On July 15th, the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) had sent ISPs a list of sites to be blocked. R H Sharma, senior engineer with MTNL, said that the list of sites ran into some 22 pages. – A blog at Rediff India
This directive led to blocking of several sites including hundreds of blogs. This was an unpredecent ban on online media in recent times. I have been following the entire event closely and here is a quick summary of the events and the current situation:
Which sites were banned?
The list is quite long if we go by the statement of R H Sharma of MTNL. However I have been able to lay my hand of this partial list:
http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Sites_Banned
The worst part was that this mass media censorship was done wrong. They ended up banning the entire domain which includes thousands of blogs. How come all blogs be banned if some blogs within these sites were not appropriate.
ISPs were lazy and they found that it is easiest to block the second level domain instead of typing few extra URLs and banning individual blogs! May be they have not heard about Blogspot or Typepad!
Listen to a podcast interview of spokesperson from Sify, a leading ISP of India.
An excellent post about Censorship Done Wrong is worth reading, which highlights how a normal censorship procedure which was hardly ever felt by internet users of India got blown out of proportion. Blocking genuine sites and blogs have got DoT their share of trouble in form of flames and rants of thousands of internet users (mainly bloggers) and the matter is even going to court in form of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL).
Isn’t India a democracy with “freedom of speech”?
Indeed. And this is the reason why I am shocked over this ban. Since freedom in 1947, Indian nationals have enjoyed an environment of free speech. There have been few exceptions, but the current young generation have never faced such censorship.
It has been very nicely summed by by Mr. M Raj at BloggersCollective –
“As part of a generation that has NOT experienced first-hand censorship of the mass media (the last time this happened was during Emergency in 1975) this ‘blogger block’ has come as a deep shock to all of us. Living in India prepares you for some of the toughest realities that LIFE could throw your way but freedom to say what you want has been largely a sacred cow, especially since the trauma of Emergency.” – Mr. M Raj at BloggersCollective
Over past six years, DoT has blocked more than 100 websites. Generally sites are blocked when they are anti-national, illegal or adult in nature.
However this is for the first time that such a large number of websites have been blocked in one go. And besides this, it was done wrong making matters worse.
Is this censorship lawful under The Indian Constitution?
Inspired by the ISPs, I also showed some laziness and borrowed the legal research done by Rediff.
Under the Information Technology Act, 2000, a body called the Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-IN, was created along the lines of similar authorities the world over. Although its main task is in the domain of Internet security, it also oversees Internet censorship under a clause that seeks to ensure ‘balanced flow of information.’ Any government department seeking a block on any web site has to approach CERT-IN, which then instructs the DoT to block the site after confirming the authenticity of the complaint.
Web sites can be blocked if they contain pornography, speeches of hate, contempt, slander or defamation, or if they promote gambling, racism, violence or terrorism.
“Such sites may be blocked within the provision of the Fundamental Rights to free speech and expression, granted in India’s Constitution,” said cyber-law expert Praveen Dalal, adding, “If, however, the blocking is arbitrary, unreasonable and unfair, it would be in violation of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution of India.”
Read the full Rediff.com story.
Therefore it needs to be analyzed, if banning so many sites in one go was well thought out and planned after reviewing the content closely OR was it a ad-hoc decision to simply divert attention from the failures of the Mumbai Serial Blasts!
How are people reacting to this ban?
There is an outrage among bloggers, who is the most vocal supporters of freedom of speech. However the general mood of people is against this censorship as people see this as censorship of mass media, which has its own drastic implications.
Some reactions can be read here:
Some people believe that the government has taken a well planned step in favor of national security (excerpt from SiliconBeat thread):
Mihir and Bala,
This is not a knee jerk reaction, this is being done to track the SIMI (Islamic fundamentalist in India) blog community hiding inside sophisticated blog community. Read more on this in http://indiauncut.blogspot.com/It has noting todo with free speech and politics.
SK on July 18, 2006 08:10 AM
What are people doing about it?
Apart from the most evident rant and verbal protest, a Public Interest Litigation has been filed (no concrete confirmation has been received yet)
People have protested to ISPs and it seems things are moving in a positive direction with ISPs understanding their lazy blunder and removing “full domain” censorship and retaining censorship to specified areas of the censored websites.
BloggersCollective group has been formed and lots of active bloggers are joining the group. See the growing list of members.
Want to know how to bypass the ban and see if the sites really deserves to be banned?
You can simply use any proxy service which is hosted outside India. The one I use very often is http://www.the-cloak.com/
There are tons of reseources which tells you how to by-pass the ban and read on! They are listed on http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Bypassing_The_Ban
So whats going to happen next?
A lot happened over last few days. With ISPs correcting their mistake, a lot of sites are already showing up. Again many ISPs have not followed the DoT directive in full.
The latest status of the censorship can be seen here.
The DoT & Government of India should come ahead to clarify the situation and put an end to an unwanted controversy which is taking up quite some time of the intellectual mass of India. And yes, they should not forget to mention that the subject got blown up due to laziness of ISPs.
Lets hope for an early end to this controversy.
Abhishek