Only child porn websites to be banned in India
Following widespread outrage on social media on the Department of Telecom's order blocking 857 porn websites, it appears that the government is taking a step back and partially lifting the ban.
IT and Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told India Today TV channel and news agency PTI that the ban will be partially lifted and websites that do not feature child porn will be unblocked. This implies that the ban will be partially lifted.
In damage control mode, Prasad took a high-level review meeting today, which was attended by IT Secretary R S Sharma and Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, among others.
Explaining the rationale behind the original directive, Prasad said, "The instant action is basically in obedience to the observation of the Supreme Court where the court asked the department to take action on the list of alleged porn sites provided by the petitioner."
The minister said that the government is committed for freedom of communication on the internet.
"The government compliments the dissemination of idea on the social media. We have launched the mygov platform seeking views of people of India on developmental agenda and lakhs of people are participating on this platform," he said.
The ministry of communications and information and technology, in its order of July 31 under section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act 2000 had banned 857 websites terming their content "immoral and indecent". Some websites in the list were found to be hosting jokes, memes and other humourous content without any pornography.
Sources in the government had denied that there was any crackdown. They said denial of access at department of telecom's (DoT) instance was "temporary, insisting that it was a prelude to the creation of a regular regulatory oversight.
The Centre had said that Supreme Court's repeated criticism of the ministry of home affairs for "inaction" on the list of websites with child pornographic content provided by petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani was the principal trigger for the blocking of 857 of them.
"The ministry has taken action on the basis of the list of adult websites showing child pornography as provided to the court by petitioner," additional solicitor general Pinky Anand told TOI on Monday.
The law officer said the ministry would soon file an affidavit in the Supreme Court explaining its action taken on the issue raised by the petition even as she emphasized only those adult websites which had child pornographic content were blocked.
(The Times of India)
