web site managers can’t be held responsible if they “acted diligently to prevent” such incidents as the attempted sale of teen’s sex video after being told about them, according to Internet law expert Pawan Duggal, talking to Indian media.
