After the GOI (Government of India) received a lot of criticism for banning porn all over the country, they have now made the decision to lift the ban on all those websites except the ones containing child pornography.
Previously, the government had made the hasty decision of telling ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to ban all pornography available on the internet. Under this, 857 sites were blocked and even those that had jokes and memes bearing no pornographic content, like 9GaG and CollegeHumour, were shut down. However, in a new directive issued by the Telecomm Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, he stated:
“The intermediaries (ISPs) are hereby directed that they are free not to disable any of the 857 URLs… which do not have child pornographic content.”
In a previous statement, while commenting on the governments commitment towards freedom of communication, Prasad had said, “The government compliments the dissemination of idea on the social media. We have launched the mygov platform seeking views of people of India on developmental agenda and lakhs of people are participating on this platform.”
Naturally then, this platform would’ve been bombarded with resentment and disapproval by the Governments involvement in censoring the internet, especially in a day and age where people are already battling censorship guidelines in all other forms of media and communication.
It may come as a relief that all sites have now been left alone, barring those containing child pornography and with good reason.
While it is good to see the government taking the peoples view into consideration, it is ironic that they made such a controversial decision around two weeks before ‘Independence Day.’ Perhaps, we will soon be able to celebrate freedom of censorship or is it too soon? Let us know your views in the comments below.
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