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Dude, where's my blog?

Though popular blog sites such as Blogspot and Typepad are accessible now, bloggers are not a happy lot. They are fuming over babus jumping the gun and coming in the way of free speech and expression, reports ANAND SANKAR

PHOTO: BIJOY GHOSH

SARKARI GAGGING Experts say that censoring the Internet is next to impossible

To describe bloggers in the city as angry would be putting it very mildly. The order by the government to shut down a few so-called "offensive" blogs prevented bloggers across the country from reading and posting blogs. After the initial few hours of confusion it turned out that instead of blocking just the "offending" blogs, entire websites of blog hosters such as blogspot, typepad and geocities were barred. They are now accessible after much hullabaloo.

Though it has now emerged that the entire domains were barred because we lacked the technology to limit access to specific blogs, the last few days have led bloggers to question the existence of the right to free speech and expression in India as this is not the first time that blogs have made the news in this context. Not so long ago a blogger ran into trouble when he posted the link to a magazine article critical of an educational institute on his pages. The blogger then reportedly had to quit his job because of "pressure". He was even threatened with defamation suits but that step has gone nowhere.

According to Lawrence Liang, a lawyer with the Alternate Law Forum, this fiasco is a result of a lack of definition of free speech.

"The IT Act does have the powers, but this case falls more under the Articles 19 (2) and 19 (1) (A) of the Constitution. Article 19 (1) (A) is about the freedom of speech and expression while Article 19 (2) imposes reasonable restraints. The question here is whether it is reasonable restriction because of the inability to block specific blogs. This argument can also be applied to a number of cases not related to the Internet. For example can you control the size of a newspaper? Interestingly in 1950 when the constitution was implemented, the first amendment by Jawaharlal Nehru was to Article 19 (1) (A) to deal with extreme right and left opinion. So, if you look at the websites that have been banned, then things haven't changed much since 1950. You must realise that the answer to problematic speech is not silence but more speech."

Tricky jurisdiction

Among the list of blogs and websites that have been barred, a couple are not even from India but Liang says that isn't a problem. "Yes, on the Internet jurisdiction is tricky, but the IT Act has the power if the content is available in India. There is no separate law on blogs. But any communication to the public has certain legal liabilities."

The community echoes similar feelings but they say they will not take the "censorship" lying down. Online groups have already been formed in protest — http://groups.google.com/group/bloggerscollective (Google group) and http://censorship.wikia.com/wiki/Blog

gers_Against_Censorship (a Wiki) — and many bloggers are mooting hauling the government to court. The two protest groups even give information on how to access blogs that have been blocked.

Madhu Menon, the owner of Shiok restaurant, says in the Google group: "The Constitution gives the Government so many powers to restrict your freedom that it's one of the most clever pieces of hedging I've seen. The Government can weasel its way out of pretty much anything. Take freedom of speech alone, for instance. Check out the grounds on which they can restrict it — sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence. Such wonderfully vague things, aren't they? I'm not going to go into a lengthy discussion of how things like decency and morality can be used to toss a very wide net and curtail legitimate expression. Yes, our Constitution has many ifs and buts that allow for precisely this kind of blocking."

The minute the word got out about the restrictions, bloggers set to work trying to bypass them. "," says Liang.

Proxy servers, Google, Google Translator, websites that anonymously extract blogs and many more tools were used to evade the restrictions. Anil Nair (name changed), a network security expert with one of the leading IT companies, explains how it is difficult to censor the Internet. "I'm not even looking at the level of the country. Even in our offices we have a tough time trying to stop people from bypassing firewalls. The number of ways by which you can bypass network security is amazing. And the problem is the people making decisions at the government-level should have more expertise than us. They are leagues behind if they have just wised up to blogs now. For example someone can create a web page to spread subversive information and keep changing its IP address every few minutes or seconds randomly across several countries. Imagine someone trying to track the website down, let alone block it."

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