Banning Orkut

It was with surprise that I read yesterdday about moves to ban orkut and thought it probably was a joke till I read about the Shiv Seniks attacking a Cyber Net Centre in Thane, Maharashtra.

One wonders what will remain of the democracy if there is such a blatant attack on Freedom of Speech and Expression. There are moves to develop a software which will partly ban orkut and prevent access to sites which spread hate India campaign

I do not think this makes sense at all. Will the government now plan a ban on paintings which hurt the sentiments of many? China....here we come.

If the Government finds a way to block an URL, the techies will find a way to bypass that and still access the site.

There are so many porn sites on the web easily accessible to anyone surfing the internet.Why does the Government not do anything about banning that? It was reported by a Television Channel (ETV) that Billions of Rupees are going out of India due to
porno sites. It says, 33% of Men and 8% women browse porno sites from office computers itself while working -quoting AC Neilson. The International porno biz is around US$60Bn. It is behind lot of abductions and other sex related crime in India. We can easily assume the loss to India could be around US$ 3BN directly and if we take in account other costs like Judicial, Administrative and Social, it becomes too difficult to evaluate.

If the Government wants to do something about cleaning up the Internet for India, they should begin with banning these sites.

On the other side, my broad band service provider has blocked Blogspot and says it is one of the sites that Government of India has issued instructions for blocking. No amount of reasoning that I can access it from my work place or using dial up has worked till last evening when I have threatened legal action. Hoping better sense prevails.