HYDERABAD: A fortnight before Independence Day, India joined the glorious company of nanny nations as an apparent ban on online porn sites was in evidence. Netizens across the country woke up to the ban on Sunday when some users of reddit reported their experience while trying to access porn sites and linked it to their ISPs, which included Hathway, BSNL, MTNL, Vodafone and ACT. However, users of Airtel, Tikona and Tata reported that they were able to access adult sites without any problem.
One user trying to open vodlocker got the message: “Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact the administrator for more information.”
However, not all porn sites were affected. But the nearly 100 sites which became inaccessible were the popular ones, according to the Alexa ranking system. Adult video sharing sites also became inaccessible. YouTube and vimeo remained accessible. By the wee hours of Sunday, #pornban was trending with ribald jokes and foul language about everyone ranging from the Prime Minister to the apparent Leader of Opposition.
Interestingly, it was only a fortnight back that a Supreme Court Chief Justice had refrained from issuing an interim order on a batch of petitions seeking ban on porn. Chief Justice H L Dattu, in oral comments had said: “Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody can come to the court and say ‘Look, I am an adult and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room? It is a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty) of the Constitution’. Yes the issue is serious and some steps need to be taken… the Centre has to take a stand... .”
The CJI, heading a three-judge Bench, gave the Home Ministry four weeks to file an affidavit. But looks like the DoT has jumped the gun and clamped down on porn on its own. There was no official word on the ban beyond the lack of access being reported by users. Being a Sunday, officials of DoT could not be contacted.
While some reported error .403 access denied or forbidden when they hit URLs of porn sites, others just got blank pages, while a few others reported seeing: “This site has been blocked as per the instructions of competent authority”.