This Article is From Aug 29, 2014

We Block One Porn Site, Another One Opens: Government to Supreme Court

A plea filed in the Supreme Court demands a ban on child pornography and blocking of adult porn sites.

New Delhi: The government said today that it is struggling to block pornography sites because "There are around four crore websites and when we block one, a new one comes along."

The government's admission was made in the Supreme Court where a Public Interest Litigation was filed last year demanding a ban on child pornography and blocking of adult porn sites in India.

The government said in court today that servers used to provide porn are located abroad, making it hard to exercise any degree of control over them.

A committee has been formed to deal with the problem, the centre said.

Judges said they would like an update from the committee at the next hearing, scheduled to take place after six weeks. "Law, technology and governance have to be synthesised to control pornographic materials on the Internet," the Chief Justice of India told the Centre.

The petition filed in the Supreme Court stated that crimes against women are fuelled by porn, and referred to the fatal gang-rape of a Delhi student on a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012.   The accused had allegedly watched porn on their cellphones before the horrific assault.

"Offenders' minds are mostly fuelled by pornography as the sexual offender or rapist achieve his gratification not from sexual release alone but also from the thrill of domination, control and power," the petition said.

In January this year, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) told the Supreme Court that it is practically and technically impossible for them to block pornographic sites without orders from the court and government and they cannot be made liable for objectionable contents of the sites.

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