The government's chase to rid the Indian Web of 'objectionable content' seems to have hit a roadblock - the Web itself.

Hours after telecoms man Kapil Sibal called a press conference pledging to stop offensive and defamatory content on Websites, two of the Web's biggest players, Facebook and Google responded with a literal, 'No way'.

"We will remove any content that violates our terms, which are designed to keep material that is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains nudity off the service," Facebook responded.

The social networking giant, however, asserted that it will not remove any content just because it is 'controversial'.

A Washington Post report added Facebook's 'parameters are unlikely to include all the images the government of India wants screened out'.

Sibal's hurriedly-called press conference on Tuesday came against backdrop of government's meetings with the officials from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo over last few weeks after offensive material, particularly against Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was put on the Web.

Sibal also has not taken 'rejection' by the Web companies lightly. He said his request for cooperation from them fell on 'deaf ears' and 'we will NOT allow intermediaries to say we cannot do anything about it'.

Google too has rejected Sibal's filtering plans. The search engine giant said when content is illegal 'it abides by local law and removes it'. And even where the content is legal but violates 'our terms and conditions, we take that down too, once we have been notified'. However, it says, when content is legal and does not violate its policies, it will not remove just because it is controversial.

Online anger

Meanwhile, Sibal is under fire from the world's third largest Internet user base - more than 100 million people.

Tweets and other online reactions continued to criticise the minister.

"If Kapil Sibal wants to jail us for speaking our mind on the Internet, go ahead! We'll just go ahead and get bail like Kanimozhi," tweeted renowned stock market broker Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.

Another user, Faking News said: "Does Kapil Sibal mean that those Indian laws, which punish a person for hurting religious sentiments, don't apply to the online world?"

Author Chetan Bhagat, who has taken Twitter fire himself, posted that the Internet is something that cannot be censored.

"I hate some of the stuff written on the Internet, but I'd hate it even more if they were not allowed to write it. You can't censor the Internet. You shouldn't censor the Internet. That's it."

There was, however, some backing for Sibal.

"Spoke to Kapil Sibal. He assured me he opposes political censorship. Concern is communally inflammatory images and language which he described," said a posting from avid tweeter Shashi Tharoor, a former minister and party colleague of Sibal.

"Have to say, I support Kapil Sibal on the examples he gave me: Deeply offensive material about religions and communities that could incite riots."

The Streisand effect

The Washington Post report also pointed out the famous 'Streisand effect' and how the Indian government may have inadvertently given more publicity to information they were seeking to censor.

Wikipedia defines the Streisand effect as 'a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicising the information more widely. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose attempt in 2003 to suppress photographs of her residence simply generated further publicity'.