India Supremes Refuse to Accept That Porn Cannot Be Blocked

INDIA—Last year, as AVN reported at the time, the Supreme Court of India, obviously fed up with the amount of porn available online, insisted that the government devise methods to block the stuff from being accessed by Indian citizens. Exactly one year later, the same court is making the same order on the heels of an admission by the government that it is all but helpless to block porn. In May, the government told the high court that it could actually cause more harm than good by banning porn sites, arguing, "Everything would be blocked and even good literature would be blocked and it would cause more, greater harm." And last week, it told the same court that it simply cannot take porn sites down faster than they spring back up. Solicitor general L. Nageshwar Rao explained, "If we block one site, other crops up. There are also hidden servers in the country and it is difficult to control them. All social media are being operated from foreign lands." Rao told the court that personal filters need to be used in order to keep porn away from kids, but the court was apparently unimpressed with the suggestion, countering that a more comprehensive solution must be found. "Law, technology and governance have to be synthesized to control pornographic materials on the internet," it said, adding, "There are rules to control such sites and some method has to be found out." As with its hearings on the issue last year, the court continues to address a petition filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, "who pleaded that although watching obscene videos was not an offense, pornographic sites should be banned as they were one of the major causes behind crime against women." According to Times of India, "The apex court also directed the Centre to place the contents of the petition before an advisory committee set up under Section 88 of IT Act so that it can suggest ways to control the problem."