No, Porn Ban Is Not Lifted. In Fact, Govt Has Passed the Buck on to ISPs

Most mainstream media has reported that Government was quick to take the action after the backlash on their decision to over 850 porn sites in India – the reports stated that websites that do not have Child pornography will be un-blocked.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Information and Technology minister, told India Today TV: “A new notification will be issued shortly. The ban will be partially withdrawn. Sites that do not promote child porn will be unbanned.”

However, the big question that one needs to ask is – how can anyone (whether Govt officials or ISPs) come up with a list of sites that feature (or do not feature) CP ? Are they going to check each and every video or image on each and every site? To do that is impossible.

A Medianama report has quoted anonymous ISP representative telling that that the letter they have recd. from Government states, “The intermediaries are free not to disable any of the 857 URLs which do not have child pornography”. In short, ISP’s can decide whether or not a site should be blocked.

The problem though remains – It is impossible for the ISP to determine whether a site contains CP or not. While it is easy for IT minister to say that they have partially withdrawn the ban, the ground reality is that ISPs are not going to dare to unblock any of the sites.

In short, ISP will never take a decision to unblock any site, as they are neither in a position to check any site completely, nor will want to take the risk of liability.

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at CIS India clearly points the issues on Twitter.

#GoIBlocks The govt’s decision telling ISPs to magically block child porn completely negates the Supreme Court’s judgment in Shreya Singhal.

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) August 5, 2015

And then this question that needs an answer

Question to fellow lawyers: Wouldn’t an ISP official viewing child porn before blocking it be culpable under s67B IT Act?

— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) August 5, 2015

Bottom line is – the porn ban is not lifted!

Note: Interestingly, on our Idea Cellular 3G network, we have been able to access all the sites without any issues. Even as of writing this report, the sites are accessible. However, the same sites are not accessible when we access the sites through our local cable internet connection.