Govt likely to go soft on adult sites

The Government may “selectively” lift ban on several websites that got blocked along with those having child pornography. This was decided in a review meeting taken by Union Telecommunication Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Tuesday. The review meeting was also attended by IT Secretary RS Sharma and Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand. 

“It was decided that the ISPs would be immediately asked not to block those sites which do not contain pornographic material, including child pornography,” Prasad said. He added that a new notification will be issued shortly to withdraw the ban partially; particularly the sites that do not promote child porn will be unblocked.

The Government on July 31 had blocked 857 websites related to pornography, under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act 2000, terming their content “immoral and indecent”. However, in the process several websites that were hosting jokes, memes and other humorous content without any pornography too got blocked.

The directive triggered a debate with the Government being accused of indulging into Internet censorship and trying to manage people’s private lives. 

However, Prasad clarified that the directive was based on the Supreme Court’s observation where the apex court asked the department to take action on the list of alleged porn sites provided by the petitioner. 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.

The Minister said that the Government was committed for freedom of communication on the Internet. “The Government compliments the dissemination of idea on the social media. We have launched the mygov platform seeking views of people of India on developmental agenda and lakhs of people are participating on this platform,” he said. Officials said the ban was a temporary measure till the final orders were pronounced by the top court.