Ever since Narendra Modi has taken over the Prime Minister seat in the Indian government, the subcontinent giant has been making massive leaps towards an era of rapid development in all of its national and international affairs. After China’s ban on Gmail services for four days as per its policy of internet censorship, India too has been doing its best to rival its neighbor.
A crackdown of sorts has been overseen by the Anti Terrorism Squad and the Department of Telecom in India, with the Indian government ordering the national Internet Service Providers (or ISPs) to block access to thirty two websites, allegedly hosting content related to the ISIS terrorist organization, in light of its censorship laws. A notification from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team was issued on Wednesday, requiring the ISPs to ban a complete list of websites.
Mainstream websites including GitHub, Imgur, Dailymotion, and Vimeo have been blocked under Section 69-A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. Director at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, Pranesh Pakesh, tweeted the circular released by the Indian Department of Telecom.
Arvind Gupta, an IT official and a member of India’s BJP, tweeted that these websites are home to content carrying anti-Indian sentiments from ISIS.
The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. 1/2
— Arvind Gupta (@buzzindelhi) December 31, 2014
Among the blocked websites is ‘The Internet Archive’, a website which stores websites’ pages in a cache file which allows users to go back in time to see older and previously deleted content. GitHub and Pastebin, famous websites that people use to anonymously communicate with each other, were also on the list. Video sites Vimeo, Dailymotion were blocked for hosting videos that were uploaded by ISIS. Unsurprisingly, YouTube is not on the list as Google has been proactive about taking ISIS videos down as soon as they are uploaded.
