Government asks to ban 827 porn websites

The Central government has ordered the Internet service providers (ISPs) to block 827 websites that host pornographic content.

This ban order derived from the government after the delivery of an order by the Uttarakhand High Court to ban the pornographic websites.

The ban issue has not suddenly come into light. It was followed by an old notice dated 31 July 2015 in which the Uttarakhand High Court ordered ISPs to ban the porn websites.

But in the next month, i.e. on 4 August 2015, the Department of Telecom (DoT) changed its order saying that as long as the promotion of child pornographic content does not occur, ISPs had a choice to not disable any of the pornographic website links.

Again, the High Court issued an order on 27 September 2018 followed by an incident of rape which was received by Meity on 8 October 2018.

A class 10 girl in a Dehradun school was gang raped by four students who admitted in the investigation that they watched the porn website on the internet prior to raping her.

The Court considered it severely stating that unlimited access to these pornographic sites showing the adverse effects on the minds of children. Hence it is essential to control it to stop the bad consequences on young generations.

The court initially ordered to ban 857 websites. However, Meity found 30 websites do not have any pornographic content.

Hence, excluding those 30 websites, 827 websites have been banned.

The DoT issued an order to the ISPs saying that all the internet service providers are directed to take immediate action to block 827 websites as per the directions of Meity and to be compliant with the order of High Court.

Those who violate this order will lose their licence as per Section 25 of the Information Technology Act 2000, warns the High Court.

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