Posted on 12/21/2004 7:40:03 PM PST by wagglebee
NEW DELHI (AP) - It was a private act of two hormone-charged teenagers that lasted 2 minutes and 37 seconds on digital video.
But offered for sale on the Internet, the fuzzy images of the 17-year-old girl having oral sex with her high school sweetheart has sent shock waves through urban India, exposing the growing friction between the conservative middle class, its increasingly Westernized progeny and modern technology.
"It came to me as a surprise that kids are having sex so soon," Barkha Dutt, who hosts the country's most popular television talk show on social issues, said in an interview. "Even we are not aware of how much things have changed."
India may be the birthplace of Kama Sutra, the 6th century sex manual, but sex today is a generally taboo subject. Premarital sex is not widely condoned, and public displays of affection draw frowns.
Caught in the scandal's stinging sweep is Avnish Bajaj, the Indian-born American who heads eBay's Indian subsidiary Baazee.com, where the video clip - shot by the schoolboy himself using his cell phone camera - was put up for sale.
Arrested last week under an ambiguous Indian law on cyber porn, Bajaj was freed after posting bail Tuesday, but his U.S. passport remained confiscated.
Bajaj's arrest triggered a diplomatic spat between the United States and India and a threat by eBay executives to reconsider doing business in a country that would toss one of their top managers in jail as a scapegoat.
"This incident has certainly given us pause and raises concerns about the safeguards that are in place for businesses operating in India," said Henry Gomez, an eBay vice president in the United States.
"This situation is one of concern at highest levels of the U.S. government," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
Bajaj set up Baazee.com in 2000 and sold it to San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, the Internet's leading auction company, for about $50 million in June. The Harvard-educated executive has since headed the Bombay-based subsidiary.
The sex clip was recorded weeks ago and passed on by the bragging schoolboy to three of his friends and eventually made its way to video disc sellers in New Delhi. It did not draw much attention until an engineering student at a prestigious Indian college listed it for sale on Baazee.com.
Now the girl's parents have sent her off to Canada. The 17-year-old boy, the son of an affluent businessman, is now in a juvenile detention center. He went to Nepal to escape the media glare and was arrested at the airport when he returned to the capital on Sunday. A judge on Tuesday ordered him held until Jan. 4 for questioning to try to determine how the video clip reached the man who tried to sell it.
The controversy over the clip - it's the talk of urban India, an obsession of newspapers and talk shows - is typical of a society in transition, said Dr. Ranjana Kumari, the director of the think tank Center for Social Research.
India's recent economic boom has created unimaginable wealth among the tech-savvy urban population, who live in a globalized world dominated by the Internet, international brands and Western lifestyle with its relatively liberal sexual values.
Kumari says urban India is being pulled apart by these new values and its own centuries-old social conservatism.
"It is this transition which is resulting in a lot of confusion," Kumari said.
Observers like Kumari think a variety of people share the blame for grossly amplifying this sex scandal - including the authorities who arrested Bajaj and the boy, who remains unidentified because of his age; the teenagers' parents, who weren't aware of their children's activities; and teachers, for sidestepping sex education in schools.
Many are outraged by the arrest of the schoolboy, who along with the girl attended one of the capital's best known private schools, The Delhi Public School.
"What are we trying to say here?" asked Dutt. "What do we believe is wrong? Was it that he had sex? Was it that he sent out the clip? Which part is the disturbing part?"
Of greater concern to many in the business community is Bajaj's arrest under the Information Technology Act of 2000. The law makes a criminal offense of "publishing, transmitting, or causing to publish any information in electronic form, which is obscene." But it also says an Internet provider or Web site manager can't be held responsible if he acted diligently to remedy an electronic offense after learning of it.
Baazee.com maintains it yanked the sex video listing as soon as customer service managers noticed it, and Bajaj had traveled to New Delhi to cooperate with authorities.
Pawan Duggal, a cyberlaw expert, said Bajaj's arrest has serious implications, especially when Internet usage in the country is rapidly growing and foreign investors are increasingly looking to India for e-commerce opportunities.
"Ultimately we have to see bigger picture. We want to increase Internet penetration. All this will only happen if you allow service providers the freedom," he said. "The law needs to be more industry friendly and more pragmatic."
BIGGER picture? I'm waiting to see even the cell phone version. And as to penetration, the less said the better.
Welcome to the age of Bill Clinton.
"We want to increase Internet penetration."
Odd choice of words!
"We want to increase Internet penetration."
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Well keep in mind that man is the only creature on earth that can have sex over the telephone....anything is possible :-)
That would be teenagers, all right.
Now, I'm sure we'll have several people say things to the effect of "Back in my day, we may have done it, but we didn't tell."
I'm in the generation that would say, "2 minutes and 37 seconds? Back in my day, we would have been embarrassed to show evidence that it didn't last longer!" LOL
Like Custer said as his last words a century ago, "Oh my God, look at all those f--in' Indians!"
Bombay Hilton?
Just "cut and paste" and loop the tape!
Is it better than the porn carvings on the Hindu temples?
He was a boy She was a girl Can I make it any more obvious He was a punk She did ballet What more can I say He wanted her She'd never tell Secretly she wanted him as well But all of her friends Stuck up their nose They had a problem with his baggy clothes He was a skater boy She said see you later boy He wasn't good enough for her She had a pretty face But her head was up in space She needed to come back down to earth Five years from now She sits at home Feeding the baby she's all alone She turns on tv Guess who she sees Skater boy rockin up MTV She calls up her friends They already know And they've all got tickets to see his show She tags along Stands in the crowd Looks up at the man that she turned down He was a skater boy She said see you later boy He wasn't good enough for her Now he's a superstar Slamming on his guitar Does your pretty face see what he's worth? He was a skater boy She said see you later boy He wasn't good enough for her Now he's a superstar Slamming on his guitar Does your pretty face see what he's worth? Sorry girl but you missed out Well tough luck that boy's mine now We are more than just good friends This is how the story ends Too bad that you couldn't see, See the man that boy could be There is more that meets the eye I see the soul that is inside He's just a boy And I'm just a girl Can I make it any more obvious We are in love Haven't you heard How we rock each other's world I'm with the skater boy I said see you later boy I'll be backstage after the show I'll be at a studio Singing the song we wrote About a girl you used to know I'm with the skater boy I said see you later boy I'll be backstage after the show I'll be at a studio Singing the song we wrote About a girl you used to know Avril Lavigne Sk8ter Boi
I don't get it -- what's the song got to do with the article?
Wow, image what it would be like if we arrested teens in America for doing this. Maybe if Paris Hilton was arrested for her sex video, we would have such a problem with teens dressing and acting so scanky.
The real outrage is that Indian brothels are filled with kidnapped underage girls...thousands of them.
I have no respect India.
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