back to article Microsoft, Google and Yahoo sued for foetus sex selection ads

The Supreme Court of India has issued notices against Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! for advertising products to select the sex of foetuses. Sabu Mathew George filed the complaint against the three firms. He told the New York Times that the ads deliberately targeted Indian users. He told the paper 900,000 female foetuses are …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Jesus

    I never knew that, it must be a damn sausage-fest over there.

    No wonder we keep getting horny indian guys coming over here and hovering around *any* woman that dares set foot in our data centre.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Where is the support

    Thing is its probably supported out of India, and yet the idiots forgot to check that first, as it would then be really easy to stop. Indian law does not allow you to host illegal content in India. And illegal content is whatever the Government says it is.

    Like here, but with guns :)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    An experiment

    Why don't all the Indian ladies leave India for a month and see how the men get on.

    The rate they keep aborting female foetuses, India will end up with too many men.

  4. chris morton
    Paris Hilton

    a big part of the problem is...

    that the biggest expense of having a girl in India is that she is expected to provide a dowry to her husband upon marriage which would have to be provided by her family. This would traditionally consist of large sums of money, property or goods which a lot of poorer Indian families would not be able to afford to give.

    This also has the reverse effect that if you have lots of boys, when they are married (potentially at least) they can bring a lot of wealth into the family.

    For a poor Indian family it's a simple choice and one that is hard for them to see the big picture, i.e. India ending up being a total sausage fest.

    All they see is girl = bankrupcy and boy = wealth.

    Ideally, the authorities should use it for force all the richest people to have only girls and the poorest people have girls that way, eveyone gets to share the wealth. Unfortunately, the authorities will likely be at the richer end of things and most likely won't want to give up any perks. A perfect plan with only one minor problem then. :o)

    Paris cos she can't quite see the big picture either. (phew, I was wondering how I was going to manage to slip her into this one).

  5. Humph

    Re: An experiment

    > The rate they keep aborting female foetuses, India will end up with too many men.

    There was a radio programme earlier in the year (it might even have been last year) that told of a poor man who was pretty much forced to share his wife with a local rich man. Neither male seemed to be particularly happy with the arrangement. I'm not sure either of them sought the woman's opinion.

    Also I recall seeing a programme on TV about women who were married and then murdered for their dowries. Sadly these crimes never seem to get investigated properly. Especially if those alleged to have committed the crimes are rich and/or powerful.

    Seems to me the situation will only get worse.

  6. L1feless

    WHAT!?!?

    As I am not Indian nor have I ever visited India. Would a simple solution not be to work towards changing the culture of dowries? I mean with that small push for culture change it would assist in having this mass abortion of women stop.

  7. yeah, right.

    dowrie culture

    Right, go ahead, try to change a culture that treats women as property they have to bribe someone to take. Of course, those people hide their misogyny behind wails of "religious freedom", so it's unlikely to change unless you do us all a favour and first remove that overused excuse.

    While you're at it, there's a few countries just west of there that wrap their women in cloth bags because they're ashamed of them. You could try changing that culture too?

    And, since you're doing all that, you might try putting a hat on a snowball so that it'll last for hours in an operating blast furnace.

    I say let the bastards do it to themselves. Perhaps with less women available, they'll finally get a handle on their population problem? Hey, if they can be convinced to war with each other for the few remaining women, maybe they can even bring down the population. Never underestimate the types of behaviour that evolution will find in order to ensure survival of the species.

  8. Henry Cobb
    Unhappy

    Dowries are also illegal

    As always a free market will solve this.

    Let parents sex-select until the supply of daughters drops to meet the demand.

  9. DMG
    Unhappy

    It's not just in India

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7123753.stm

    The results are consistent year upon year. The NHS nurses (gawd love 'em) will not tell people the sex of their child because they know the women will go to India, have an abortion and come back here to get pregnant (with a male) again.

  10. Suresh Sundaram

    is it india or...

    i have heard that dowry system is rampant in the moslem culture as well; the mowlvi gets heftily paid (by the bride's father, ofcourse) & the groom gets treated royally.

    india is going through extremes: they've been on the dogmatic extreme earlier, & now with the "bangaloring" & IT culture coming in in the name of globalisation, things get into total imbroglio, leading to identity crisis.

    strangely enough, 15th aug is india's day of independence from the err.. uhum... british.

    india is dead... long live india.

  11. Martin Lyne

    It would seem..

    anyone demanding an excessive dowry is, in effect, destroying their own country with greed.

    It's a shame the knock-on effect isn't so obvious to the avaricious around the rest of the world.

  12. Jeffrey Nonken
    Unhappy

    Don't these people want grandchildren?

    I think this behavior should be encouraged.

    In a generation the women will be in very high demand. Either it will force a change in India's attitudes towards women...

    ... or in two generations India will all but die off. Assuming of course that they don't kill themselves off first. Riots? Could happen. Or they could seek a military solution and get creamed by a neighbor.

    Think of it as evolution in action.

    Now I'm sure somebody will accuse me of racism, but this isn't about India per se. I simply see a culture that treats some people as property, and now that technology is changing their environment, they're trying desperately to hang on to their traditions. No matter what the cost.

    My own culture has been through some of this (treating people as property) and we're still fighting the effects. *sigh*

    They're destroying themselves. The world is moving on. If they refuse to change with it, they will be left behind. Nobody can force enlightenment on them, and saving them from the consequences of their own folly merely means more folly.

    ... And the fact is, they won't entirely die off. Hopefully the few that remain will have learned from their mistakes.

    But it will take a while. I won't be here to see the end of it.

    My real hope is that the culture will adapt and they won't go through this crisis. But I'm afraid it usually takes a crisis before people change. Look at the oil price thing going on here in the US. No matter all the warnings from those ecology nuts and peak oil weirdos, everybody has to buy an SUV or a Hummer and drive everywhere they go every chance they get. Our so-called public transit system dies slowly because people don't use it. (Well, that and because it's badly managed. But who cares, right?) Then petrol hits $4/gallon and suddenly it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. Transportation costs rise and everything else with it, and THEN suddenly it's time to treat this seriously. Me? I own a 12-year-old 4-door with a 3L v6 and I've had SUV owners offer to buy it. Because even mediocre mileage starts to look good when your behemoth gets 12 mpg.

    So, what do you think? Will they adapt, or will they die?

  13. C Ridley

    Tw@t

    > Me? I own a 12-year-old 4-door with a 3L v6 ...

    Here's hoping Jeffrey Nonken's countrymen 'seek a military solution and get creamed by a neighbor' for the sake of humankind.

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