Tata Docomo unblocks Bloggernews
By Bala Shah

Bangalore based The Centre for Internet and Society describes its vision and mission to ‘critically engage with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South - South dialogues and exchange’. CIS filed a RTI with the Govt of India and had scooped the list of banned websites.

The Centre of Internet Society (CIS)’s Pranesh Prakash filed an RTI with the Department of Information Technology (DIT) to source this previously secret information.  CIS has eloquently and thoroughly analyzed the implications of these blocks, as well as the shortcomings of the DIT's response.

Among the eleven websites and specific web pages that the DIT acknowledges are blocked in India include one article at Bloggernews (which you can access via a proxy server)

“
www.bloggernews.net/124029
“

The Government of India had ordered only one article of Bloggernews.net be blocked, but Tata Docomo and Airtel have blocked the entire website which can legally be seen as a Denial of Service.  Reliance Net Connect and BSNL allow Indians to access Bloggernews.

Cyber law expert Na.Vijayashankar, also known as Naavi in Cyberspace, is one of the most respected names in the Indian tech world.  As Chairman of the Digital Society Foundation and as a Director of Cyber Law College, one of Naavi’s life mottos is “Let’s build a responsible Cyber society”. 

Naavi’s views are highly regarded and he is regularly quoted by Indian media.  Most recently, the Bangalore Cyber Security Summit held in Mid-March and which was addressed by Telecom and Technology guru Sam Pitroda, had invited Naavi to share his vast expertise at the conference.

Late last week,  Naavi wrote to Tata Docomo giving prima facie evidence of wrongful blocking of Bloggernews which is an offence under Sec 69/69A of ITA 2008. The network administrators as well as other officials of the Company could be liable for criminal action in such cases of blocking of websites.

Tata Docomo has now unblocked Bloggernews.net.

But Airtel continues to block it.  Is it because some Network Administrators cannot make the distinction between a single article and the entire website?  Or it is laziness and wanting to be on the safe side?