Internet service providers (ISPs) on Wednesday told the Centre that they will continue to block the 857 porn websites until there is clarity on the issue.

The operators said they are in no position to take the responsibility of filtering child pornography and hence will continue to block all sites to avoid being penalised by the government.

Faced with severe criticism, the Centre on Tuesday revoked the ban on pornographic sites except those with child pornographic content. However, the Department of Telecom did not specify the number of sites or name of the sites that have such objectionable content. DoT put the onus on ISPs to ensure that the unblocked sites do not carry child pornography.

‘Vague directive’ In a letter to the DoT, the Internet Service Providers Association of India said the directive was vague and un-implementable. “We urge you to withdraw the said vague directive as it is not only confusing but also putting responsibility on ISPs of the website on which ISPs do not have any control. The site and content owner can change the content any moment without any information to the ISPs. As such we request you to provide specific URLs to be blocked,” the letter stated.

The Department of Telecom’s order to ban over 850 porn websites had 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 a significant part of the income from data services comes from users accessing such sites.

Sunil Abaraham, Executive Director at Centre for Internet Society, said that excessive blocking of pornography, going beyond child pornography, revenge porn, voyeuristic pornography and footage of real-life sexual violence can come with unintended consequences. “Large number of internet users will adopt privacy protection technologies and it will be very difficult for the state to conduct targeted surveillance to fight crime or terror. This happened in the US when the war against file-sharing by copyright-holders resulted in massive adoption of TOR and in India during the north eastern exodus in August 2012 the daily limit on SMS imposed as a censorship measure resulted in massive migration to Whatsapp.”

Big challenge The Indian law enforcement and intelligence agencies find it much more difficult to intercept Whatsapp in comparison to SMS. He added that users of pornography will start to share pornography offline resulting in massive transfers of large collection, an illegal market for pornography will flourish featuring much more harmful content and even those who were not previously obsessed with pornography will seek out the forbidden fruit. “Therefore, censorship should only be done in a highly targeted fashion to prevent unintended consequences,” Abraham said.

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