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Nearly 857 porn sites banned in India leading to a debate about censorship and freedom

Nearly 857 porn sites banned in India by the government to prevent pornography from becoming a social nuisance, leading to a debate about censorship and freedom in the largest democracy of the world.

Porn sites banned in India and N.N. Kaul, Department of Telecommunications’ spokesman told Reuters:

“Free and open access to porn websites has been brought under check. We don’t want them to become a social nuisance.”

The Indian government issued a 17-page order on July 31 to ISP’s, which listed offending sites and directed the internet service providers to ban those websites on the basis of decency and morality.

Telecom companies told us that they won’t be able to impose the “ban” immediately.

An anonymous telecom company official said:

“We have to block each site one by one and it will take a few days for all service providers to block all the sites.”

Earlier, the Supreme Court of India refused to impose a complete ban on porn sites after hearing a petition that said Internet porn is fueling sex crime. According to the Supreme Court, adults watching porn in private is not considered as a crime.

However, the court asked the ministry of home affairs to submit its views regarding the ban and the government acted only after a letter was sent to the telecom secretary by the home ministry.

Porn sites banned in India due to which several websites listed by the government became inaccessible over the weekend and are displaying messages that “they were blocked on the instructions of the competent authority”. The hash tag #Pornban has become trending on Twitter.

Following China, India has the maximum number of internet users. According to Pornhub, an adult website, which is included in the ban, said India ranked fifth for daily visitors on its website.

After porn sites banned in India, famous novelist Chetan Bhagat tweeted:

Porn ban is anti-freedom, impractical, not enforceable. Politically not very smart too. avoidable. Let’s not manage people’s private lives.

— Chetan Bhagat (@chetan_bhagat) August 3, 2015

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