Should websites/blogs be censored?

Note: This is a post that collates post-ban reactions. Refer to our original post on Blogspot ban for details. Details on ban status.

The last few days have been extremely hectic [for the desi blogosphere] trying to make sense of the ban and find a temporary/permanent solution around it. But have the big picture issues been examined yet?

Falstaff comments on the two camps that have emerged in the blogosphere regarding the act of censorship and explains why banning under the pretext of national security without any oversight might not be the way to go.

Gawker is dismayed at the gross incompetence of the Indian government that made them block innocuous and previously unheard-of blogs and websites.

Govindraj asks if the digital platform of content makes it more ‘bannable’ and if such acts of supression are any different from banning movies, pictures, and books.

Dilip D’Souza is “glad that this bizarre block happened. For it opens our eyes to the way the government works and forces us to find ways to make it accountable to us.” He also asks the bloggers to get the government to explain why and how it took the decisions to block those 12-18 sites.
Confused finds that the actions of the government trying to block undesirous content completely antithetical to principles of democratic freedom.

Amit Varma thinks that the government is just trying to give an impression of ‘doing something’ after the terror attacks and ending up making a mess.

I am afraid that an otherwise innocuous action in the minds of millions of Indians (who reads blogs anyway?) might just set a dangerous precedent and it might be too late then.

If you don’t believe the ‘dangerous precedent’ part then you might be interested in knowing that the ISP Association of India is urging DoT to ban Skype and other voice messengers. Can you hear me now? You may not in the future.

The Witchy Angel finds it “odd that all of us have now moved on to the Indian Government’s pathetic decision to stop people accessing blogspots within India” while forgetting the Mumbai blasts and the recent tsunami in Indonesia. Om Malik has a similar sentiment about the blogosphere. Agree? Some do, some don’t.

Chamique believes that believe that “words are enough to intimidate. To outrage. To insult. To empower. So maybe all our blogs are threatening to the stability of the country.”

Ash cites insightful quotes by John F.Kennedy, Theodore Schoeder, and Sigmund Freud that effectively underline the issue we are talking about here.

Dina rightly points out that through this entire exercise, we have realised that neither the government nor the ISPs are aware of how blogs work. As she puts it perfectly, blogs are “not just individual journals but dynamic social networks.”

OpiniPundit, one of those blogs mistakenly placed on the ban list points to India’s dilemma:

As a relatively young democracy India is going to have to come to grips with whether or not they are going to truly be democratic which entails embracing the foundation of any true democracy, free speech or rather be some of pseudo in name only democracy and cater to the sensibilities of various groups at the expense of liberty.

The Buddha Smiled attributes this chaotic mess to the generation gap between regular Internet users and luddite government regulators but is glad that the youth is taking the government to task over matters that affect them directly.

Andy has dashed off a letter to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the global watchdogs of the blogosphere and shares his contents with us.

Judging by precedent, TTG feels that the government is not capable of monitoring content even if they had a right to which they do not.

Aishwarya is surprised that our government believes that they have a right/duty to protect us all from anti-national activities, even when matters aren’t remotely anti-national. Orkut has quite a few hate groups for India but apart from being disgusted I don’t see how they are any danger to national security.

Greatbong rightly points out that “if there is anything worse than censorship, it is censorship done incompetently“. The ISPs screwed it up further by blocking entire domains but I am glad they did otherwise we never would have noticed.

If you have a original big-picture analysis of this issue, blog it and send us the link. We’ll feature both sides of the debate…without excercising censorship.