Via the BBC: India bloggers angry at net ban
India’s burgeoning blogging community is up in arms against a government directive that they say has led to the blocking of their web logs.The country’s 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders.
Some of these sites belong to Google’s Blogspot, a leading international web log hosting service.
Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.
And they would be correct.
I noticed a headline about this story in passing earlier today, but didn’t get around to reading it until I received an e-mail from Rusty, whose blog, the Jawa Report is among the banned sites.
And even better:
The government is not saying why it has banned each of the sites in its latest notification.
According to the BBC story, a backlash is building–and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. India seeks to be “the world’s biggest democracy” but is going to be hard-pressed to obtain such a designation if it seeks the power of censorship (not to mention a panoply of other issues).
Rusty thinks that the offensive issue at hand is linked to jokes about Koran desecration (which Rusty discusses here).
July 20th, 2024 at 9:22 am
India’s Congress party always seems to want to protect freedom by curtailing it. Fabian lunatics.