India Blocks Slowly Lifted
Reports are trickling in that ISPs in India are slowly releasing blocks on the big guys - Blogger and Typepad, either because they’re refining the blocks to be more precise, or they’re backing off completely for the short term. There still seems to be a directive in place to block specific controversial sites.
Sify and BSNL are two ISPs that have reportedly eased the blocks.
Also, WSJ has a story about this (available without subscription for a short time):
The Indian government told the country’s Internet-service providers to cease blocking popular sites full of Web logs after attempts to restrict access to the sites spurred protests from the online community.
In a meeting yesterday, India’s Department of Telecommunications clarified that the Internet-service providers have to block access only to specific blogs within the sites — not entire sites that contain blogs, according to the Internet Service Providers Association of India. The confusion had resulted in many blogs being blocked inadvertently.
Last week, the telecom department gave service providers a list of more than 15 Web sites they wanted blocked to users in India. The orders were issued without an explanation of why the sites needed to be blocked or how long they should be blocked. As a result, many service providers extended blanket blockades over sites popular for posting personal Web pages.
July 23rd, 2006 12:29
[…] There have been recent signs that the blanket filtering are slowly being lifted by some ISPs. In the meantime, concerned bloggers have been communicating and organizing themselves using Google Groups, as well as a wiki that aggregates information, including information on how to bypass the block. […]