Apparently the censorship order applied to only one Yahoo Groups list but some ISPs blocked the entire Yahoo Groups website. Some reportedly may have narrowed the block since then. Politech subscribers have pointed me to these useful discussions on a local mailing list (thanks, folks): https://ssl.cpsr.org/pipermail/india-gii/2003-September/005110.html Dishnet has blocked access to groups.yahoo.com since 13th September 2003 and on further enquiries tell me that it is because Govt. of India has sent them a directive to block specific Yahoo! Groups and since Dishnet doesn't know how to do that, it has blocked access to the entire URL http://groups.yahoo.com/ https://ssl.cpsr.org/pipermail/india-gii/2003-September/005116.html I saw it a couple of days ago. I've asked for a scanned copy, which I will hopefully be able to make available to the list. The group in question is a list of some Indonesian anti-Indonesian government group. See also this coverage: http://www.rediff.com/netguide/2003/sep/23yahoo.htm -Declan --- Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 08:26:03 -0400 (EDT) From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@private> To: "johnmac's living room" <johnmacsgroup@private> cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Subject: India blocks access to Yahoogroups >From Cyberia -- I pasted in the whole story ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Arvind T. Thattai <a.thattai@private> To: CYBERIA-L@private Folks, As of Monday, internet users in India can no longer access Yahoogroups following a government order requiring all ISPs to block the site. The government's request was confined to a specific group, run by a seccessionist organisation. ISPs responded by blocking access to the entire cite, claiming they are unable to block only a particular group. If memory serves right, the last attempt by the Indian government to control the net (by blacklisting the websites of several Pakistani newspapers) was quietly dropped after a number of Indian sites hosted overseas began mirroring the sites in question. It will be interesting to see how this particular round develops. The story is here: http://web.mid-day.com//news/city/2003/september/64623.htm 'Anti-national' Yahoo Groups blocked By Shibu Thomas Cyberspace users in India are up in arms against the government. For the first time since the Information Technology Act, 2000, was introduced, the government has banned a site, Yahoo Groups, for publishing anti-government material. Many netizens believe the government is trying to gag the Internet, a medium for free flow of information. On Monday, when Yahoo users tried to access Yahoo Groups, they got error messages saying the site had been blocked. Neville Taraporewala, who heads yahoo.coms India operations said, We received no communication from the government. We realised Yahoo Groups had been blocked when users started calling us. On checking with the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), we came to know the government had told them to block the site. The government move came stealthily. In a notification dated August 10, 2003, Jayant Kumar, director, DoT, asked ISPs to block groups.yahoo.com/groups/kynhun for promoting anti-national news and containing material against the Government of India and the state government of Meghalaya. The Kynhun Group, which has barely 25 members and a total of 20 messages, is run by an organisition called Hynniewtrep International Liberation Council. Though some of the messages call for independence, many of them are about corruption, police brutality against minorities and lack of public infrastructure. A VSNL spokesperson said, If the government issues a notification, the ISPs have to fall in line. However, since the technology to block a particular group is complicated, ISPs have completely blocked access to the whole of Yahoo Groups. [...] What is banned The government wanted the Kynhun Group banned from cyberspace. But ISP blocked Yahoo Groups a service provided by Yahoo, where users can form their own groups to share ideas and information. [...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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