The Indian government seems to have blocked several pornography websites in India through many of the country’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Several of the most popular porn sites are currently not accessible 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.”
However, users on Airtel and Tikona have 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?”
