Dear User,

Facebook pictures, blog posts, and even online petitions could be censored in under a new proposal from India. It's critical to stop this plan to censor the Internet now before it spreads to other countries.

According to the New York Times this week, India's Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, told Facebook, Google, and other Internet companies that India wants to pre-censor all content before it's posted online -- and if those companies won't do it, that government will do it itself.

Ritesh Singh, an engineering student from the India Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, has used Change.org to spark a nationwide outcry. The government is weighing their options, and Ritesh tells us that international support can tip the scales.

Click here to sign Ritesh's petition calling on Minister Kapil Sibal and India's government to not block freedom of speech and drop the idea of censoring Internet content.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other websites are increasingly the place people around the globe go to say what they're thinking. Under the plan floated by India's government, anything you post on those sites would be screened before it's shared with your friends, so the government can make sure nothing is objectionable.

Censoring what you post online isn't just an invasion of your privacy -- it's a violation of your freedom of speech.

While India's proposal may seem radical, the world's biggest democracy isn't alone in wanting to control the Internet. This year alone, countries from the United Kingdom to the United States, and from Egypt to Syria, have all proposed censoring online content. But India's idea is the most direct threat yet, and it needs to be stopped now.

Thousands of Indians have signed Ritesh's petition to stop Internet censorship, but they need you to join them. International pressure could be just what India needs to drop its radical proposal to decide what's posted online.

Join Ritesh's campaign to stop India -- and the world -- from censoring what people post on the Internet.

http://www.change.org/petitions/indi...ensor-facebook

Thanks for being a change-maker,

- Michael and the Change.org team

We should all take a few minutes and sign this petition. I and many others here do not want the government to act as a "middle man" for every post or whatever we make on the internet. It would affect this site, sites of other fetishes we're interested in, and other types of things that we do on the internet. I'm a user from the United States and there are bills in Congress that are trying to force a version of this to be passed. These people are petitioning to prevent that from going into law as well. Again, please take a few minutes and sign this.