Notice to the Department of Telecom (DoT): Block Porn Websites

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  • Friday, August 29, 2014
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  • The Supreme Court of India has issued a notice to the Department of Telecom (DoT), seeking a response on how it plans to block porn websites, especially those that promote child sex abuse.
    Supreme Court asks for response from DoT on child pornography. According to reports, the apex court bench led by Justice BS Chauhan used strong words saying “Nothing, you have to do it” in response toAdditional Solicitor General KV Viswanathan’s request for more time on a plea for blocking such websites in India.
    Earlier this year, the court had granted the government an extension of four weeks to come up with a mechanism for blocking websites that contain or promote all sorts of child pornographic material.
    It is worth mentioning that the central government, on multiple occasions expressed its inability to ban or block foreign-based porn sites in India due to several legal and technological constraints. In its defence, the government had stated that it was experiencing a lot of difficulties (primarily due to the physical location of the overseas-based servers) while trying to take measures against such websites in the country.
    The bench later advised the government to work with all those ministries that can collectively bring forth a mechanism to enable strong and flexible actions on Internet child pornography.
    The war against Internet pornography has intensified in the country following a PIL filed by Kamlesh Vaswani – an Indore-based lawyer who argued that even though watching porn is not a crime, such sites should be banned on the ground that they have been a prime cause of crime against women.
    “The petitioner most respectfully submits that most of the offences committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography. The worrying issue is the severity and gravity of the images are increasing. It is a matter of serious concern that prepubescent children are being raped,” the petition read, further adding, “At best, the IPC only recognises the offences of obscenity, kidnapping, abduction, and other related offences which are not sufficient to tackle the issue of pornography, and such videos,”.

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