DoT directive to block blogs irks bloggers

BANGALORE/MUMBAI: Bloggers in India are considering revoking the Right to Information Act against the Department of Telecommunications' directive to block about 20 websites and

blogs. 

The DoT sent a directive to ISPs, apparently on Friday, urging them to block certain websites and blogs. The department usually sends such a directive when it finds objectionable and anti-national content or anything harmful to public

interest.

"Most of us are contemplating on the future course of action. Quite many bloggers are considering invoking the Right to Information Act. It so happens that blogs are essentially individualistic by nature, hence a group effort is quite uncommon. But I see a sort of movement emerging against this move," said Peter Griffen, an avid blogger and freelance journalist. 

Many bloggers were angry at the way the ban was imposed. “One fine day DoT decided to impose a ban, very discreetly. No reasons were provided and no questions answered. This could be a very dangerous trend, similar to the so called guardians of Indian culture imposing ban on numerous things on the pretext of cultural subversion," Griffen told CyberMedia News.






However, the banned blogs were accessible by logging in through other sites. The most popular site for accessing blogs blocked in India today was
www.pkblogs.com.






Pkblogs.com, intended to “Slap the Block”, was invented in Pakistan, as that country banned blogs on the Danish newspaper cartoon controversy. A few bloggers in Pakistan came up with a tool to view these banned
blogs.






Ironically, bloggers in India, the largest democracy, were using the same tool to view those DoT-blocked blogs. This triggered the question whether a ban on blogs would be effective.





“If we were to assume that indeed terrorist groups are using blogs for communication, can it be stalled by banning? There are innumerable ways in which people can work around such bans, like newsgroups or proxy servers, etc. The best way would have been to approach Google and place the case before them. The ban on Blogspot is akin to banning all certain mobile service provider, just because a call was made in his network," Griffen said.





Another blogger, Neha Vishanathan, wrote in www.withinandwithout.com, “Coming to the issue of technology being used by terrorists. Now, technology has always been a cat and mouse game - with the identities of the cat and mouse being switched between the entities. The way to overcome the use of technology to harm XYZ's interests is not to block the technology itself, but to use a higher variant of the technology to protect XYZ's interests.”





She further asked: “Tomorrow, will the government decide that terrorists travel by cars, and therefore all petrol pumps must be shut?”


Meanwhile, bloggers were sharing a common platform on Censorship Wikia to protest the ban on blogs. Certain others, such as withinandwithout, conversationswithdina, traveltalesfromindia, etc. were giving updates on the block, the list of ISPs who had blocked the blogs, and also on “how you can bypass the block.”





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