With the help of internet service providers, and presumably under directives of the court, has banned thousands of websites and URLs in the last five odd years.
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Earlier, the only the uploaders of pirated content on websites or torrent sites were thought to be in danger of any legal prosecution; however, the latest warning is against every Internet user who dares to even open such sites and view torrent files.
Forget about downloading torrents, now users in India can face jail time and a hefty Rs 3 lakh for even visiting or viewing a blocked website.
We tried to visit one of the blocked websites http://uploadable.ch/ and here is the message we got: “This URL has been blocked under the instructions of the Competent Government Authority or in compliance with the orders of a Court of competent jurisdiction”.
And all this while, visiting these blocked sites and URLs were nearly fine – that is until now.
As per a report by India Today, it has been revealed that Govt. of India has intensified their attack against piracy and porn in a massive way. You don’t have to download, just viewing or accessing the information will land you in jail and you may end up paying the fine of INR 3lakhs. To this day, most of the websites were being blocked using DNS filtering.
However, after witnessing such as development the government had directed ISPs in India to take further steps to bolster their blocking mechanism. The author’s e-mail to the specified address to get more information bounced back. The fact that a person would be jailed and made to pay a fine for just viewing a blocked website seems hard to digest. Also, monitoring the web for monitoring the web also looks quite bleak.
There is a complete lack of clarity under the above message. It’s also unclear how the person who lands in trouble will be prosecuted. However, at the same, it is also clear that the mere presence of this message to web users mean that they may end up in trouble if a government body or cops do chose to follow through on anything that they believe is an “offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957”.
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John Doe behind this warning?
