India hasn't exactly banned porn, as the government's spokespeople continue to insist. It has only issued an order demanding the disabling of an unprecedented 857 websites by internet service providers on priority. Although the government hasn't come out and said it, unnamed sources have told newspaper reporters that it wants only to regulate the internet. The bedroom is not its concern, the government insists. Even if it wanted to just "regulate" porn, though, is it actually possible?
Even the Chief Justice of India HL Dattu declined to pass an order to ban such websites while responding to a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court that called for a blanket ban on all porn websites in the country, pursuant to concerns over child pornography. An interim order could not be passed as it would violate the fundamental right to personal liberty of individuals as guaranteed by the Article 21 of the constitution, Dattu observed.
Yet unnamed sources in the government quoted by the Hindustan Times claim that the DoT has followed Supreme Court’s observations on child porn while Times of India quoted people from the government insisting that “the idea was not to black out or police what people watch in their bedrooms.”
Take even the current attempt to lock websites, presumably those listed in the PIL. The list, a leaked version of which was released by the Centre for Internet and Society, included not just hundreds of porn sites but also less graphic ones like CollegeHumour, a parody site, and barstoolsports.com, a popular American site that satirises sports. With these less-than-pornographic sites, yet ones that could offend prudes, disappearing, there has been concern that the government will carry out its internet regulation with a sledgehammer, never mind collateral damage on the way.
Will it work?
While largely arbitrary bans like these would satisfy the government’s ambitions of a “swacchh internet”, the effectiveness of such a move is questionable since the internet always has an option.
To simply understand how wide the net has to be to asphyxiate online pornography, it is important to remember that 30% of all traffic on the internet is porn. According to estimates, porn sites from across the world get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. With this in mind, 857 sites, or even 857,000 is a drop in the ocean.
Estimates suggest that popular sites such as YouPorn.com could be holding anywhere between 100-200 terabytes of data and serve up to 4,000 pages per second which could mean a transfer of 800 GBs of porn per second and that’s just one website among millions such.
Even with bans, the world loves its porn
Take the case of Iraq. It might come as a surprise but irrespective of the fact that all pornography is banned in the country, Iraq loves its porn a little too much. A recent report put the conservative Islamic nation on the top across the world since its porn websites make up 11% of all sites in the country, highest for any nation in the world. Europe and USA, for instance, don’t even figure in the top 20 list.
Even though the government tries to ban URLs on the internet, international satellite networks directly deliver it to people’s homes and there’s always Virtual Private Networks that come as cheap as a burger meal in any popular fast food chain, which not only allow access to blocked pages, but also protect the user’s identity keeping it safe from the government and the ISP.
Similar is the case for Egypt where possession, distribution or import of pornography are all offences but the country continues to stream porn online. In fact, 9% of the websites in the country hold pornography, only second to Iraq.
Moreover, a research carried out by a porn search website PornMD put six Muslim states in the list of top 10 countries which searched for porn online. The list had Pakistan, which has even banned YouTube for the fear of blasphemic content at the top while Egypt was second in order further dispelling the myth that a blanket ban on websites would be enough to keep people away from the content that their governments don’t want them to watch.
A similar situation is expected to surface in India if the banning of webpages continues. Many argue that the ban would actually help introduce the concept of internet privacy to users in the country and the use of VPNs to access such websites will become widespread thus enabling a truly free and fair access to the internet and all its porn – even with the ban.
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Even the Chief Justice of India HL Dattu declined to pass an order to ban such websites while responding to a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court that called for a blanket ban on all porn websites in the country, pursuant to concerns over child pornography. An interim order could not be passed as it would violate the fundamental right to personal liberty of individuals as guaranteed by the Article 21 of the constitution, Dattu observed.
Yet unnamed sources in the government quoted by the Hindustan Times claim that the DoT has followed Supreme Court’s observations on child porn while Times of India quoted people from the government insisting that “the idea was not to black out or police what people watch in their bedrooms.”
Take even the current attempt to lock websites, presumably those listed in the PIL. The list, a leaked version of which was released by the Centre for Internet and Society, included not just hundreds of porn sites but also less graphic ones like CollegeHumour, a parody site, and barstoolsports.com, a popular American site that satirises sports. With these less-than-pornographic sites, yet ones that could offend prudes, disappearing, there has been concern that the government will carry out its internet regulation with a sledgehammer, never mind collateral damage on the way.
Will it work?
While largely arbitrary bans like these would satisfy the government’s ambitions of a “swacchh internet”, the effectiveness of such a move is questionable since the internet always has an option.
To simply understand how wide the net has to be to asphyxiate online pornography, it is important to remember that 30% of all traffic on the internet is porn. According to estimates, porn sites from across the world get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. With this in mind, 857 sites, or even 857,000 is a drop in the ocean.
Estimates suggest that popular sites such as YouPorn.com could be holding anywhere between 100-200 terabytes of data and serve up to 4,000 pages per second which could mean a transfer of 800 GBs of porn per second and that’s just one website among millions such.
Even with bans, the world loves its porn
Holizz/Wikimedia Commons
Take the case of Iraq. It might come as a surprise but irrespective of the fact that all pornography is banned in the country, Iraq loves its porn a little too much. A recent report put the conservative Islamic nation on the top across the world since its porn websites make up 11% of all sites in the country, highest for any nation in the world. Europe and USA, for instance, don’t even figure in the top 20 list.
Even though the government tries to ban URLs on the internet, international satellite networks directly deliver it to people’s homes and there’s always Virtual Private Networks that come as cheap as a burger meal in any popular fast food chain, which not only allow access to blocked pages, but also protect the user’s identity keeping it safe from the government and the ISP.
Similar is the case for Egypt where possession, distribution or import of pornography are all offences but the country continues to stream porn online. In fact, 9% of the websites in the country hold pornography, only second to Iraq.
Moreover, a research carried out by a porn search website PornMD put six Muslim states in the list of top 10 countries which searched for porn online. The list had Pakistan, which has even banned YouTube for the fear of blasphemic content at the top while Egypt was second in order further dispelling the myth that a blanket ban on websites would be enough to keep people away from the content that their governments don’t want them to watch.
A similar situation is expected to surface in India if the banning of webpages continues. Many argue that the ban would actually help introduce the concept of internet privacy to users in the country and the use of VPNs to access such websites will become widespread thus enabling a truly free and fair access to the internet and all its porn – even with the ban.