ISPs refuse to unblock porn sites

Specification on child pornographic content has now become a cause of concern

The department of telecommunications's revised notification, modifying the earlier ban on 857 websites containing adult content, has led to more confusion.

On Tuesday, it had directed all internet service providers (ISPs) that they were free "not to disable any of the 857 URLs, as given in the list, which do not have child pornographic content".

The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) has written a letter to DoT, which says: "The direction is very vague and un-implementable, as ISPs have no way to filter out child pornography from URLs and further unlimited sublinks of the said URLs in different names. Sir, we are totally against online child pornography, as well as abuse on women. We would continue to adhere to the practice of providing URLs to be blocked as per list provided."

Last month, a Supreme Court bench headed by the chief justice had asked the government to take a stand on the issue. The government then sent a notification to disable the 857 websites. It then chose to partially withdraw the ban.

The ISPAI letter says: "We urge you to withdraw the said vague directive, as it is not only confusing but also putting the responsibility on ISPs of the website, on which an ISP does not have any control. The site and content owner can change the content any moment without any information to ISPs. As such, we will request to provide specific URLs to be blocked/disabled to all ISPs."