I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Let’s say a mob destroys a temple or a mosque, and self-appointed ‘leaders’ of the other community start making public speeches, distributing pamphlets and CDs, and pray, blogging, to the effect that members of the community should now take violent revenge.
Will you support clamping down on such a person’s right to free speech? I certainly will. I would see censorship in such a case as a lesser evil, the larger evil being riots. Potentially killing thousands.
A man sexually abuses a child and puts up his/her compromising photos online. Will you support the censorship of such a webpage? I will. For the simple reason that the child’s right to privacy is being compromised.
Having said that, it is important to note that censorship should be applied in the rarest of rare cases, where it serves a larger purpose. (I do know that “rarest of rare cases” is used for justifying capital pubishment as well, and I don’t support capital punihment for the simple reason that it institutionalises violence.)
The eighteen or so websites that the Department of Telecommunications ordered to be blocked, come nowhere near to a threat to anyone or anything in this country. Even if they did, there should have been a public debate, and the DoT should have justified as to how the blocking of these sites is important for national interest.
I believe some bloggers are in the process of filing a PIL against this ham-handed, arbitrary decision. I hope it leads us somewhere lest this episode set a dangerous precedent.
One of the sites banned, hinduunity.org, has a “hit list” which includes a friend and a number of many senior journalists, some of whom are actually right-of-centre and thus it is surprising they are there. The Hinduunity site is so hilarious the babus have to be killjoys to ban it!
Blocking Hinduunity.org is funny, but blocking Rahulyadav.com is not. I don’t know why Rahul’s site has been blocked. Rahul links to sites of right-wing organisations that are very much legit in India, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, despite the violence they have unleashed from time to time. I wrote to Rahul and this is what he had to say:
Hi Shivam, thanks for getting back at me. I appreciate the traffic but its really of no importance to me since I don’t run a blog and I’m not trying to get my opinion out to the masses. If I could forward the traffic to people who want it, like you, then I would:) Here are the answers to your questions:
What is your site about?
My website has been created for personal reasons and has nothing to do with politics. It merely presents information about myself and my interests. Along with that I have a personal photo gallery and links to websites which I like and organizations whom I share similar beliefs with.
I only have information about my background as well as a list of my hobbies and what I like to do in my free time.
What do you think got your site blocked?
I have nothing against any group or the Indian government on my website. It may have been because of the links to nationalistic organizations: BJP, RSS, and VHP in the links section. All of which the Congress Party and its Leftist allies hate with a passion. If they hate them so much why didn’t their websites get banned?
What are you doing about it?
I have put up a message of protest on the front page of my website and I’ve emailed all the major ISPs involved in this whole issue as well as the Ministry of Telecom who initiated the ban to unblock my website.
Are you disturbed, angry, outraged?
What angers me the most if not that my website got blocked but the fact that the first course of action the Indian government took to fight terrorism in the wake of the Mumbai bombings was to block out websites. That too, websites which were not terrorist in nature nor did they have any connection at all to any terrorist group. The websites which were political in nature only highlighted the current administration’s failures. Whats wrong with that? Going after students and freelance writers is not the first step against fighting terrorism. But for a government which licks the feet of its minority population and political allies, this is the right direction to take in order to protect ourselves from further attacks. Instead of taking any action against the land which breeds a majority of the world’s terrorists, we go to the G8 summit and beg the nations involved to denounce the attacks. As long as they do that and Indians get back on their feets the day after the bombings, all is well.
About myself:
I’m a grad student in the U.S. My family is originally from Bihar, I was raised here in the U.S. but I’ve kept my Indian and Hindu pride on my back since the day I landed here. More information about me can be found on my website: rahulyadav.com. If your in India and you can’t access it, I apoligize. But at least you’ll feel safer the next time to get on a train:)
Shivam, feel free to post this anywhere you’d like. Again, I’m not out to get traffic, we have to do what’s necessary to mobilize people against this useless administration. Thanks…
Another blocked site is www.clickatell.com. I agree with Devangshu when he says:
Actually clickatell is one of the few sites, maybe the only one, which does make sense to block from the security angle. It’s extremely difficult to track an sms sent via clickatell visavis a standard cellphone to cellphone sms. You may (I emphasise “may”) be able to intercept and read the msg but you cannot locate the chap sending it. It is ideal for a terrorist to coordinate an op. Even the sender’s actual IP is masked. The only issue is the delay in msg delivery but that can be worked around. If you were a cop tracking “sensitive” cellphones, this would drive you nuts. [Link]
But aren’t there a lot more sites like Clickatell? What about sms.ac? And can’t Clickatell still be used via anonymisers?
You want to protest against this bout of internet censorship? I tell you what to do: copy-paste content from the objectionable sites on your blog and invite the DoT to block your blog. I’m planning to do that with Princess Kimberly very soon!
My previous posts on this issue:
The blame game
So what’s the status of India’s blogspot blockade?
Sleep with Princess Kimberly, and expose the left
“Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?”
News reports on Rediff:
20 July: DoT may take action against ISPs
19 July: Blog blockade will be lifted in 48 hours
17 July: Are ISPs blocking blogs?
The 20 July story says DoT may take action against ISPs, to which here is ISPAI’s response today.The 19 July story quoted an ISPAI spokesperson as saying that the en masse blockade should be lifted in 48 hours, which means it should have been lifted by all ISPs now. However, I gather that some ISPs will take time till Monday morning.
That quote above that I begin this post with, is usually attributed to Vltaire. Here’s Rana Dasgupta’s explanation.
21 Comments
July 26, 2006 at 8:38 pm
as profane pornography and perceived by few as inspired literature. There are those who are arguing that censorship in the name of security is justified (and there are others who are acting as if anything in the name of security is justified!!) and Shivam does a great job of attacking this issue. My two cents in this argument is why would you ban a website spreading communalism—when for the first time a medium gives you the ‘non-violent’ option of engaging them? Why wouldn’t you question them,
July 23, 2006 at 8:45 am
Why should we let you get away with this? On what basis did you conjure up that list? We looked at the sites you hid from us. We laughed at some, scratched our heads in puzzlement at others. What was so repulsive about them? The people who ran those sites came to talk to us. They were civil. They were puzzled too. We listened as they explained what they understood. We hear of little birdies atwitter. This ban is just a smokescreen for a sinister operation, they tweet. An operation orchestrated by the government to nab
July 23, 2006 at 8:15 am
Why should we let you get away with this? On what basis did you conjure up that list? We looked at the sites you hid from us. We laughed at some, scratched our heads in puzzlement at others. What was so repulsive about them? The people who ran those sites came to talk to us. They were civil. They were puzzled too. We listened as they explained what they understood. We hear of little birdies atwitter. This ban is just a smokescreen for a sinister operation, they tweet. An operation orchestrated by the government to nab
July 22, 2006 at 9:32 pm
In fact, the Indians moved to block access not to “a web site”, but to eighteen different web sites, resulting in Indian ISPs blocking thousands of blogspot and typepad blogs. Indian blogger Shivam Vij posts a scan of the official order naming the sites here. This seems to be a misguided attempt to minimize the extent of the ban, which Dr. Rusty Shackleford of The Jawa Report considers to be a symptom of radical Muslim influence on Indian government.
July 22, 2006 at 1:42 am
as profane pornography and perceived by few as inspired literature. There are those who are arguing that censorship in the name of security is justified (and there are others who are acting as if anything in the name of security is justified!!) and Shivam does a great job of attacking this issue. My two cents in this argument is why would you ban a website spreading communalism—when for the first time a medium gives you the ‘non-violent’ option of engaging them? Why wouldn’t you question them,
January 23, 2007 at 11:39 am
[IMG]Censorship should be used in the rarest of rare cases at National Highway
July 21, 2006 at 10:17 pm
censorship should be applied in the rarest of rare cases, where it serves a larger purpose.
So who defines the larger purpose? government? courts? the public?
Also, limits on free speech are subjective and often adjudicated by the courts, mostly the Supreme Court. Screaming fire! in a crowded theater when there isn’t one is not considered free speech because of the intent to harm or cause chaos. The examples you cite are similar.
July 21, 2006 at 10:38 pm
[...] Will you support clamping down on such a person’s right to free speech? I certainly will. I would see censorship in such a case as a lesser evil, the larger evil being riots. Potentially killing thousands. [...]
July 22, 2006 at 12:01 am
Patrix: Yes, a democratic government, which should do this with transperancy. For such actions it is accountable to the public, the media and the courts – all three being pillars of democracy. Of course, governments will err, will misuse such powers, but that’s democracy for you, and democracy is the best system we have for all its faults.
July 22, 2006 at 2:37 am
Blog Ban : Doing the Wrong Things Poorly
Indian blog Renegade of Junk shares the following thoughts:Man, this really makes me squirm in embarassment. The Indian government is actually mispelling the websites it wishes to block, and as a result, blocking the wrong ones.A couple items down:http…
July 22, 2006 at 2:45 am
Feel free to swipe anything you like from me. If you really want to get wild, I would suggest searching “koran” or something from the “religious desecration?” category.
Also, the photoshops from one of the main reasons most of us got banned (which still really amuses me) http://flushthekoran.blogspot.com/2005/05/ok-so-my-original-post-and-new-website.html
July 22, 2006 at 11:09 am
Hinduunity.org so much sounds like SIF !
July 22, 2006 at 12:28 pm
[...] Shivam Vij has posted an insightful article on the whole censorship drama thus far, at his blog. It’s definitely worth reading. [...]
July 22, 2006 at 3:10 pm
[...] Shivam Vij’s article on Rediff, this post on his blog [...]
July 23, 2006 at 2:34 am
Indian Official Misleads Press About Blog Bannings
Cross-posted from The Dread Pundit Bluto. From the International Herald Tribune (emphasis added):In an e-mail sent early Thursday, an official at the Consulate General of India in New York said that the order to block a handful of Web sites,…
July 23, 2006 at 3:02 am
Shivam
The ban of internet sites is senseless but what better can we expect from incompetent babus and netas. Looks like the dark days of communist-socialist censorship are back in India.
BTW how true is this “news”?
India Hosts Hizballah’s Websites, TV
Remember India? The country that blocks this website (jawa) and others calling them dangerous. Well apparently if you are a terrorist organization with some rupees you can still host your website there. The big news today is the return to the internet of the web site of Hizballah’s al-Manar TV, still hosted in India. So much for Indian calls for no compromise in the war on terrorism.
Name: almanar.com.lb
Status: active
Address: 203.86.96.30
Registrar: .LB Domain Registry
Datacenter: VSNL, Mumbai, IN
Webhost: brainpulse.com
DNS Provider: brainpulse.com, Noida (U.P.) IN
July 23, 2006 at 3:26 am
The long dawn of Indian internet activism
July 23, 2006 at 10:49 am
We are back…….
July 23, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Typepad and Blogspot still down on Tata Indicom Broadband in Mumbai…
July 24, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Après la fermeture de l’accès à plusieurs plateformes de blog en Inde
“Resistance to blogs futile” : c’est le titre d’une tribune libre de Shivam Vij que l’on peut lire aujourd’hui sur le site de l’Hindustan Times. Ce blogueur y reprend certaines idées déja exprimées dans un de ses billets. Vij…
November 22, 2006 at 6:06 am
[...] Censorship should be used in the rarest of rare cases at National Highway – Published by Shivam Vij July 21st, 2006 in Blogging, Media and The Internet. … Let’s say a mob destroys a temple or a mosque, and self-appointed leaders’ of … – [2006-11-18 16:01:35] – [...]