No it isn't. Everything is working fine for me. I checked in Airtel, and over NIC (National Informatics Center). If it isn't blocked by the NIC (gov. body, btw, I am a gov employee) I doubt whether anyone else would block it.
No, these sites are being blocked. I am on Airtel as well and things weren't blocked until yesterday. I think Reliance was the first to enforce the block - I believe they're also the ones who filed for the court order. It's really good to see this on the HN front-page, and hope there's more awareness / discussion. Blocking pastebin is a bit ridiculous :/ - the message one gets when one goes to any of the sites is just "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders", without any other explanation. Changing DNS servers does not work, so they are doing it at a different level.
A few days back, customers of Reliance faced blocking of Torrent and Vimeo, which was later unblocked. Meanwhile, BSNL did not block any of these sites.
I think that the reason behind this block-unblock cycle that reliance goes through every time a movie of theirs is released is quite simple. They do not want to block these sites permanently because then they lose an edge in the competition with airtel.
On the other hand whenever a movie from Reliance entertainment comes out they want to avoid the cams to spread for the first few weeks so they block these sites. Once the first couple of weeks have passed they undo the blocks.
This is happening so often in India that it isn't even newsworthy anymore :(
For those outside India who are wondering, only Airtel (private) seems to have blocked sites. I have a BSNL (state owned) broadband connection and everything still loads fine for me.
The really disturbing aspect of these blocking is the blatant manner in which websites which are known for their self-regulation (mainly for quality control) like Vimeo have been blacked out presumably by twisting the Chennai High court order against 'video sharing websites' by Copyright Labs, which seems to be a dummy company http://goo.gl/a1rjS . There is an alarming lack of internet literacy among the law makers and keepers who need to be educated on these issues so that such ridiculous incidents don't happen again.
It is not a dummy company, it should be a company with significant backing, may be it should have been put up in a hurry. I was expecting something of this sort when many politicians and their kin started acting in movies and buying stakes in production companies. From their contacts page I could see that they are based in chennai
Dummy meaning it is a facade put up by some vested interests. To my mind there is no way a genuine company can get this done without a legal (or should I say, illegal) backdoor.
"I worried more about piracy and it almost spoils everyone in the movie industry" ... only a man of such eloquence is capable of such otherwise impossible tasks ...
I am on airtel, got the "This site has been blocked as per Court Orders" message when trying to access vimeo this morning, and was taken by surprise. Why would one want to block vimeo? These guys have to at least say why they blocked it. The most stupid thing is blocking pastebin, if they are going to block a site due to someone writing something that is objectionable, then I think almost all sites which accepts and displays user inputs qualifies to be taken down. If you see the comments in youtube.com/indiatimes.com during an IPL match you can find all sorts of nasty comments and one can easily argue that these sites should be taken down. I am even considering switching from Airtel to some other ISP if they are not blocking traffic.
It is a John Doe order being enforced because some big movie is being released and they don't want it to be pirated. Those of us who use Vimeo for leisure or work are evidently lesser citizens ...
It may be working via few isps and dns servers. But the whole point of excercising a ban on websites is absurd. Wonder how the court is controlled by the big shots in India.
Having a Tata Photon+ wireless (EVDO) connection, as well as an MTNL (Mumbai) broadband and a local internet provider (Hathway) in my home and/or at work, I haven't seen this in action.
I am not sure whether Airtel and Reliance have any vested interest (far be me from it!), but Reliance is also the owner of BIG Entertainment and BIG Pictures (both owned by the younger Ambani), and the Mittals of Airtel have tied up with BigFlix.
In other words, this may be a net non-neutrality move, not the first of its kind.
Its getting ridiculous by the day, the way laws are being set here in India.
Recently the Supreme Court of India, has ordered that all cars must get rid of their sun films. Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed. This is because they think the kidnapping, terrorism and crimes against women will stop if the cars get rid of sun films and tint on windows. People are predicting heavy bribe business in early days after ban is enforced.
In another instance, the court has also ordered that heavy vehicles like lorries, trucks and other goods/passenger vehicles get speed regulators fixed preventing them from going above some level(I guess that is 60 Km) this is because some boy died in a over speeding accident. From what I hear, there is a strike planned to counter this.
Coming to Piracy, its ridiculous to think that they are going to stop piracy by banning torrent and video sites. In a country where pirated CD's are available on the footpath for the price of peanuts, Piracy isn't going to be that easy to solve. In fact of bulk of the piracy business happens, through those means. Very few people apart from the computer savvy ones know how to use torrents, or even know what torrents are.
Though I am frankly amazed that pastebin was blocked. I know what its used for... everything. It is about as nefarious as a chalk board. When are those getting banned?
Basically anything that makes content sharing easy, becomes a threat to the government.
The thing is Radio, TV and Papers are already bought by the government. Its paid media, and media that is isn't paid is generally killed.
Internet is a dangerous beast. No centralized control, amazingly rich content can be shared seamlessly. This is dangerous to the government. That is why there is so much commotion.
I am somewhat amazed that you are clubbing somewhat unrelated issues with a problem that directly threatens freedom of internet access in India.While, I do not take any sides -tinting of car glasses was prohibited by few state governments before. Also I am not sure if installing speed regulators is a step in the right direction but people getting killed in road accidents is a real problem in India. Remember that Lambourghuini mowing down several people in New Delhi?
But lets not call it "getting ridiculous by the day" yet. These orders were passed by court and not laws that parliament tried to make to achieve a totalitarian state and as such these orders are open for challenge by anyone. For example, it is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through and there weren't anyone[probably] challenging it and hence it is now being enforced by ISPs.
> "It is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through"
I would get worried if this were the case. Serious cases take years to pass through Indian courts. If Copyright Labs (which I increasingly feel is a facade company) got this rushed through the court AND got the ISPs to block access at such a blanket level I would start getting worried about the integrity of that court.
My point was the cases that drag for years generally has two sides, but what if the case had only one side? Copyright Labs wanted certain sites banned and obviously Vimeo, Pastebin etc have zero ground presence in India so there wasn't really anyone protesting the case of Copyright Labs. I am betting, if there was someone opposing what Copyright Labs was claiming, the outcome would have been different.
If a court is banning a publication, surely at least someone might be expected to go and double check that the claim isn't bullshit. You know, just on the basis of it being their job, or something nice like that. Otherwise it isn't really a court, is it? Is more like just a carefully staged sketch show with unusually high consequences.
>>I am somewhat amazed that you are clubbing somewhat unrelated issues with a problem that directly threatens freedom of internet access in India.
These are not unrelated issues. The common thing among these issues is the knee jerk reaction by authorities to fix social problems with artificial and infeasible patches to social living conditions of a country.
Do you think piracy can be solved in India by just blocking torrents. Piracy has been existing from long back. Even before all this you could buy pirated audio and video cassettes from foot paths. By restricting sites like pastebin they are actually showing how clueless they are about the root cause of the issues.
You will see a similar pattern in all these bans.
1. Some one commits a crime.
2. Investigation reveals a tool used to commit crime.
3. Courts/Authorities think banning the tool prevents the crime from happening again.
>>Remember that Lambourghuini mowing down several people in New Delhi?
Yes, Roads and foot paths are meant to drive and walk on. If you sleep on the road you shouldn't look too surprised if people drive over you.
The solution to this problem is to provide affordable housing to people so that they can sleep in their homes, instead of putting the speed limitation.
"Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed" You are either misinformed or deliberately misleading.
"heavy vehicles like lorries ... get speed regulators ... a over speeding accident" Studies have shown and statistics in India have shown that most accidents are caused by excess speeds.
Apparently you just don't laws. Careful, people like you end up in jail someday. Just because piracy is a difficult problem, doesn't mean that you don't put pirates out of business. Stop buying stuff on the footpath.
112 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadAccess to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders
tl;dr: sites are being blocked. wtf?
Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders
On the other hand whenever a movie from Reliance entertainment comes out they want to avoid the cams to spread for the first few weeks so they block these sites. Once the first couple of weeks have passed they undo the blocks.
For those outside India who are wondering, only Airtel (private) seems to have blocked sites. I have a BSNL (state owned) broadband connection and everything still loads fine for me.
I have 2011 and it comes out just fine.
Recently the Supreme Court of India, has ordered that all cars must get rid of their sun films. Even tinted glasses of any tint percentage aren't allowed. This is because they think the kidnapping, terrorism and crimes against women will stop if the cars get rid of sun films and tint on windows. People are predicting heavy bribe business in early days after ban is enforced.
In another instance, the court has also ordered that heavy vehicles like lorries, trucks and other goods/passenger vehicles get speed regulators fixed preventing them from going above some level(I guess that is 60 Km) this is because some boy died in a over speeding accident. From what I hear, there is a strike planned to counter this.
Coming to Piracy, its ridiculous to think that they are going to stop piracy by banning torrent and video sites. In a country where pirated CD's are available on the footpath for the price of peanuts, Piracy isn't going to be that easy to solve. In fact of bulk of the piracy business happens, through those means. Very few people apart from the computer savvy ones know how to use torrents, or even know what torrents are.
Though I am frankly amazed that pastebin was blocked. I know what its used for... everything. It is about as nefarious as a chalk board. When are those getting banned?
The thing is Radio, TV and Papers are already bought by the government. Its paid media, and media that is isn't paid is generally killed.
Internet is a dangerous beast. No centralized control, amazingly rich content can be shared seamlessly. This is dangerous to the government. That is why there is so much commotion.
But lets not call it "getting ridiculous by the day" yet. These orders were passed by court and not laws that parliament tried to make to achieve a totalitarian state and as such these orders are open for challenge by anyone. For example, it is likely that Madras High Court judgement was rushed through and there weren't anyone[probably] challenging it and hence it is now being enforced by ISPs.
These are not unrelated issues. The common thing among these issues is the knee jerk reaction by authorities to fix social problems with artificial and infeasible patches to social living conditions of a country.
Do you think piracy can be solved in India by just blocking torrents. Piracy has been existing from long back. Even before all this you could buy pirated audio and video cassettes from foot paths. By restricting sites like pastebin they are actually showing how clueless they are about the root cause of the issues.
You will see a similar pattern in all these bans.
>>Remember that Lambourghuini mowing down several people in New Delhi?Yes, Roads and foot paths are meant to drive and walk on. If you sleep on the road you shouldn't look too surprised if people drive over you.
The solution to this problem is to provide affordable housing to people so that they can sleep in their homes, instead of putting the speed limitation.
As I said, we don't look at the root cause.
"heavy vehicles like lorries ... get speed regulators ... a over speeding accident" Studies have shown and statistics in India have shown that most accidents are caused by excess speeds.
Apparently you just don't laws. Careful, people like you end up in jail someday. Just because piracy is a difficult problem, doesn't mean that you don't put pirates out of business. Stop buying stuff on the footpath.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/i-will-vote-against-the-c...
..and we can announce that we're a vote bank that can hurt them.
This is from our leased line via Airtel, so it seems that corporates are exempt from the ban.
I guess the ISPs are only sniffing port 80?
Having said that, this is hardly surprising.
The Pirate Bay works on https (I love that they have legit certs)