GoI orders 32 websites to be blocked

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked for 32 websites to be blocked, with Vimeo, Pastebin, GitHub and DailyMotion counted amongst the affected portals. These were apparently barred by various service providers following instructions based on an advisory from the country’s Anti-Terrorism Squad, according to the BJP’s Arvind Gupta.

The blocked sites were allegedly seen to be carrying anti-India content from ISIS. A Twitter update from Gupta notes that those portals which have co-operated with the ongoing investigations and taken down the objectionable material are back on. Although the DoT appears to have issued the directive to all Internet service providers (ISPs) to bar the domains, only a couple or so may have complied.

Going by a report on Times of India, BSNL, Vodafone and Hathway obeyed the order. On the other hand, GitHub, Pastern and DailyMotion which were named in the DoT list, were still accessible on Airtel’s 3G network. It’s being said that some users were flashed a message about the websites being blocked based on instructions from a ‘Competent Authority.’

Also see: India leads in top 3 nations asking Facebook to censor content

The DoT notification was made public by Pranesh Prakash of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore. But Gupta’s word is all the official confirmation we’ve got about the DoT memo being a genuine one. It’s possible that the Indian government is trying to pass it off lightly in order to avoid comparisons between China and its draconian online censorship policies.

It’s obviously not a good time for the country to invite jibes about how it treats everything related to tech and IT in general, seeing as the Prime Minister is keen to keep the Digital India campaign going. So blocking access to a site like GitHub, a Git repository hosting service, is the last thing it should be doing.