India Lifts Ban On Pornography After Public Backlash And Outcry
India is partially lifting their ban on online pornography after public outrage over this past weekend's clampdown on 857 websites, according to Indian news outlets on Tuesday
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The government will however continue to block sites that promote child pornography.
According to the IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, who spoke to India Today TV, he said: "A new notification will be issued shortly. The ban will be partially withdrawn. Sites that do not promote child porn will be unbanned,"
India had ordered Internet service providers to block the 857 websites starting Friday, deeming their
content "immoral and indecent." The move came after the nation's supreme court ruled last month that banning pornographic websites is not its job, but the elected government.
The ban drew sharp criticism across the nation, including from Bollywood celebrities. Experts warned the move could merely result in a boom for the adult porn industry.
Mahesh Bhatt, a Bollywood filmmaker, told the Washington Post saying: "Banning porn is an age-old trick that many countries have tried. It will always find many supporters."
Also, many accused the government of moral policing and infringing on personal freedoms, according India Today.
"Don't ban porn. Ban men ogling, leering, brushing past, groping, molesting, abusing, humiliating and raping women. Ban non-consent. Not sex," author Chetan Bhagat said on Twitter. "Porn ban is anti-freedom, impractical, not enforceable. Politically not very smart too. avoidable. Let's not manage people's private lives," he added.
India has the second-largest population of Internet users in the world after China, the Post reported. India is expected to have more than 500 million Internet users by 2017, compared with about 350 million now, according to a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the Post reported.
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