Tuesday, 4 August 2015

Indian Government Blocks 857 Pornography Websites

The Ministry of Communications and Information and Technology, in its order of July 31 under section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act 2000, banned the 857 websites terming their content "immoral and indecent".

In July, the Supreme Court had said banning adult websites was not its job, but was an issue for the government. That followed an order from the court last year that suggested the government needed to monitor access to pornography.


Indians had accused the government of moral policing and infringing on personal freedoms. "Don't ban porn. Ban men ogling, leering, brushing past, groping, molesting, abusing, humiliating and raping women. Ban non-consent. Not sex," author Chetan Bhagat said on Twitter. "Porn ban is anti-freedom, impractical, not enforceable. Politically not very smart too. avoidable. Let's not manage people's private lives," he added.

In past India has tried to control social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and ask them to take down offensive material. It had briefly blocked several Twitter accounts in 2013 citing security and law and order fears. It also blocked access to a homegrown soft-porn website in 2008.

Owing to the growth in the smart phone sector, online porn viewing is going to see an explosion in the next five years, a recent study said. According to Britain-based digital market research specialist firm Juniper Research, online porn watching will grow by nearly 42 percent in the next five years.

The porn video hits will grow to 205 billion a year by 2020 from around 145 billion this year, it said. Growth is taking place in the video chat and webcam content area in the global porn industry that is worth $105 billion.

List of banned websites