Indian Blogosphere is filled with the posts about blogs being blocked in India.
Some are linking it with Mumbai Blasts saying that Govt might have taken decision to block the blogs as it is believed that terrorist orgs like SIMI which were main engines behind recent Mumbai Bomb Blasts have been using blogs as powerful tool for their activities.
There are people who are defending above facts reciting their ISPs as VSNL/BSNL which would had been the first to block but still they are allowing the access to different Blogger as well as Blogger blogs. Our ISP – Sify doesn’t seem to be blocking any blogs as I tried to open some blogs from my feeds.
And then there is a group which thinks that this can be decision of a particular heard of ISPs.
If your ISP is blocking access to blogs, you can try too access them using www.pkblogs.com…perhaps the service came into existence during days of blogs being blocked in Pak.
Deprived Indian bloggers are going for filing RTIs as is being reported in blogs.
In my view, it is an activity deserving criticism as in a country where every citizen has right of freedom of speech, one cannot be blocked just because of the reason that there is threat to the country bcoz of very small number of junk blogs. This activity shows the inability of the authorities to detect the intruding/offensive blogs and hence, not their power to protect their people.
You can find the complete story and latest updates at following posts –
Blogspot.com Blocked In India By Some ISPs
What is Up with Blogspot (Blogger) Sites in India?
Blogger blocked by some ISPs in India?
Update (20/07/2006): Here is the official release of websites banned by Indian Govt. This paper as it appears to be official list from Indian Govt, lists 17 websites which are asked by Gove to be blocked!
And these have become popular within one night.
I tried to open these websites. My ISP is Sify and as my comments goes for a blog –
Right now, out of these 17, only one websites seems to be blocked – http://www.hinduunity.org/
Whereas following websites are shown as URL Not found –
http://prinesskimberly.blogspot.com/
http://merrimusings.typepad.com/
http://hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.htmlFollowing domains are shown as not registered –
http://nndh.com/
http://dalitstan.com/
http://imamali8.com/
http://bloodroyaltriped.com/Rest 9 websites are opening fine. Donno, from where the hell govt got idea of blocking http://rahulyadav.com/ as it is someone’s personal website…with nothing to do with terrorism (perhaps bcoz his links section contains links to Bharatiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Vivek Kendra – BIG rivals of current congress govt. I pity on the govt’s ignorance 🙂 ). http://commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com/ contains some chinese looking text…any decrypter? 🙂
And many of these sites which are opening but mentioned under blocked list are taking full opportuninty to advertise themselves with BIG LETTERS written over their sites as – BANNED IN INDIA!
Update (21/07/2006): DoT has lifted the ban on blogs following blogger & media pressure and it has also threatend ISPs for not interpreting the orders properly – clearly they are finding excuses for what was done! Still members of BloggerCollective community are going to file Public Interest Litigation (PIL) againt Indian Govt in Supreme Court of India. What I fond about the list of blogs which were blocked, they were either linked to RSS/BJP, Israel or the Mumbai Bomb blasts. So is govt worried about BJP activities, or does it want to keep healthy relations with a country which is outraging its neighbour countries just bcoz it is in better position & has support from bullish uncle SAM or does govt think that it is not capable enuf of controlling online terrorism? While searching for alternate ways, found a very useful link which lists all the proxy services available over net. So if you are blocked for not accessing one website or other, try using one of these proxies and you may find the solution. Link – censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Bypassing_The_Ban
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