he list, seemingly, is endless, and includes some of the Internet's most popular names: DailyMotion, Vimeo, Xmarks, Pastebin, Clickatell, Megaupload, ThePirateBay, Isohunt, Typepad, Mobango, MediaFire, Sendspace. All of these are among sites that have been blocked at least once in the last year by one of India's Internet Service Providers. The websites are of all kinds, though commonalities can be found: most of them are file sharing sites of one form or the other, some are video upload sites, one a blogging network, a mobile applications marketplace, and one a site that people use to share code or messages.
To give you some context, Vimeo is a video sharing site, much like YouTube, which hosts user generated content – my friends' wedding video, another friend's acting debut, another one's only short film, down to a documentary I love called Everything is a Remix. ThePirateBay, notorious in some media representations, is the file sharing website that the author Paulo Coelho recently put his books up for free download, calling himself "Pirate Coelho". Sendspace was where, last year, I was able to upload a zip file with hundreds of vacation photos to share with a friend.
The recent spate of blocks are due to a generic "John Doe" order from the Madras High Court that allows the producers of the film Dhammu and 3 (of Kolaveri-Di-on-YouTube fame) to ask ISPs to block any websites they feel are promoting piracy. It is tied to a multi-movie John Doe order from Reliance Entertainment.
Why this works is that many ISPs, in my opinion, are spineless cowards: instead of protecting the access rights of their customers, and questioning and challenging a notice from a film producer to block websites, they block all the websites to protect themselves (remember that court orders do not mention a specific website). It's much easier for them to cite the court order and pass the buck on to the movie producer and the courts, or to blame the Department of Telecom (sometimes even without there being an order from the department).
‘They can’t stop us from accessing information’PAWANPREET KAUR
Above all, however, it is a decision that is driven by commercial considerations – ISPs have nothing to lose if all of them block websites. It is also unlikely that any ISP will break rank and uphold consumer interest because competition in the ISP business is so abysmally poor – India has less than 14 million broadband connections, and a policy change in 2007 led to a consolidation (and possible cartelisation) in the ISP business. I can't think of a single Indian ISP which hasn't ever blocked a website, or publicly spoken out against blocks.
The worrying thing is that it is only going to get worse: Reliance Entertainment, which was the first to use these John Doe orders for the movie Singham, now appears to have one which covers multiple films and any site it wishes, blocked. In addition to this, a motion to get the draconian Information Technology Rules 2011 (IT Rules 2011) annulled was defeated in the Rajya Sabha recently, and this means that ISPs and websites will now continue to entertain often frivolous complaints, as a research from the Centre for Internet and Society has shown.
At times, entire websites like CartoonsAgainstCorruption will be blocked, and in other cases, groups on Facebook will be removed, articles on news sites will be taken down, and you'll probably never realise it, but comments on articles will mysteriously vanish; some website will just not load, and you'll assume it is a problem with your Internet connection.
All of this impacts freedom of speech and the culture of sharing of information. Remember that we still don't know why Blogger was blocked in 2006, or Typepad was blocked last year.