Features

Indian Bloggers Protest Against Government Banning Sites

By Sophia Mayengbam

The government has issued an order to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to ban 17 websites, which are perceived to be anti-India, days after the Mumbai bomb blasts. Unfortunately Google’s affiliated website blogger or blogspot.com, which host million of bloggers around the world, has been also categorised as an anti-social elements directed to India.

The directive from the department of telecommunications was aimed at curtailing various political and religious extremes. But service providers were forced to cut all major sites, including the popular Geocities and Typepad. This step has ended in blocking all access to a number of blogging Web sites, causing outrage to thousands of bloggers. Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.

The citizens have filed a petition under the freedom of information law, which allows citizens the right to access information held by the government.

Bloggers criticizing the governments ban said that the ban will also block access to blogs like the one set up to help relatives of the victims of the train bombings in Mumbai, www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com.

"This is a clearly an infringement of fundamental right [of freedom of speech]," said Sanjukta Basu, a lawyer who blogs at eateccentricitydotcom.blogspot.com.

India has some 40,000 regular bloggers and the sites are platform for various subjects ranging from the political, music, mundane to topics rarely found in polite conversation in India.

Bloggers say they can still access their sites using a Pakistani-based service called pkblogs. "It is completely ridiculous. India is meant to be a democracy. We are not living in China here," said EM, who writes anonymously at thecompulsiveconfessor.blogspot.com. "The silly thing is I can still get to my blog by going via pkblogs."

Government officials are trying to pacify the angry bloggers. They said they are looking into the matter so that only individual pages could be block without affecting the entire bloggers community.

Gulshan Rai, director of the computer emergency response team, which is responsible for India's cyber-security, said, "Blogspot.com should not be blocked." He added, "What we need to do is work with service providers so that we block individual pages. Just give us some time."

Blocking sites does not serve any purpose in a country like India said Internet professionals. The professional said that ISP’s can block a specific site but the person who runs it can easily change its name and return.

According to ISP’s estimate there are 50 million Internet users in the country.


print	save	email	comment