On Saturday, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in India had been asked to block more than 857 pornographic websites by the Communications Ministry, which said the sites “were found to be spreading anti-social activities”.
While several have been banned already, more such websites are projected to be blocked in the near future.
Meanwhile, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has slammed the ban on Twitter saying it was depriving consenting adults of harmless fun. He compared the government’s actions to those of Taliban or ISIS.
To deprive consenting adults of the harmless fun they ar having of watching porn is equivalent of what Taliban nd Isis is doing to freedom
— Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) August 1, 2015
Jantakareporter.com was one of the first to break the story on the Internet, as several of the leading porn websites were suddenly blocked in India on ISPs such as MTNL Mumbai, BSNL, Vodafone and ACT, which show a blank page when connecting to these sites, or the message ‘Directory does not exist’.
A few websites also show the message: “This site has been blocked as per the instructions of Competent Authority.”
Some of these websites include Redtube.com, brazzers.com, pornhub.com and bangbros.com. However, users on Airtel and Tikona had reported that they are still being able to access these sites.
A lot of Twitter users have also expressed their outrage on this matter under the hashtag “pornban”.
And we are perhaps oldest civilization to celebrate sex but impotent govt. Believes its their fucking job to control our sex lives. #pornban
— Rohit (@rjhunjhunwla) August 1, 2015
Apparently porn websites have been banned in India. What will our MPs do in the Parliament now? #PornBan
— Rahul Sharma (@Biorahul) August 1, 2015
Interestingly, earlier this month, the Supreme Court had raised an important question during the hearing of a petition on blocking websites circulating child pornography that whether watching porn in private within four walls of one’s house was an offence.
Petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani had provided a list of more than 800 websites circulating child pornography to the home ministry, asking for an order for them to be banned. Appearing for Vaswani, lawyer Vijay Panjwani argued in front of a bench headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu on Wednesday asking why no action was taken under the existing cyber laws.
To this, the bench said, “It is an issue for the government to deal with. Can we pass an interim order directing blocking of all adult websites? And let us keep in mind the possible contention of a person who could ask what crime have I committed by browsing adult websites in private within the four walls of my house. Could he not argue about his right to freedom to do something within the four walls of his house without violating any law?”