Govt can't ban porn websites for obscenity

Just happened to read the Article “ - Govt can’t ban porn websites for obscenity

I was more shocked than surprised. Though this sort of inaction can very much be expected from the Govt, we certainly could not accept it. When the Indian IT Act amendments were being discussed and the amendment to the act were being looked at in 2008, it was a strong feeling and the Cyber Security Professionals were of the idea that the amendments would be making law bit more stringent in nature. Its exact reverse of what had been expected. I had numerous discussions with the various Cyber Security Professionals and Cyber Law experts and each one of them was expecting a drastic change in the way issue of Porn sites is dealt with. It was opined that the Govt would empower Cyber Tribunal or similar organization and convert it as a watch dog to govern the display, access and transmission of Porn material. Alas, it didn’t happen. Govt more so has cleared itself off from the responsibility on this front. Amendments to the section 69A are something that certainly have weakened the power as it was earlier identified for it. Moreover with assigning the power to block the Porn sites has been granted to the Courts and that too if a petition is filed in the Court for jurisdiction. Apparently, the govt has indirectly let Porn be prevalent in the Cyber Society, without giving a thought that this very porn is at times the cause to create nuisance in the society and leading to molestations, child abuses etc. Yeah it would be countered that how can we create the correlation between the two things. Incidentally some bright mind came up with a pretty Creative Thought – “May be Government Machinery and Think Tank would have thought as to when the Country has Given KAMASUTRA to the world, how can we stop Porn that is nothing but an extension to KAMASUTRA. They might have thought that if they block / ban porn in cyber world, the cyber community might come up with an argument that similar things are depicted as Artifacts and Artistic at various temples in Khajuraho.” Well may be, who knows.

But all said and done, don’t we think that too much of Porn is circulating around on the net and is unnecessarily leading to the situation of unrest and creating an atmosphere that would affect law and order negatively?

I am unable to understand as to Why govt can’t Enforce a Blanket Block at ISP Gateway levels? I guess rather than going with an approach of Law and Order, the Govt. can simply go ahead with issuing a notification to the ISPs to go ahead and Block all the Porn Sites right at the ISP Gateway Level itself. I don't understand what is stopping the Govt. from doing that? or do we take it this way that the Govt. machinery is pretty happy to let Pornography be prevalent till it affects the Public Order???

There are Countries where a Country level Proxy is set-up and that blocks all the Porn sites from being accessed. An argument may come up that the countries where this sort of set-up has been deployed are smaller countries with lesser Internet traffic, where in case of India the traffic is humungous to be managed by a central Proxy. So, let me clarify that I am not saying so. What my point is – If the Govt. wants to really act in this direction, it can instruct the ISPs to deploy measures at their levels to ensure that porn sites are completely Blocked out. Govt may also conduct periodic surprise audits of the ISPs to this effect and ensure that the directive as published is well followed by the ISPs.

Mayank Trivedi

Blog - http://www.myopinions.name

Tech Blog - http://matricsindia.net.in