In the country's first big clampdown on internet porn, the Indian government has ordered service providers to block 857 websites, as per a spokesperson of the Department of Telecommunications, NN Kaul. “Free and open access to porn websites has been brought under check,” Kaul said. “We don’t want them to become a social nuisance.”
However, Communications and Information Technology Ministry officials have denied to acknowledge it as a crackdown and called it a “temporary measure”. “The directive came after the Supreme Court last month expressed concern over the Home Ministry’s failure to block websites featuring child pornography,” an official said. The department insisted it was not a ban since several such websites are available, and also through VPN and proxy servers.
The government, in a 17-page order issued a list of offending sites and directed service providers to block access on the grounds of morality and decency. In response to the original petition filed that argued that that crimes against women and children were influenced by the proliferation of porn sites, the Supreme Court refused to impose an outright ban after hearing a petition that said internet porn fuelled sex crime. The court said individuals should be free to access such websites in private.
But the court asked the home ministry to submit its views and the government acted after the ministry sent a letter to the telecom secretary, Kaul said. As a result, several sites became inaccessible and displayed messages that they were blocked on instructions of the competent authority. People stormed social media, protesting against the decision, the hash tag #Pornban even became a trend on Twitter.
“Porn ban is anti-freedom, impractical, not enforceable. Politically not very smart too. Avoidable. Let’s not manage people’s private lives,” best-selling novelist Chetan Bhagat posted on Twitter.
Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma said that given that level of popularity, any government embraced a ban would lose the next election. “To ban porn, saying it will be seen by who shouldn’t see it, is like saying to stop traffic because there will be accidents,” he tweeted.
Watching porn is legal in India, although distribution and sale of pornographic material remains illegal. Kaul said the government was working on a long-term solution and suggested the ban would not remain indefinitely.
The government is treading on wafer thin ice with the porn ban as it directly points at the citizens' right to the internet.
