“Indian govt bans the innovative porn cartoon site savitabhabhi.com . Fuck you bureaucrats ! This ain’t China assholes !” – says a friend’s status on FB and that’s how I got to know about this latest interesting/controvertial development. A quick Twitter search led me to this post on ContentSutra.
According to documents seen by contentSutra.com, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, has asked all Internet Service Providers to block the website in a communication dated 3 June
The Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA), a government agency under the Department of Information Technology, is the agency that is entrusted under the IT Act to block websites. N. Vijayaditya, of the CCA, confirmed the development. “There were several complaints against the site. We have taken action under the relevant sections of the IT Act and blocked the site,” he said. When asked if the agency will give a chance to the owners of the site to defend themselves, he said nobody has come forward so far with such a request. He said he could not say if the agency will pursue legal action against the operators of the website. – ContentSutra.com
The site started having accessibility issues with some ISP’s starting to ban it since 19th June and as per now it’s blocked by all major ISP’s. This would easily be one of the biggest censorship move in India and definitely a cause of worry for Indian netizens who were already apprehensive by the ammendments to the “IT Act 2008”. While people are busy debating if it’s all right to ban the 85th most popular site in India, the guys behind it have started rallying to “Save Savita”. They’ve set up a blog at http://www.savesavita.com/ and are using it to gather support, crowdsource information( including how to access the site). There’s an account on Twitter and on Facebook to connect with SB fans and raise their voice. It will be interesting to see what fate(or should I say Indian Govt) has in store for SavitaBhabhi and how the ammended “IT Act 2008” will affect us.
While I certainly don’t appreciate this censorship, what do you think about it ?
As mentioned at savesavita.com you can access the site using hidemyass.com