Indian tech firm in Media glare
By Bala Shah

US-based Indian origin Tech firm Apex Technology Group had initiated legal action against American blogs EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. Apex Technology Group, which counts IBM, Microsoft, UBS and other blue chip companies as clients, wanted to protect its reputation after EndH1B published a post accusing it allegedly of mistreating Indians on H1B Visas.

Apex has flatly denied all allegations made against it. At this point in time none of the allegations have been proved in court.

What Apex wanted was to use its lawyers to get all articles criticizing it removed from EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. But they landed up requesting the New Jersey based American Court to remove the 3 websites from the internet.  On Dec 23, 2009 the Judge, instead of asking for only anti Apex articles to be removed, banned the 3 websites. Banned as in ejected from the internet.

While Techgoss was the first Indian site to report this news, soon American national media picked up the story.  International sites like Slashdot, Computerworld, Techdirt, Arstechnica and others reported the story.  While many journalist and Americans did not agree with some of the anti Indian views expressed by EndH1B and ITGrunt, most felt that banning them was not only unjustified but it may have even been illegal under the American constitution.

On Dec 30, Techgoss had said that while we disagreed with the venom in some of the anti H1B and anti Indian blogs, the ground reality is that there is not much we can do about it. Apex has made a mistake by getting the websites banned. There is no way Apex can win this battle either in Court or in the hearts and minds of most Americans.

It is technically impossible to ban such sites on the internet.  And sure enough, the banned American site endH1B changed its name to endh1b2 and moved its hosting to Canada.

On Jan 4, 2010, Techgoss had published “Apex may have won a legal battle.  But as you can see the war may have been lost.  Indian tech companies like Infosys and TCS have also been criticized but they have avoided head on confrontation to avoid a public relations nightmare. Most Americans believe in free speech and dislike any form of censorship.”

And on Jan 7 (India time), the powerful EFF publicly criticized the judgment banning the sites.  EFF has the same moral gravity as Greenpeace and soon after a number of American newspapers wrote articles quoting the EFF and criticizing the judicial decision to ban the websites.

Apex wanted to ensure that negative articles about it are removed from the internet to avoid bad publicity.  But by requesting a Judge to ban the entire websites, it has drawn national and international media attention to its operations. Media that have reported the story include Computerworld, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Slashdot, Fox TV Channel, Times of India and many more.

And if you thought that media had moved on to other topics, America’s No. 1 tech blog Techcrunch did an article on Jan 17 criticizing EFF for protecting ‘hate mongers’.  More than 350 readers have left comments at the end of this Techcrunch article.

Apex better have a great track record in its business operations in general and more specifically in its dealings with Indian techies on H1B Visas.  Be assured the media tiger is closely watching both Apex and the websites it got banned.

(Techgoss had published the following on Jan 9, 2010)

Banned H1B site gets strong support
By Bala Shah

US-based Indian origin Tech firm Apex Technology Group had initiated legal action against American blogs EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. Apex Technology Group, which counts IBM, Microsoft, UBS and other blue chip companies as clients, wanted to protect its reputation after EndH1B published a post accusing it allegedly of mistreating Indians on H1B Visas.

Apex has flatly denied all allegations made against it. At this point in time none of the allegations have been proved in court.

What Apex wanted was to use its lawyers to get all articles criticizing it removed from EndH1B, Itgrunt and Guestworkerfraud. But they landed up requesting the New Jersey based American Court to remove the 3 websites from the internet.  On Dec 23, 2009 the Judge, instead of asking for only anti Apex articles to be removed, banned the 3 websites. Banned as in ejected from the internet.

While Techgoss was the first Indian site to report this news, soon American national media picked up the story.  International sites like Slashdot, Computerworld, Techdirt, Arstechnica and others reported the story.  While many journalist and Americans did not agree with some of the anti Indian views expressed by EndH1B and ITGrunt, most felt that banning them was not only unjustified but it may have even been illegal under the American constitution.

On Dec 30, Techgoss had said that while we disagreed with the venom in some of the anti H1B and anti Indian blogs, the ground reality is that there is not much we can do about it. Apex has made a mistake by getting the websites banned. There is no way Apex can win this battle either in Court or in the hearts and minds of most Americans.

It is technically impossible to ban such sites on the internet.  And sure enough, the banned American site endH1B changed its name to endh1b2 and moved its hosting to Canada.

On Jan 4, 2010, Techgoss had published “Apex may have won a legal battle.  But as you can see the war may have been lost.  Indian tech companies like Infosys and TCS have also been criticized but they have avoided head on confrontation to avoid a public relations nightmare. Most Americans believe in free speech and dislike any form of censorship.”

And on Jan 7 (India time), the powerful EFF publicly criticized the judgment banning the sites.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in USA is the leading civil rights organization to protect its citizens when their freedoms in the networked world come under attack. Founded in 1990, the highly regarded EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights. EFF is a donor-funded nonprofit and like Greenpeace values its independence.

One of the ways big business, governments, powerful individuals and vested interests prevent free speech is by threatening legal action. Often, a phone call followed by a legal letter is enough. Sometimes, powerful and rich organizations/individuals drag people to court who lack resources to fight legal battles.  The EFF often steps in to protect such people.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its views under the title ‘Order to Shut Down Websites Critical of Apex Technology Group is Dangerous and Wrong’. EFF raised the following points.

“
Curiously, Apex simultaneously claimed that the document defamed them and that they were its copyright owners. This is unusual, since people rarely defame themselves with their own copyrighted works.

On December 23, Judge James Hurley issued a prior restraint against endh1b.com, itgrunt.com and guestworkerfraud.com, ordering the websites to remove all postings about Apex Technology Group or its President, Sarvesh Kumar Dharayan, until further order of the court. The court also ordered the sites’ ISPs/domain name registrars (DiscountASP.NET, GoDaddy.com, Domains By Proxy and Network Solutions) to stop hosting and “immediately shut down and disable” the websites. Finally, the order requires the ISPs to provide identity information about their customers.

This order dangerously overreaches. By restricting access to entire websites, it places a prior restraint on all of the speech on the websites, even if that speech is unrelated to Apex or Mr. Dharayan. Imagine if a court could order Amazon.com or Yelp.com shut down because of a disparaging review of a single product.

The New Jersey court’s overreaching order shutting down these websites also is inconsistent with federal law to the extent that it holds service providers to account for user posts. Additionally, the order has troubling implications about the longstanding constitutional right to anonymous speech.

The New Jersey court order is therefore wrong in at least four ways: (1) it creates a prior restraint that takes down too much speech, (2) it wrongly punishes websites for the speech of their commenters, (3) it wrongly requires the identification of anonymous speakers without sufficient opportunity to challenge the disclosure, and (4) it wrongly enlists out-of-jurisdiction upstream providers who did not act in concert with the websites in taking down speech. We hope the parties and the upstream and domain name hosts involved will seek to overturn it.
“

EFF is one of the most respected moral voices of America.  Apex should have published documentation showing it is a good employer.  By getting these anti H1B sites banned, it has shot itself in its foot. Americans cherish their freedom to say what they feel like.  Anyone who tries to censor them does so at his own risk.