If you think ‘Internet’ is open to everyone, think twice though you live in India. Earlier Union Minister Kapil Sibal asked to remove controversial contents from social networking sites like facebook. It was highly criticised over the media but still Google, Facebook and twitter was asked to court to defend them.
Now similar thing is happening as of now almost all major ISPs has got the court order and has been asked to block 300+ sites as our exclusive inside sources from Indian ISPs informed us.
If its 300 today who knows it will be another 300+ tomorrow are we living in China? On March 29th, 2012 Madras High Court passed another ‘Jon Doe’ order in response to Chennai-based Copyright Labs for their two movies, Dhammu (Tamil) and 3 (Telugu). This was passed so silently that very few noticed it.
All these mess started in July 2011 when Reliance Entertainment obtained a court order from the Indian High Court which restrained many Internet services providers from offering, even indirectly, a pirate copy of the movie Singham. With this court order Reliance Entertainment asked all ISP to block many file-sharing sites including Mediafire, MegaUpload and Hotfile.Mediafire and similar file hosters are not simple pirated file sharing platform rather many people shares important files via these sites.
In March this year Kolkata High Court ordered ISPs to block 104 music sites which offer unauthorized music content. The court even ordered to block via DNS and IP address blocking, backed up with Deep Packet Inspection.
Why Vimeo is not working in India?
Vimeo is just another video sharing site like YouTube was blocked by ISP due to court order, but after soon it was unblocked by Reliance Communications (ISP of ADA Group) but it blocked player.vimeo.com so that even if you can load the website, no video can be played. Interestingly another legitimate video sharing site – DailyMotion is also blocked which now has been unlocked as told by inside sources from Indian ISPs informed us.
In United States anti-piracy does not go like this, there anti-piracy cells can’t even think about these actions ordered to ISPs by Indian courts. Here in India anti-piracy cells are not a big success, hence they and entertainment industries are lobbying to take the ultimate step – website blocking. This can never be supported.
As a reader or a common Internet user whats your take dont you think there is a loophole in our legal system and money muscled entertainment industries is misusing it over our legal system? Internet is free and open to all, and it will be!
List of all 300 sites which has been asked to be blocked in India
The Pdf file will take some time to load its embedded in Google Doc
If you are having trouble viewing the PDF file click here
In a reponse to protest against file sharing sites famous hacker group Anonymous posted two videos with their message to Indian Govt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52zwjkSVx2k&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3SoQ4i16TA&feature;=related
