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BLOGS BLOCKED

What: 18 major blog sites blocked post 7/11 (blogspot.com, hindunity.org, typepad.com etc)

Where: India

When: July 18, 2006

Who: The department of telecommunications (DoT) orders Internet Service Providers (ISP’s)

Why: to stop rumor mongers and to stop members of banned organizations from sending messages to other members.

Reactions: 

I am student of mass media…and never did I even imagine that creating a blog for a media studies project would be so laborious:

July 17:  We create a blog on blogspot.com

July 18: Blogspot refuses to open

July 19: We create a blog on XANGA!!!

No doubt that the blogging industry is growing  ... but I never thought that blogging could become this important in a country like India, for the only reason that 70% of India is rural.

The blogosphere is in the news now.  I have deciphered different angles to this story:

MY STUDY

Under the Information Technology Act, 2000, a body called the Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-IN, was created along the lines of similar authorities the world over. Although its main task is in the domain of Internet security, it also oversees Internet censorship under a clause that seeks to ensure 'balanced flow of information.' Any government department seeking a block on any web site has to approach CERT-IN, which then instructs the DoT to block the site after confirming the authenticity of the complaint. Sites can be blocked within the provisions of the Fundamental Right to free speech and expression, granted in India's Constitution.

This ‘block’ has also received different reactions from regular bloggers, who have been affected the most by this. As I was running through a few blogs and opinions on this issue, I came across these angles:

1)     According to Amit, this is not an order from the top as government Govt. ISP’s like VSNL and BSNL have not blocked the domain. This is a very interesting observation as the DoT officials themselves are not openly announcing the blocks. He has assumed that the govt. has done this to stop rumor mongering. He is of the opinion that this won’t help because ‘blogging’ is not a big thing in India. True, there have not been many such instances before, but figures indicate that blogging is a big industry and hence can be a mean for spreading rumors.

He also disagrees with the purpose of the block – avoiding widespread panic because he thinks that sites like mumbaihelp.com really helped when the phone networks were jammed. The point that he is trying to make is correct, but we must not forget that something like ‘War of the Worlds’ has happened        that created panic all over.

2)     The second blog is the blog by Amit Varma – ‘Inept censorship won’t work’ (guardian.co.uk)

From the title of his blog itself, we can infer that this blogger is ‘not’ for the block.  He talks about the actions that bloggers have taken – they have setup a wikipedia post against censorship and also a public- access newsgroup to discuss this matter.

He is also unhappy about the government’s response to their grievance. He thinks that the govt. is being irresponsible by making statements like ‘somebody must have blocked the sites’ and ‘what are they missing from their life due to absence of these sites?’ The govt. actually blocked the sites because they couldn’t filter it.  He perceives this as government’s intrusion into their right to speech. This is a debatable issue here. The right of speech as declared in the constitution is not absolute and comes with certain restrictions. Blogs do have the potential to spread religious and communal tension as there is no screening of what is being written. At the same time, blocking 18 sites seems to be too heavy on the people and some other alternative solution could have been provided.

          He also says that he is not against the govt. and that he also wants to help, stop the terrorists.  But, he thinks that by doing that the govt. is displaying its ineptness and that it’s only a superficial gesture. Probably, this could be an indication of technological hiccups that India is facing now where just to block a few harmful site, the entire bloggers community has been affected.

Readers have posted their opinion on ibnlive.com. Anju Chandel thinks that the government is trying to control the entire media. Another blogger Vidya Bhushan Rawat, is also strongly opposing this act and says the govt already has censorship with everything and that it is unfair to block sites and block ideas.

The bloggers mostly have reacted negatively considering this as an intrusion into their rights and the non-bloggers think that it is too small a thing to affect lives of people.

THE GOVERNMENT STORY

There is another story which is doing the rounds which says that the government had to block the site because it is easy to track emails, but it is very difficult to track blogs.

The govt. has still kept the list of the sites confidential. This could be interpreted in many ways: probably it doesn’t want the terrorist organization to know about their moves. But, the bloggers are becoming aware of it rather quickly.

The government’s story about this issue is under the wraps till now. But the issue is becoming bigger and bigger among the bloggers day by day and it doesn’t look like the bloggers are going to take this lightly. This is the reason why the bloggers have come together and organized a BLOGGER’S COLLECTIVE and are planning to file a Right to Information application to obtain the list.

This issue is not going to die with the bloggers determined to bring about change! So, wait for new posts on this blog to follow this story…

Saumya Ramakrishnan