Indian govt blocks 40 smut sites, forgets to give reason The Indian government has ordered ISPs to block 39 smut flick web sites hosted outside the country without giving any explanation, stoking further fears of online censorship by the back door. Most of the sites are web forums and so allow for the uploading of naughty images and URLs where smut-seekers can download their grumble …
"Facebook and Google were forced to remove “objectionable content” from their Indian sites last year after complaints it was offensive to Muslims, Hindus and Christians."
Considering the huge range of material these groups object to, what's left? The Indian equivalent of .gov?
Yea well, ultimately everyone gets the government they deserve...
It should be obvious to everyone that blocking these sites is going to drive the rate of rape down. So that's a good thing, right?
(For those who are genetically deficient in sarcasm receptors: no, I am not mocking rape victims.)
<blockquote>While the law, updated in 2011, does forbid production, transmission and sharing of smutty content in India - therefore requiring internet cafes, for example, to block such content - there is no ban on consumption, especially from sites hosted outside India.</blockquote>
Errm... the enforcement action isn't forbidding consumption, neither is it attempting to have smut sites shut down, AFAICS, it's forbidding transmission by acting against the ISPs. If the law lets them do that, then it's legal. We have this confusion in the UK, too. The Communications Act 2003 forbids the *transmission* of objectionable material over the public telecommunications networks, it doesn't forbid the creation of it, or require the consumption of it to have happened for an offence to have been committed.
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