Government orders ISPs to block 39 sites hosting obscene content
Responding to a PIL seeking action against obscene content online, the Indian government orders blocking of 39 websites hosting obscene content.
The Indian government has ordered Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block as many as 39 websites hosting obscene content. The order comes in the wake of a petition filed by Indore based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani that says watching obscene videos is not an offence but is among major reasons behind crime against women.
The petition further highlights the lack of adequate Internet laws encourages people to access obscene videos. More than 20 crore such videos or clippings are available in the market and are being downloaded through web or accessed via video CDs, the petition points out.
“Absence of internet laws encourages watching porn videos since it is not an offence. This has led to a situation where more than 20 crore porn videos/porn clippings are available in the Indian market, which have been downloaded from the internet,” the petitioner through counsel Virag Gupta had said.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir issued notices to ministries of Information and Technology, Information and Broadcasting and Home Affairs, and Internet Service Providers Association of India over the petition.
Department of Telecom in its June 13 order says: “It has been decided to immediately block the access to the following urls (website links). Kindly do not mention the name of URLs in the compliance letter.”
Responding to the government order, President of Internet Service Providers Association of India Rajesh Charia says: “Effective way of blocking as per DoT’s directive is to block the content at origin by respective data centre or content owner if content is hosted in country… if content is hosted outside India, then it should be blocked at international gateway of cable landing stations.”
Source: DNA India