Govt ready to unblock sites once objectionable content removed

Bengaluru, Jan 2: ‎The blocking of 32 URLS by the government has come under severe criticism and several persons especially on the social media have questioned if blocking is the right approach.

The government however has clarified that once objectionable material is taken off the websites they would be unblocked. The government also said that show cause notices had been issued before blocking the websites, but only a couple of them had responded.

‎Sites that were blocked:

justpaste.it
hastebin.com
codepad.org
freehosting.com
vimeo.com
dailymotion.com
pastebin.com
gist.github.com
archive.org
ipaste.eu
github.com
pastie.org
pastee.org
paste2.org
thesnippetapp.com
snipt.net
tny.cz (Tinypaste)
slexy.org
paste4btc.com
0bin.net
heypasteit.com
sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie
atnsoft.com/textpaster
hpage.com
ipage.com
webs.com
weebly.com
000webhost.com
snipplr.com
termbin.com
snippetsource.net
cryptbin.com

Government clarification:

The notice sent to all Internet Service Licensees mentions the Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, which states "Power to issue directions for blocking for public access of any information through any computer resource."

The government said that it was only after show cause notices were issued that the sites had been blocked. There was objectionable material and it was based on the advisory of the anti terror squad that this decision was taken.

Further the officer also said that based on court orders or advisory by the anti terror squad in national interest websites can be blocked.

Expert's take:

According to the experts blocking is not the right way of doing things. Instead of taking down the entire website only those webpages with objectionable material should be taken down.

The experts also state that under the IT act there is a provision to take down select webpages and also go after the intermediaries instead of taking down the entire web site.

Oneindia News