Have websites been banned before in India?

In India, the first such incident took place in September 2003, when government wanted to ban Yahoo Groups because one of their groups was allegedly linked to Kynhun, a separatist group from Meghalaya. However, because the ISPs did not know how to ban a single group, all groups on Yahoo ended up being banned for two weeks. In July 2006, government ordered a ban on 17 websites, but again due to the ISPs’ inability to ban specific sites, whole websites ended up being banned. There was a major uproar in the media, the ban was lifted.

What kind of things are censored the world over?

Certain countries restrict the internet more than others. According to the OpenNet initiative, China, Vietnam and Iran are the worst offenders.

The two biggest reasons officially cited for restricting the internet are child pornography and support for terrorism. In the US, the Common Decency Act (1996) restricts online speech that could be seen by minors. In the UK, schools, public libraries etc are encouraged to install software called Cleanfeed, which is a content filter. In the past, the Home Office had asked ISPs to block access to articles that glorified terrorism. This is within the purview of their Terrorism Act, 2006.

Countries, like Pakistan, Egypt, Iran are critical of sites that criticise the government. Recently, an Egyptian blogger was sent to jail on that count. China’s strict control of the internet is well-known, and in North Korea it is available to only a few people.

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