Indian govenrment, on blockade: It wasn’t us! Might take action.

July 20, 2006 | Matt Marshall | Comments | |
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The Indian government, understandably embarrassed by the blame it is getting for the bungled censorship of a list of select blogs, is pointing the finger at the Internet service providers, and might take action.

This from Rediff India Abroad: In a press release on Thursday, the Department of Telecom (DoT) said it has asked Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to explain why action should not be taken against them for unintentionally blocking some Web sites. This refers to the blocking of the Blogspot, Typepad and Yahoo! Geocities domains by ISPs across the country since July 15, after being asked to block just some sub-domains hosted by those services.

Makes our headline pinning blame on the gov in the last post look a little off.

(Hat tip to Ram Shriram, who alerted us in a comment.)

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  • I wouldn't think your earlier post was off at all. This finger pointing is nothing new in Indian bureaucracy (and politics). It's just one of their tactics to coverup the facts and save some big as*** in the government.

    What do they now mean by saying "...ordered the ISPs to block certain WEBSITES/webpages."?
  • Maybe the way ISPs reacted to the order was a little too much but you could look at it in another way. The Indian government should know better than to try banning those as those sites could be accessible elsewhere anyway and the information from there will get to the Indians in one way or another.