India Government Stance on Blocking
This message was posted to the South Asian Journalists Association list, and was a response directly to Sreenath Sreenivasan, journalism professor, tech reporter and founder of the group:
A two-page write up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and the holy prophet which had the potential to inflame religious sensitivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country appeared in a blog facilitated by well known search engines. The matter was immediately taken note of by our CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) was informed of it. The DOT took up the matter forthwith with the search engines and instructions were also issued to all Internet providers to block the two impertinent pages. Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs. Department of Telecommunications have now clarified the issue and the error is being rectified and it is expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will soon be restored.
This is for your information.A.R. Ghanashyam
Deputy Consul General
New York
This is interesting because it does not say that the block will be entirely lifted, but it says “normalcy in respect of blogs” will be restored.
Unfortunately, blocks like this often call more attention to the objectionable material than there was previously.
One question circulating on mailing lists, did the government attempt to go to the source (ie. web site operators) first, to ask for the blogs to be taken down? If they contained hate speech, then it may have violated the terms of service agreed upon at Blogger, Typepad or any other site. That would have gone a long way to avoid this problem in the first place.
December 1st, 2006 04:08
The Great Indian Government did it again. We elected those asses now they are paying up. Just answer me one thing, the Babus who know nothing they are dealing with. Do you own the internet? Do you have the right to censor it? Did your Dad own it? Did you buy it? Did you overtake it from anyone through Bruteforce. Let me answer this one for you. NO. The Government NEVER helped to popularise the Internet. The Internet is the real thing FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE and TO THE PEOPLE. Now from nowhere comes this banning.