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PostPosted: Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:58 pm 
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5194172.stm

India bloggers angry at net ban
By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Delhi

Indians with computers in an office
There are 50 million Internet users in India
India's burgeoning blogging community is up in arms against a government directive that they say has led to the blocking of their web logs.

The country's 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders.

Some of these sites belong to Google's Blogspot, a leading international web log hosting service.

Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.

A number of them have started filing petitions under the country's new landmark freedom of information law which gives citizens the right to access information held by the government.

Bloggers say the ban has meant that people do not even have access to blogs like the one set up to help the relatives of the victims of the recent train bombings in Mumbai (Bombay), http://www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com.

Angry

The government is not saying why it has banned each of the sites in its latest notification.

This has incensed bloggers in India, which has about 40,000 blog sites, even more.

"We want answers. Has the government goofed? Or is really talking censorship? With all our problems in India I was naive enough to feel that I was always free to express myself," writes blogger Dina Mehta.

Writer Dilip D'Souza, who authors a blog, says there is a "groundswell" of anger over the government decision.

"The government of my country does what governments find so easy: ban, block, censor," he writes.

Blogger Amit Agarwal bemoans on his site that India has "joined the Internet Filtering Club of China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Ethiopia".

"If the access to restricted websites is not restored in a day or two, this issue is sure to gather active momentum in the Western blogosphere."

Technology consultant Abhishek Baxi, who authors a blog, has filed two petitions under the freedom of information laws demanding answers from the government on the reasons behind the move.

"Is there a directive to block entire blog hosting services? Isn't this is a violation of our freedom of speech," he wonders.

But a spokesman for India's Internet Service Providers Association says that not all the ISPs have blocked blog sites.

"I have personally checked through different ISPs and logged on to many blogging sites, apart from the ones which have been specifically banned by the government," says Deepak Maheshwari, secretary of the association.

A government official has also said there has been no blanket ban on blogging hosts like Blogspot.

"The government order has four blogs under blogspot.com. The order didn't ask the whole site to be banned," Gulshan Rai of India's state-run Computer Emergency Response Team told reporters.

This does not placate bloggers like Sailesh Bharatwasi, 23, who says he has not been able to blog due to the ban.

"I am very tense and angry. We write so that people can read us. The ban is cutting us off from the people," he says.

'No purpose'

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.

The sites that have been banned include ones with right-wing Hindu links and an anti-Communist one. At least four of them are on the Blogspot hosting service.

This is not the first time that the government has ordered the blocking of websites since its notification three years ago.

Two years ago, the government blocked a site under a popular message group saying it was indulging in "anti-national activity".

"It has happened a few times in the past, particularly blocking of pornographic sites. But this is the single largest lot of sites to be blocked," says Puneet Tiwari, deputy director of the Internet Service Providers Association of India.

Internet professionals and lawyers believe that blocking sites really serves no purpose in a large country like India with an increasingly thriving blogging community.

"The ISPs can block a specific site, but the person who runs it can easily tweak its name a bit and return," says Mr Tiwari.

There are an estimated 50 million internet users in India, according to ISP industry estimates.

Only seven million people subscribe to the internet, of whom 1.5 million receive broadband services.


SOME BANNED SITES
http://www.hinduunity.org
exposingtheleft.blogspot.com
pajamaeditors.blogspot.com
commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com
http://www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
princesskimberley.blogspot.com


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:40 am 
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A person, any and every person, ought to have the right to say whatever he or she wishes — and the right not to have to listen to what another says, along with it — and the government ought to have no role in it but to shut the f*** up.

Of course, "practicality" will play into it: If a person feels that he ought to be able to say something, then the "state" feels that it ought not to threaten the lives of its citizens. If a Web site is selling arms to a known enemy of the state, shut it down and arrest the person dealing the weapons. If a person is voicing his displeasure with the way in which the government is conducting itself, or with the way in which certain people behave, or, yes, the religion certain people practice, then the government need do nothing but to shut the f*** up. Too many things go wrong when people are not allowed to say what they want to say, and no one should be too vehement in his support of the government's telling people to — making people — shut the f*** up, because he never knows when his will be the mouth found to be against that very government.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 3:59 pm 
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bah. people need to quit bitching.

freedom is a privilege, not a right. some people abused these privileges and screwed everyone.

moreover, these bloggers need to get a life and get laid.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 22, 2006 10:45 pm 
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Yuvan wrote:
freedom is a privilege, not a right.


That's perhaps the single stupidest thing ever written.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 1:11 am 
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I'm glad you approve :P


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:15 am 
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Yuvan,

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

-Thomas Jefferson (1791)

:)


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 3:08 pm 
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This coming from a slave owner :)


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 4:54 pm 
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Yuvan wrote:
This coming from a slave owner :)


LOL, true, but he did have a point. Freedom sometimes poses problems, but its a slippery slope when you start banning certain expressions, even if its temporary. Besides, now the blogs have even more publicity due to the banning :roll:

BTW, are the GOI's claims of inflaming religious sentiments overblown? Of India's entire population, only a fraction has internet access, and what fraction of that fraction reads blogs? And even of that fraction how many will be driven to violence? I somehow doubt there'll be a sudden increase in religious tensions because of blogs.

I'd like to hear from the POV of Zulmis who are living in India. This is an interesting topic.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5926_0,0040.htm

India unblocking blogs

All the blogs that had been blocked in India are now in the process of being restored, according to an Indian official.

The blogs were blocked by Internet providers because of a "technological error", India's Deputy Consul General AR Ghanashyam said in a letter to Sreenath Sreenivasan, co-founder of South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA).

The action followed the appearance of a two-page write-up containing extremely derogatory references to Islam and Prophet Mohammed that had the potential to inflame religious sensitivities in India and create serious law and order problems in the country in a blog facilitated by well-known search engines, he said.

The matter was immediately taken note of by CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and the Indian Department of Telecommunications (DOT) was informed of it. The DOT took up the matter forthwith with the search engines and instructions were also issued to all Internet providers to block the two impertinent pages.

Because of a technological error, the Internet providers went beyond what was expected of them, which in turn resulted in the unfortunate blocking of all blogs, Ghanashyam said.

The DOT has now clarified the issue and the error is being rectified and it is expected that normalcy in respect of blogs will soon be restored, he said.


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 5:15 pm 
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hm...I'm not suggesting that posing barriers will solve problems. it's a natural fact that humans will find alternate paths to overcome any form of barrier if they are passionate about their goals.

I'm merely suggesting that the idea of "freedom" is subjective. What is it, really? In a democracy, the common citizen has very little power. Even that is there to appease their citizens to some extent.

I'm against government intervention in terms of fiscal policies. I see the Govt as a daddy figure. Govt should control social issues - security, peace, protection, justice etc. Keep us in check. Humans simply can't handle "freedom".


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PostPosted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:27 pm 
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Yuvan wrote:
hm...I'm not suggesting that posing barriers will solve problems. it's a natural fact that humans will find alternate paths to overcome any form of barrier if they are passionate about their goals.

I'm merely suggesting that the idea of "freedom" is subjective. What is it, really? In a democracy, the common citizen has very little power. Even that is there to appease their citizens to some extent.

I'm against government intervention in terms of fiscal policies. I see the Govt as a daddy figure. Govt should control social issues - security, peace, protection, justice etc. Keep us in check. Humans simply can't handle "freedom".


I agree that a "citizen" has very little freedom; I also contend that the same citizen has a great deal of freedom. It's not oxymoronical: it's about how you're looking at it, about what you're talking about. "Freedom," indeed, is subjective: You're not (legally) free to run down the street nude. You're also not free (again, legally) to kill someone. I wouldn't propose that the latter be forgone, but I wouldn't fight to keep the former in place. An action that does not directly interfere with another, is, at the very least, to be considered possibly permissible. Freedom of speech, of expression, is not altogether "subjective"; it is the right to say what you feel, and it must be upheld at all costs. Who the f*** is anyone else to tell you that you "mayn't" say something? As a fellow "someone," the person is fully within his or her rights in doing so: "You're a fucker"; "f*** you! You can't say that!" Fine. The government is an elected body, people elected by people to run things and "keep order." It can not be in the business of, from an authoritative stand-point, telling people what they can and cannot say. The government is certain people, it is run by certain people; empowering the government to shut people up, empowers it to do absolutely anything it pleases. If it wants to go to war, and you don't want it to, it can tell you to shut the f*** up (and it certainly has done this in the past). Now, what the f*** right does it have to do this? The government's "duty" is not to "run the lives of its people"; it's to give them aid, and build their roads, and pay for their schools. It's not there to tell people what they can think, or whom they can influence, or whom they can marry, or what they can wear, or what language they can use, or any other such fucking thing.


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