Many Blog hosts including blogspot banned in India
Freedom of speech, I think blogging falls under that category. But I don’t think Indian Gov. takes it that way. Many blog hosts, most of them free ones including Blogspot, Typepad and Geocities are banned in India.
NyTimes reports,
For reasons yet unexplained by the authorities, the Indian government has apparently directed local Internet service providers to block access to a handful of outlets that host blogs, including the popular blogspot.com. Indian bloggers have reacted with anger and confusion, accusing the government of censorship and demanding to know why their sites have been jammed.
Officials at the Ministry of Communications in India did not return repeated calls, according to the Times report. An official at the ministry’s department of information and technology, Gulshan Rai, told the Times he was aware of ‘two pages’ that had been blocked for spreading what he called ‘antinational sentiments,’ but was unable to provide details.
But Deep says DOT had sent a 22 page list of ‘to be blocked’ sites to ISPs and some of the lazy ass ISPs blocked the whole domains instead of spending time and blocking each and every sub domain mentioned in the list.
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July 19th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
May the government bureaucrats who did this be shamed both domestically and internationally. India is not China.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Thanks for linking to my post, Sreejith. The ban has now been lifted. I’ve posted about it on my blog: Blocks Removed, DoT Angry at ISPs.
Saffron, it was a mistake on the ISPs’ part, not the government. They never wanted to block out the network, just certain hateful sites.