Technical Devices

Last night, many Indian internet users were shocked to find their favourite filesharing websites banned. Members of the India Broadband Forum reported that visiting popular websites such as Megaupload, RapidShare, MediaFire, DepositFiles, and many others served up a static page saying that the “site has been blocked as per instructions from the Department of Telecom”. This ban was reported by subscribers of major ISPs, including Reliance, MTNL, and Airtel.

There has been no official announcement from either the ISPs or the Department of Telecom (DoT) on the ban. I encountered the same static page with MTNL and Airtel when I tried accessing the filesharing websites earlier in the day. Interestingly, various filesharing portals have been banned and unbanned intermittently since last night across different ISPs. As of this writing, I found both MTNL and Airtel to have lifted the ban. However, there is no saying if and when then ban will recur.

Although users can bypass the ban with proxies (by enabling Opera Turbo in the Opera browser, for example), it’s still ridiculous for the DoT to infringe upon users’ rights. Forums are abuzz with various conspiracy theories, including one that cites Bollywood lobbying for the ban under the pretext of piracy. Whatever may the the excuse, the government has no business banning an entire service altogether just because it’s being misused by some. This is just as daft as deploying thermonuclear warheads to cure polio. Hopefully, these websites will continue to remain operational.