Indian ISPs to Stop Blocking Blog Sites

A reprieve is on the horizon for Indian bloggers as local Internet Service providers have been ordered to stop censorship of several entire blog sites. The Indian government has required of the ISPs to lift the blanket block that rendered whole sites inaccessible following media and independent blog reports. The ISP Association of India is supporting the governmental measure and has advised all of its members to follow through with the censorship reprieve.

Entire blog Web sites such as Google Inc.'s www.blogspot.com or www.blogspot.com were found to be under censorship because the local ISP have proved overzealous in their pursuit of a government's Department of Telecommunications (DOT) demand to forbid access to specific 17 Web sites and blogs. With the new intervention, ISP will only deny access to the sub-domains that the Indian government considered as potentially dangerous because of their content that promoted hate, violence, terrorism and pornography under India's Information Technology Act 2000. The censorship was introduced as a measure to censor access to Web sites and blogs associated with terrorist activities in the wake of the Mumbai trains bomb attack that left deaf more than 200 people.