The Centre on Monday informed the Supreme Court that blocking websites with pornographic content is not possible as it would cause more harm with literary content containing such words also becoming unavailable on the Internet. “Even good literature would be blocked,” Additional Solicitor General K V Vishwanathan told a bench headed by Justice
B S Chauhan.
Vishwanathan further said that computer manufacturers had been directed to install software in the system which would block pornographic websites.
The court was hearing a petition filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani who pleaded that although watching obscene videos was not an offence, pornographic sites should be banned as they were one of the major causes of crime against women.
The petition, filed through advocate Vijay Panjwani, said that the absence of Internet laws encourages people to watch porn. It added that over 20 crore porn videos were freely available in the market, either directly downloaded from the Internet or copied from CDs. “The sexual content that kids are accessing today is far more graphic, violent, brutal, deviant and destructive and has put the entire society in danger and also poses threat to public order in India,” the petition read.
The apex court had on November 18 issued notice to the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) seeking its response on blocking websites with pornographic content, particularly those featuring child pornography.