Indian Striptease Video uploaded to YouTube
By Techgirl

A 23-year old girl studying at a B-School in tech hub NOIDA, India allows herself to be filmed doing a strip tease for her boyfriend and fellow student.  She then uploads it to her computer and shares her passwords with her boyfriend.  The couple breaks up and things get messy.  Police now allege that he hacked into the computer to send out the video to all her contacts.

Things get even messier.  A friend on the contact list forwards it to more ‘friends’ and so it is circulating on the internet. Mumbai newspaper Mid Day breaks the story and makes it mainstream.  Times of India does a follow up on how the National Commission of Women has decided to investigate (after a written complaint) about such ‘sexually explicit MMS tapes’ being used to demean women.   Times of India ends its news article by asking its readers to discuss: “Who is to blame for the complete lack of morality among today’s youth?”

Indian bloggers and commentators give their often strong views.  All agree anyone hacking and illegally forwarding risqué footage should be punished.  Many support the female victim and accuse the media of ‘spoiling her life by sensationalizing the incident’.

Someone uploads it to Google’s YouTube and the strip tease is watched 50 thousand times.  It is also one of the most searched items on the Google search engine in India. Most of the men doing the searches were from certain parts of India notorious for eve teasing and other anti-women behavior.

An Indian TV Station broadcasts a report showing the boys father using ‘abusive language’ against the girl for lodging a police case against his son.

The Indian police are now hot on the trail of the ex-boyfriend and have charged him with ‘criminal intimidation’ and ‘criminal intimidation by anonymous caller’.  The Business School has also suspended him.  If convicted, he faces a stiff, sobering jail sentence.  It is just a question of time before police arrest him.

This case certainly raises many complex issues on the best way for media to handle such incidents.  Is it a good idea for any 20 year old female or male to allow themselves to be filmed in any state of undress?  Is it a good idea to store it on a personal computer and share the password with your boyfriend? And not change the password if you break up?  Is the media coverage (include this by techgoss) immoral as it exploits high jinks by young men and women?  Or would this blanket media coverage actually serve as a salutary lesson to others contemplating such foolhardy filming.

Techgoss has seen the video and while certainly embarrassing; it is not something which most Indians have not seen in the hot Bollywood movies.  Google’s YouTube may eventually remove it but not before it has been downloaded to a number of other sites. Nothing dies on the internet.  Then again, most net surfers have short memories and will move on to the next scandal.

No one is really sure on how to answer these moral and ethical questions.  The only agreement is that anyone who hacks into a personal computer and forwards private adult footage deserves a few years in jail.  And that the media publicity will ensure fewer young men and women will allow themselves to be embarrassed by allowing such filming.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com