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Our Bureau

DoT seeks explanation for blocking unintended sites

New Delhi , July 20

The Department of Telecom on Thursday asked Internet Service Providers to restrict the ban to only the 17 Web pages listed by the Government on July 13. The move from DoT comes after Internet users expressed outrage at not being able to access the entire Web Site on which the banned Web page was located.

It has also issued a show-cause notice to the ISPs as to why action should not be taken for blocking unintended Web sites. The DoT letter could lead to users being able to access sites such as blogspot and geocities soon.

Earlier, the DoT had asked all the ISPs to block access to Web pages such as princesskimberly.blogspot and pajamaeditors.blogspot. Some of the ISPs, however, ended up blocking the entire blogspot.com, a popular blogging site.

In a letter issued to all ISPs, the DoT said, "it had come to notice that in some cases, the parent Web site had been blocked in contravention to what was stated in its earlier order whereby it ordered the ISPs to block certain Web sites/Web pages.

As such, the DoT has now directed all the ISPs to strictly comply with the order dated July 13 and provide unhindered access to Internet except for the Web sites/Web pages, which have been specifically mentioned in its orders." The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) has, however, shot off a letter to the DoT saying that it was not practical to block the Web pages that are an extension of a sub domain (Web pages with a `slash'). Therefore, ISPs have to block the entire site. For instance, of the 17 Web pages listed by the department, there is one Web site hinduhumanrights.org/

hindufocus.html.

On blocking Web pages without a `slash' such as commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot, the association said most ISPs have opened up access to the main Web site, which is blogspot in this instance, even as they were blocking the specific Web page. However, it added that there was a risk of the blocked Web page being accessible, therefore ISPs may have blocked the entire Web site. There are four pages on blogspot, which have been blocked by the DoT.

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