Internet Service Providers (ISP) informed the Supreme Court on Monday that it is possible to remove objectionable pornographic content from websites but only on an instruction given by the Government or court.
The stand of the ISPs has strengthened efforts made by a PIl petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani to put in place a regulatory regime to sieve out pornographic material although the Government admitted it was a difficult task.
Responding to the PIl, Association of ISPs submitted their response before a bench headed by Justice BS Chauhan said that to blame the ISPs for any pornographic content on its website was not the correct approach since they were mere “conduits” who carried the information.
Moreover, it claimed lack of infrastructure and manpower shortage to handle such a monitoring of its websites, which is not permitted under the Indian Telegraph Act.
The Court has granted three weeks time to Centre to respond on blocking websites, particularly featuring child pornography.
“While ISPs possess blocking tools to comply with Department of Telecom (DoT) instructions the power to block is imposed only upon instructions by the DoT and after the procedure established by law is followed,” the Association in its affidavit said.
It negated the suggestion by the PIl petitioner to hold the ISP guilty for any objectionable content on the ground that there existed no accepted definition of pornography.
“It is neither legally nor technically nor practically possible for ISPs on their own to block pornographic sites… There is no unanimously accepted definition of pornography nor the boundaries of the same are amorphous.”
The ISPs were of the view that any attempt to block such content would tantamount to pre-censorship of content without authority of law and could unfairly limit the fundamental rights of the customers and may expose them to liability under civil laws.