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Blogs Banned in India

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The Indian government, acting under a:

federal government notification of July 2003 says it can ban websites in the interest of:

  • sovereignty or integrity of India
  • security of the state
  • friendly relations with foreign states and public order
  • preventing incitement to commissioning of any cognisable offences.BBC News | South Asia

has ordered Indian ISPs to block a number of websites, principally blogs. Some ISPs seem to have responded by blocking whole blogging domains, thus cutting Indians off from potentially thousands of sites along with those the Indian government deems dangerous in some way.

The situation is unclear, but it would appear that some Indians are unable to receive any blogs hosted by blogspot.com, the Google-owned Blogger on which Slawyers Connie Crosby (http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com), Steve Matthews (http://vancouverlawlib.blogspot.com), Michel-Adrien Sheppard (http://micheladrien.blogspot.com), and Patrick Cormier (http://imbok.blogspot.com) blog.

Those interested in following the developments might look at a wiki established as part of the Censorship Wikia, Bloggers Against Censorship. Incidentally, I think this ability quickly to marshall information from diverse sources demonstrates a real merit of wikis.

If any of our Indian readers are unable to get Connie, Steve, Michel-Adrien or Patrick please let us know and we will republish their content here.

Comments

  1. Saffron
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:21 pm

    May the government bureaucrats who did this be shamed both domestically and internationally. India is not China.

  2. Steven Matthews
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    Ban my blog, just don’t ban my feed! :-)

  3. Simon Fodden
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:29 pm

    Really good point, Steve. I wonder if anyone has been bright enough (so to speak) to think of that. Long live RSS.

  4. Simon C
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:39 pm

    Okay some practical solutions to the DoT directive sent out on Friday.

    Apparently, there is a portal that can be used to avoid the blockage: http://www.pkblogs.com/ For more enthusiast bloggers, http://www.boingboing.net has all the tips needed to fool such bans.

    For more detailed discussion see http://www.efytimes.com/fullnews13.asp?edid=13029 and our local Chennai paper, the Hindu:
    http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006071902421300.htm&date=2006/07/19/&prd=th&

  5. Simon Fodden
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:57 pm

    The BoingBoing page that gathers the updates and contains suggestions about circumventing the ban is here. Apropos of Steve’s RSS point, there’s some speculation now that India will try block RSS feeds, but if they’re done via a feed management provider like Feedburner, e.g., the government would have to thrash far and wide to stanch the flow. No?

  6. Steven Matthews
    July 19th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

    Yes, and that’s before we add in any RSS mixing, filtering or re-blogging tools.

  7. Simon C
    July 19th, 2006 at 7:03 pm

    A Government official said that only two websites had been blocked.

    “I have seen the Government order. Only two webblogs — pyjamaeditors.blogspot.com and exposingtheleft.blogspot.com — have been blocked,” Gulshan Rai, head of cyber security agency Computer Emergency Response Team, told AFP.

    http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/20/stories/2006072018771200.htm

  8. Simon C
    July 25th, 2006 at 4:42 pm

    Restrictions raised today according to The Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/thscrip/print.pl?file=2006072518130100.htm&date=2006/07/25/&prd=th&