ISPs in a fix over ban on child porn sites order

NEW DELHI: After four days of drama and lot of public criticism, the Indian government has mellowed down its stance on the blocking of porn websites, saying that the ban would be restricted to child pornography sites only.

However, the Internet Service Providers (ISPs)in India continue to be in a fix as the onus of identifying the child porn sites lies with them.

ISPs are foxed by the government's latest stand as they say they are not in a position to identify child porn sites. Also, technology experts from the industry believe that certain content can and should be blocked at the international gateways itself.

Rajesh Chharia, President at ISPAI, the association of Internet Service Providers in India, said that rather than advising all the ISPs to block certain websites it would be better if the government gets the five international gateways and the cable landing stations to block certain websites originating from the overseas.

He further added that “sites which are originating in India can be blocked directly by advising the respective data centers.”

Girish Trivedi, Co-Founder, Monk Consulting, said:" Blocking certain websites at the gateways is a logical step, which can be taken to clear the mess."

At present, India has five international gateways in New Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata.

“For the last 17 years, we are getting requests for blocking of sites and the list is growing every day. It's not just troublesome to execute, (on account of technical reasons) it compromises the quality of services as well and it's not the right approach,” elaborated Chharia, who is the voice of ISPs in India as President of ISPAI.

The government had earlier asked all the telcos and ISPs to block 857 porn site, but yesterday it revised its stance by saying only child porn sites should be banned.