Blocking of Blogs by Indian Government
Posted by Ashish on July 18th, 2006
This is an old news now where people have been speculating about the reason for a lot of different blogs to be blocked in India.
Indiatimes has an article with the reason for the blogs being blocked: Terror heat hits netizens, select blogs blocked.
From the article:
MUMBAI/DELHI: The central government, reeling under fierce criticism of its response to the Mumbai blasts, has struck a blow at the online community by issuing orders to block blogs across the country.
The Department of Telecommunications has sent a notice to internet service providers (ISPs) to block around 17-18 websites on the internet. DoT usually sends such notices of censorship only when it finds objectionable, anti-national content or anything against public interest on these websites.
Experts believe that the government’s sudden move is aimed at thwarting the use of blogs (online journals) and websites by terrorists and their supporters. Blogspot, a Google-owned site, is among those blocked by this government measure.
And, they say, we have a freedom of speech! Another reason for not using a hosted blog - thank god that I have my own domain name.
July 18th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Why isnt Google doing anything about it? Google just bought Blogger and just abandoned it… there have been like 1 feature addition per year or something.
Now if the government blocked google.com you’d have protests in the street. And why not? Dont those terrorist bloggers use google to search for their dark deeds
Block google and observe the effect on the economy..
July 18th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Its a big blow to freedom of speech. This sort of thing can be misused by the government anytime for their vested interests to curb freedom of speech.
July 18th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Does that mean that we can’t write and read on blogspot? What will happen to the existing blogs on blogspot?
July 19th, 2006 at 7:33 am
Saad / Hiren - I agree that it’s total BS. Nobody sane would ever support this.
Siddharth - you will be able to read / write on blogspot but will have to wait a few days. The existing blogs are there but it’s just not accessible from India currently. I have no idea when they would remove the ban on those sites but the criticism is strong.
July 20th, 2006 at 10:40 am
I did not know this ! I have been trying to open my blog but I simply get the “The page cannot be displayed” page ! I thought this was some temporary Blogger problem.
Certainly cannot be supported at all !
July 26th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
The blocking of blogs were done by the service providers. This could have overcome by http://pkblogs.com/
August 29th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
I just laughed at it. Just go to this web proxy site and start using any blocked site you want.
So simple. And the people in power are so dumb!
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