The Department of Telecom’s order to ban over 850 porn websites has come under severe criticism from users, Internet activists and telecom companies. While users and Internet activists termed it a violation of personal liberties, telecom operators are worried about its impact on their revenues as nearly 70 per cent of income from data services comes from users accessing such sites.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, said, “The government has to tread carefully on this issue. On one side there is a Supreme Court ruling on it, while on the other there are issues of freedom of expression, freedom of access to Internet and morality issues.”

Telecom companies said that though the industry does not support pornography, especially those involving children, such bans are difficult to implement. “Even if we ban a particular URL, the content owner can start a new site within minutes. Also, most of these websites are located on servers abroad so users can still access the content through various techniques like creating a virtual private network or by changing the DNS (domain name system) server,” said a Mumbai-based telecom operator.

Responding to the criticism, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “I reject with contempt the charge that it is a Talibani government as being said by some of the critics. Our government supports free media, respects communications on social media and has respected freedom of communications always.”

Apex court’s stand

Top government officials said the ban is only an interim measure ahead of the Supreme Court hearing a PIL filed by advocate Kamlesh Vashwani on August 10 to block porn websites in India. “We will issue guidelines after consulting child rights activists, residential welfare associations, ISPAI (Internet Service Providers Association of India), journalists and NGOs,” the official added. Internet activists, however, said the government stand was contrary to that of the apex court, which had said earlier that adults watching porn at home was not a crime and a move to stop anyone from watching porn was a violation of Article 21 (right to personal liberty).

“The ban on porn websites may have significant revenue losses for ISPs (internet service providers). Pornography constitutes a significant portion of video streaming and video downloads.

With this being banned, consumers may be tempted to downsize their data plans too,” said Biswapriya Bhattacharjee, Vice-President, Technology Practice, IMRB International.

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