India censors web again

Posted by admin

July 17, 2006

what do India, Pakistan, China and Ethiopia have in common?

It’s not a love of cricket. Or even clandestine nuclear programs.
They are all - apparently - blocking blogspot.com.

India is the newcomer to this party, and it is unclear just what blogs are being blocked, whether all ISPs are complying, and whether all blogspot blogs will be blocked or just a subset of sites.

India is again playing with censorship on web just after china. The Department of Telecommunications passed an order to ISPs Friday to block several websites. The list is confidential. ISPs have been slowly coming into compliance. blogs & sites hosted on Blogger , Typepad & Geocities are not accessible now. The List of ISP’s that Blocked Blogger is here. Bloggers collective initiated protest by Bloggers. A new wiki is setup against censorship
Shivam Vij managed to talk to Dr Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, the only body authorised to issue a blocking directive. His response: “Somebody must have asked for some sites to be blocked. What is your problem?”.

Every ban Govt proposes is in the name of controlling terrorists. There are such unclarified reports this time too. It is very same as denying public water supply in the name of terrorists are used to drink it. This also shows that Govt of India & CERT-IN did’nt learn anything from the past experience of banning yahoo! Groups in the name of militant Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) of the Khasi tribe, started a mailinglist named kynhun. The popularity popularity and visibility went up by leaps and bounds instantaneously, despite it being blocked by all ISPs! Clearly, you can’t ban anything on the internet.

More than a censorship it violates Communication rights of the people. As blogs become more an more important as a platform for free speech, government seeking to restrict speech are finding it appealing to control speech on blogs. Blogs are the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, theyâ€™re tremendous tools of freedom of expression. I expect Reporters without Borders will come with a press Release soon.

Neha vishanathan, Global Voices editor for South Asia written a nice article explains the situation. Needless to say, most Indian bloggers are deeply upset about this apparent block. The fact that Pakistan has a similar block in place - put in place in the wake of the Danish cartoons, fiercely combatted by the Don’t Block the Blogs campaign - is not much consolation.

India is country with nearly 16,580,000 internet users & amoung them around 38 lakh of people are using blogs, reading or Writing, around 45,000 blogs from india is hosted at blogspot.com. We all knows the help done by Disaster response & relief blogs at the time of Tsunami. (it came to the eye of mainstream media at that time). The current blocks affect (in the name of security) affects even mumbaihelp blog.

Govt’s need to understand that any kind of censorship will not work on internet. The online community will overcome any ban with the help of social technologies. The most Interesting thing I’m seeing among indian bloggers is the way they are collectively documenting the issue using social Technologies. see the Bloggers against censorship wiki. The Techniques for bypassing the ban is also available here.

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