On Sunday morning, aficionados of ‘adult entertainment’ were in for a rude shock.
Many ‘staple’ porn sites such as pornhub.com, redtube.com and youporn.com were unavailable on leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Vodafone, MTNL, Hathway and BSNL.
But the government doesn’t seem to have managed to get even the clampdown right.
It seems that the Department of Telecom (DoT)has issued an order to ISPs asking them to block over 800 websites that contain pornographic content.
Airtel users we spoke to didn’t have any trouble accessing adult content.
They shouldn’t get too excited though, it may just be a matter of time before Airtel users are in the same boat as everyone else.
Speaking to The Quint, a senior executive at Airtel confirmed that they have received the DoT order and have implemented it.
We got the order from DOT to block a certain number of porn websites. As an ISP we have already started blocking these in India. It may take sometime to reach our entire user base, but we are following the DoT order.
– Senior Airtel Executive
Whatever the motivation behind this order, it is thoroughly improbable that it will make any dent on porn viewing in the country.
After all, given the innumerable number of porn sites, what difference will blocking a few hundred make?
Some of the staff at The Quint googled “Indian Adult Videos”. The very first site that came up was not blocked.
Neither was worldsex.com, a popular aggregator like the ones that have been blocked.
So, ladies and gentlemen, don’t get too worried about this ‘ban’. It hasn’t been very well executed.
(With Inputs from Siddharth Sharma.)