It is reported that India Government has blocked 20 website domains this week, including the famous blogging website blogspot.com from Google, Typepad.com, and the famous free webpage provider Geocities.com from Yahoo!. Computer Emergency Response Team (India) – CERT, which is part of the global cyber-security network is controlling this in India.
I am not able to access these sites from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. I am able to access Blogger.com and post this entry, and is published to my own domain, ananthapuri.com. So blogging works for me. That is, people who have their own domain for blogging are not affected – one more reason to have your own domain!
If we continue to block the whole domain instead of specific subdomains, we may end up in blocking all the free service providers. Can the government block free services like Gmail and Hotmail or instant messenger services like Yahoo messenger, or the telecommunication networks because the terrorists and anti-social elements may use it for their communication? By blocking major free blog hosting providers, the government has cut the freedom of citizens’ journalism, which is never acceptable in a democratic country like India.
There is no doubt that India should take care of the security aspect of the country, especially because we face both internal and external terrorism. We should block only those subdomains which have to be banned. We should use technology to scan through websites, find such negative websites, and block them periodically. We should have more sophisticated process for this. Killing the whole blogosphere is not a solution at all. Should we burn down the house to kill a rat?
Data Reference: The Indian Express
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