The Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) has asked the Centre to revoke its recent decision banning 32 websites. Some of the sites include code sharing and information exchange platforms widely used by companies, techies, students and researchers.
“Censoring access to sites violates the fundamental rights of citizens and retards innovation and scientific progress,” the association, which is promoting open source software, said.
“The Government has acted with haste and without adequate application of mind to the matter. It should have blocked a few web pages, if need be, instead of blocking the sites such as Vimeo and Internet archives,” the FSMI said here in a statement.
“Denying Indian citizens access to one of the world’s most popular code-hosting websites is a retrograde step and only harms the efforts of the Government to promote development of the software sector in India,” it said, reacting to the blocking of the sites last month.
Calling for the immediate unblocking of the sites, it said access to websites such as GitHub, Pastebin and Imgur was important for the Indian technical and scientific community.
While calling upon the tech community, researchers and students, the FSMI asked the Government to revisit the relevant provisions of the law, including Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, and rules framed under the law, which propagate an arbitrary and non-transparent system of censorship.