Posted on February 11, 2011 by Techtalk
Internet service providers (ISPs) in India have done it once again. They are systematicallyblocking the Blogspot Domain, upon which popular blogging happens on a daily basis. ISPs that have reported to blocked Blogspot include Airtel, BSNL, Tikona, Tata, Idea, etc.
As usual, measures to fight this website blocking exercise have already surfaced. The best way to view and access the blocked blogs is to use a proxy server to access the same. Since ISPs in India cannot block internet protocol addresses located out of India, this can restore access to the blocked blogs.
Till now there is no official response from Google in this regard. A dedicated help thread has been created at Google’s help forum to circumvent this blocking exercise.
India has a draconian cyber law in the form of information technology act, 2000 (IT Act, 2000). It was deliberately amended by the information technology amendment act, 2008 (IT Act 2008) for the sole purpose of getting absolute and unaccountable e-surveillance, internet censorship and website blocking powers.
Although all these powers were granted to Indian government and its agencies yet till now the government of India in general and ministry of communication and information technology (MCIT) in particular have defaulted in providing such civil liberty protection safeguards.
Repeated requests to the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh in this regard also proved futile. Till now the prime minister’s office (PMO) has not shown any willingness to reform this situation.
In these circumstances self defence seems to be the only choice for citizens of India.
