After porn sites and torrent sites were blocked now the new crackdown has surfaced sites including Reddit, Telegram and comedy site College Humor in some parts of India. The blocking was done as it raised questions on the enforcement of net neutrality rules.
When CollegeHumour.com was accessed the message read “Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India.” But Reddit and Telegram websites were easily accessible.
Apar Gupta, executive director at the non-profit Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said: “It’s not making any sense, what’s happening, A lot of these blocks are also happening in such a way that no notices are displayed.”
A news agency has approached Bharti Airtel to know if they have blocked either of the websites. So they said that it “supports an open internet” and does not block content unless directed by authorities. However, it did not clarify whether it was currently blocking any websites.
The net neutrality rules were approved by the Telecom Commission in 2018 that service providers cannot discriminate against Internet content and services by blocking, throttling or granting them higher speed access and they have to be neutral to all. TRAI has also recommended restrictions on service providers from entering into agreements that can lead to discrimination of content on the Internet.
However, recently these websites were blocked in India to prevent copyright infringement and as per the court orders, pornography websites are also blocked.
