After the Department of Telecom issued a directive asking internet service providers to block around 800 porn websites we all thought that our world had ended.
Indian lawmakers simply hate our Indian audience watching content online. After talks to censor streaming based content, they are now attacking our beloved pornographic industry.
JIO may have already implemented the plan, the likes of Airtel and Vodafone are on their heels, but our ‘jugaadu’ Indians are already ready with hacks to find their way around it.
There’s no stopping Indians
Indians being the third-biggest porn watching audience in the world (after the US and the UK) the mobile traffic share in recent years, jumped up over 121% from 2013 to 2017.
It was obvious that Pornhub will help its loyal Indian fanbase and they sure did.
Just days after the ban, Pornhub launched a mirror site with a slightly altered web address to ‘.net’ from their old ‘.com’ just for its Indian users. After all, not all heroes wear capes right?
https://twitter.com/Pornhub/status/1055931244129615874
“There are no laws against pornography in India and watching adult content privately. It’s evident that the Indian government does not have a solution to a very serious and systemic problem in the country, and is using adult sites like ours as a scapegoat,” said Corey Price, vice-president of Pornhub.
If a website like Pornhub can simply get past this ban by altering their username, I’m sure any porn website which is effected can do something similar to get back their Indian fan base.
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Specifically, people are being able to access porn through some browsers with UC Browser being the most popular on the Jio network. This is the same app that was accused for leaking Indian user data last year.
Apart from that, there are other easy ways to get past the ban. Hoards of proxy sites including – Hide.me, Hidester, Whoer.net, and Anonymouse have come to the rescue.
But Indians are still not happy with these hacks and have taken the internet to cite other options than these porn websites.
https://twitter.com/theabhijoshi/status/1055358150730145792
For old school people, access to porn is just a few steps away with a massive industry of offline pornography. A porn DVD can be bought for as little as Rs. 30 and some upload it on flash drives for similar rates. Controlling this seems to be an impossible task.
https://twitter.com/IyerPrasanna/status/1055110657845223425
This is not the first time
Earlier in November 2014, the government tried to ban porn for the first time by taking aim at 40 million porn websites globally rather than limiting it to 800 websites like this time.
The current ban was filed in 2015 with 857 porn sites under the radar. But, it was lifted within a week of its implementation.
The reason was a simple one: the ban was hurting the telecom operators pockets.
We all know that online traffic in India is driven by porn websites, with a whopping 70% of India’s website traffic driven by porn, according to sources in LiveMint.
All this porn viewership which has increased in India is due to such cheap data plans by the likes of JIO and this move will surely hurt the revenue of these cellular operators.
https://twitter.com/iamrekiraj/status/1055059756274991104
Ahead of the 2019, elections the government is taking a big risk in suppressing the freedom of communication. Last time around, it was forced to not only lift the ban but also but come against their stand of censorship.
This only adds to the government long-standing efforts on cracking down the freedom of expression and it remains to be seen how tolerant the citizens of our country can be.
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: Business Today, Livemint, Quartz
Find the Blooger at @aarooshjairath
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