A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity to BBC Hindi, said India’s department of telecommunications had “advised” telecom companies and Internet service providers to “control free and open access” to 857 websites featuring explicit content.
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Defending the decision, a top government official said the government has merely complied with the Supreme Court directive asking for measures to block porn sites, particularly those dealing with child pornography. The full list hasn’t yet been released, but is said to relate purely to pornographic or sexual sites.
The 17-page order issued on July 31 directed ISPs to block access on morality and decency grounds.
Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. “We are looking into evolving a system”, Kaul said, adding that until then all sites would be blocked.
With less than a week remaining until that deadline, it appears the Indian government may have responded – by implementing a ban that prevents most porn sites from being accessed through Indian ISPs.
By Monday noon, however, the list of blocked sites was released.
India’s Supreme Court had previously admitted that it was not its responsibility to order a ban, and the government should be responsible. Chief Justice H.L. Dattu said that as long as a person of legal age is watching legal content “within the four walls” of his or her home, porn can not be summarily banned.
The blockade is a result of a PIL being now held in the Supreme Court that seeks the government to block citizens from accessing pornography on the Internet.
They said denial of access at department of telecom’s (DoT) instance was “temporary, insisting that it was a prelude to the creation of a regular regulatory oversight”.
Over the weekend, Internet users across India reported that some adult websites had been replaced with blank white pages, according to The Verge.
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“To ban porn saying it will be seen by who shouldn’t see it is like saying to stop traffic because there will be accidents”, Ram Gopal Varma, Indian film director Tweeted. Some of the world’s most popular pornography sites, including Pornhub and Redtube, are now inaccessible on most major ISP networks, Quartz India is reporting.
