It seems India Government have ordered Internet service providers (ISPs) in the country to bring down all pornography websites accessible in the country. According to media reports, Telecom and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, directed the departments of IT and telecom to co-operate with each other to enhance the blocking infrastructure at the ISP level itself.
The move currently seems to be limited across Govt owned ISPs (BSNL & MTNL) and some private telecom operators, but we can expect a nationwide block on these websites by all major ISPs in the coming week. When blocked visitors on to this website will see a message saying “This site has been blocked as per instruction from Department of Telecom (DOT)”. [Source – Reddit]
#Pornban seems to be trending high on Twitter, with possible response from every corner. Here is the live coverage of that –
According to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team there are over 40 million porn websites and the majority of them operate outside from India. Blocking each and every one of them seems to be impossible and such a large scale blockage can slow down overall data speed in the country, which in-turn require service providers to bring their infrastructure up-to-date. [Source – The Economic Times]. Another issue faces by ISPs is the encrypted HTTPS protocol on pornography websites, that’s even harder to block.
It should be noted that, Supreme Court of India has earlier declined to block pornography websites, saying it would be a violation of article 21 – “Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody may come to the court and say look I am above 18 and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room. It is a violation of Article 21 [right to personal liberty]” [Source – The Hindu].
At the end of the day, nothing can be blocked in Internet, people will find other ways to access it. Users can simply access this website through proxy servers or VPN which can’t be detected by ISPs. It would be way better to provide proper sex education to the younger generation in India.