Internet censorship in India
DNS filtering and educating service users in suggested usages is an active strategy and government policy to regulate and block access to Internet content on a large scale.
[7] The Freedom on the Net 2012 report says:[8] In June 2000, the Indian Parliament created the Information Technology (IT) Act to provide a legal framework to regulate Internet use and commerce, including digital signatures, security, and hacking.
By stretching the prohibition against publishing obscene content to include the filtering of Web sites, CERT-IN was empowered to review complaints and act as the sole authority for issuing blocking instructions to the Department of Telecommunications (DOT).
Many have argued that giving CERT-IN this power through executive order violates constitutional jurisprudence holding that specific legislation must be passed before the government can encroach on individual rights.
[17][18] Rediff, a media news website, claimed that the ban was instigated by the Indian government, and then published detailed instructions as to how one could bypass the filter and view the site.
The new rules require Internet companies to remove within 36 hours of being notified by the authorities any content that is deemed objectionable, particularly if its nature is "defamatory," "hateful", "harmful to minors", or "infringes copyright".
Cybercafé owners are required to photograph their customers, follow instructions on how their cafés should be set up so that all computer screens are in plain sight, keep copies of client IDs and their browsing histories for one year, and forward this data to the government each month.
On 24 December 2011, Reliance Communications, a widely used ISP, again blocked access to file-sharing sites, having obtained a John Doe order from a Delhi court to help protect the movie Don 2 several days before its release.
Noting that the posters were created by Aseem Trivedi and "are believed to be made at the instance of Shri Anna Hazare", the complaint requested "strict legal action in the matter".
[49] The Delhi Court also allowed Yahoo's case to be heard separately after it appealed citing it did not host any objectionable content and does not fall under the social networking site category.
[50] Starting 3 May 2012, a number of websites including Vimeo, The Pirate Bay, Torrentz and other torrent sites were allegedly blocked by Reliance Communications, on orders from Department of Telecom without any stated reasons or prior warnings.
[56][57] After this hack, Anonymous also released a list of websites that had been blocked by Reliance without any orders from the government, raising questions of private and unaccountable censorship by telecom providers.
The blocked articles, accounts, groups, and videos were said to contain inflammatory content with fictitious details relating to Assam violence and supposedly promoting the North East exodus.
[72] Over four days from 18 August, the Government of India issued directives to Internet Service Providers to block the Twitter accounts of two Delhi-based journalists – Kanchan Gupta and Shiv Aroor – and Pravin Togadia.
[73] In November 2012, Anonymous India defaced Indian Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal's constituency website in protest against an amendment to the Information Technology Act and the recent crackdown on netizens for comments posted online.
Just a couple of hours before taking oath as judge Justice Selvam called on Karunanidhi and got his blessings and this was revealed through a govt press release with photograph by the Tamil Nadu government's Information Department.
[97] In October 2018, the government directed Internet service providers to block 827 websites that host pornographic content following an order by the Uttarakhand High Court, effectively reinstating the previously rescinded 2015 porn ban.
[16] In 2022, under national security grounds, new regulations were implemented by CERT-In to require the retention of customer data by VPN, web hosting, and cloud service providers for five years.
[126] In April 2023, new regulations were enacted that will require online intermediaries to censor and remove content that is deemed to be false or misleading by a body appointed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
[133][134][135] On 5 September, the Court threatened to hold Wikimedia guilty of contempt for failing to disclose information about the editors who had made changes to the article and warned that Wikipedia might be blocked in India upon further non-compliance.
[144][145] This has happened in the same week were media personnel's filter-free over indulgences to manipulate ongoing cases and political statements without any guidelines were appalled by Lawyers in the country.
Many social action groups say that these as inappropriate time and money spend while real issues like unemployment, access to education, freedom of practicing religion, women and children safety, drug use are ever rising.
Some of them are also wary about how will these actions get reflected in terms hostility towards human rights, implications of these fines, profiteering stakeholders agendas, is it the government's first step to a long-term plan "monitoring the whole world wide web" as China does.
Other groups express their fear and uneasiness whether these will lead to emergency era like arrests where anything that government bodies believe is an "offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957".
Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the contents under this URL is punishable as an offence under the laws of India, including but not limited to under Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act, 1957 which prescribe imprisonment for three years and also fine of up to Rs.
Often these are done with the contracted lawyers of film studios approach courts in regular intervals ahead and after a movie's release seeking preventive blocks on the URLs they compile and list.
In 2018, the website was blocked by the Government of India, which was challenged by Mr. Thakur with legal assistance by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) in November 2019 before the Delhi High Court, as illegal and unconstitutional.
The State government shut down the Internet on 17–18 March 2014 in Jammu and Kashmir to stop separatists from addressing a United Nations Human Rights Council sideline event via video link in Geneva.
[194] The government ordered all forms of telecom services, except voice calls, to be suspended for five days in Manipur with effect from Thursday night (19 July 2018) to prevent anti-national and anti-social messages on social media.
"[197][198] For the third time under the leadership of CM N. Biren Singh in 2019 the state government ordered to shut down mobile data services in Manipur for five days, amidst protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill which took effect from 11 February 2019 at midnight.
