New Delhi: India blocked 245 web pages for provocative content on Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of hate messages and lessen communal tensions in the country, and suggested via an official release on the website of the Press Information Bureau that more could follow.
As was widely reported in the days that followed, most websites blocked were not related to the ethnic clashes in Assam.
Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, analysed the sites which were listed by the government. In his analysis, 33% of all blocked addresses were on Facebook, 27.8% on YouTube, 9.7% on Twitter and the rest were spread over a number of different websites including Wikipedia, Firstpost.com and TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com.
Prakash says, “I don’t believe that the decision to block sites was politically motivated, but I do believe that in trying to prevent harm, the government has gone overboard.”
He also writes in his analysis, “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.”
Prakash also pointed out, “There are numerous egregious mistakes. Even people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, and it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care.”
Of course, India’s overall record on Internet censorship isn’t great, with the current laws encouraging Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down content without investigating individual cases properly. And that is not even taking into consideration official government orders, such as this decision to block websites.
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