Here is a new twist in the tale. The government of India has taken U-turn on the issue of blocking websites. On July 16, some of the bloggers found that their websites are blocked and the reactions started coming fastly in news.



The question arose over the guarantee of the freedom of the speech in India. People started comparing India with China, North Korea and the the countries of middle-east over this issues.



Now after three days of striking hue-n-cry the government of India told Internet service providers (ISPs) to stop blocking the whole blog websiteson late Thursday. The blocking of blogspot.com and geocities.com were becoming the major issue during the episode. The non-reaction from the government added fuel to the burning episode.



Earlier, the government of India’s department of telecommunications (DOT) had notified ISPs on July 13 to block seventeen Web sites and blogs only.



The secretary of the ISP Association of India, Deepak Maheshwari, said,

some ISPs blocked entire domains rather than the sub-domains for which they actually got the instruction.

The DOT also asked ISPs to explain why action should not be taken against them for blocking unintended Web sites and Web pages.



However, the DOT has not put in plain words about the basic cause of telling ISPs to block the 17 sites and blogs. What were the things wrong with these sites are unknown until yet?



Note: We earlier said repeatedly in our previous articles here on this issue to some over-reacting bloggers to just calm down and wait for the government’s move. There was no need to react sparkingly as the India’s Information Technology Act 2000 favors the ‘truly nationalistic bloggers’.



I do say it again that if the government finds anything wrong with any websites promoting hate, violence, terrorism and pornography. Just go per the law and block the website. Nothing is more important than the national security and the security of our fellow-citizens.





India is really no china.





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