Safernet Brasil

A lot of Orkut users from India, which should please Google Inc., owner of the social-networking site.

But as in other places where social networking has taken hold, there are problems as users come to grips with the risks and benefits of that online activity.

In August, Mumbai police said that they suspected a youth may have been killed by people he met on Orkut. That prompted a debate on Indian TV channels and in newspapers about the dangers, as well as the good aspects, of Orkut and other social-networking sites.

There also are frequent calls by fundamentalist organizations to ban Orkut, because some user community or others on Orkut insulted an icon or leader of such a group. The site earned criticism in June from the Shiv Sena, a powerful political party in Mumbai, after it was found that someone had posted derogatory remarks on Orkut about its chief, Bal Thackeray. The Shiv Sena demanded that the federal government ban Orkut, and some of the party's supporters vandalized cyber cafes in Mumbai.

"It is important to remember that the vast majority of people use Orkut for the purpose it was created -- to meet and share, organize and communicate, speak and be heard," a spokeswoman for Google in India said this week. Shutting down the whole site because a minority of users don't play by the rules is like closing the entire road when a few drivers break the speed limit, she added.

Orkut has also emerged as an online forum for Indians and Pakistanis to insult each other. India and Pakistan have a long feud over the disputed territory of Kashmir, which is partially under Indian control.

A lawyer from Aurangabad filed a petition last October before the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court against Orkut and other social-networking sites. The lawyer, Yugant R. Marlapalle, petitioned the court to issue general directions to all network service providers with operations in India to ensure that their sites are not used to promote content inimical to the country or to promote hate and violence.

Marlapalle said he was annoyed that despite his complaints to the company, Google did not immediately remove from Orkut a community called "We Hate India" that included a photograph of an Indian flag burning along with anti-India propaganda.

"I am not against social-networking sites, but they have to be monitored," Marlapalle said this week. In his petition, which is still to be ruled on by the High Court, Marlapalle asked for the creation of a watchdog to monitor objectionable activity on social-networking and other Internet sites.

But he is less likely now to pursue his case against Google and Orkut, because he finds that the company is more cooperative and subsequently removed the "We Hate India" community from Orkut.

Google has been making overtures to some of its detractors, with some success.

It recently offered Indian police a special tool for priority reporting of objectionable material on Orkut. The new reporting tool does not affect the way Google treats users' data, but enables faster, direct communication between the company and law enforcement agencies, Google said.

Google has also benefited from educating people on the use of social-networking sites, according to the Google spokeswoman. "We have, for example, advised users on how to report abuse and not to share private information," she said.

The redesigned Orkut interface also provides security tips and a variety of new tools including one to report when someone is impersonating someone else. "We believe that rather than monitoring content of the Internet, it is better to educate users about appropriate online behavior and provide them with tools with which they can report abuse," the spokeswoman said.

Despite the controversies, the number of people on Orkut from India continues to grow.

India has the third-largest number of users of Orkut, according to data on its Web site. Indian members of Orkut account for 16.02 percent of people using the social-networking site, with 53.25 percent from Brazil and 18.85 percent from the US.

Orkut is the most popular Web site in India after Yahoo's global site and Google's India site, according to traffic rankings from Alexa Internet Inc.