KING Canute's attempt to command the waves seems less demanding than th e threats of the Delhi High Court to Google, Facebook and others to precensor objectionable material and eliminate them from circulation.

The recent story has deeper roots.

According to the New York Times, in October 2011, IT Minister Kapil Sibal called internet service providers to protest a Facebook page maligning Sonia Gandhi. Following another meeting in November, on December 5, 2011, Sibal called Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and others to proclaim that " the Indian government doesn't believe in censorship. It believes in self- regulation". But his request from the service providers was Herculean. They were to create a mechanism to identify and, perforce, excise " inflammatory" and " defamatory" material. The service providers were to be simultaneously regulators and spies.