Wednesday, 11 April 2012

India Bans Popular Filesharing Websites

RapidShare, Megaupload and others blocked by the Department of Telecom.

There has been no official announcement from either the ISPs or the Department of Telecom (DoT) on the ban. I encountered the same static page with MTNL and Airtel when I tried accessing the filesharing websites earlier in the day. Interestingly, various filesharing portals have been banned and unbanned intermittently since last night across different ISPs. As of this writing, I found both MTNL and Airtel to have lifted the ban. However, there is no saying if and when then ban will recur.

Although users can bypass the ban with proxies (by enabling Opera Turbo in the Opera browser, for example), it's still ridiculous for the DoT to infringe upon users' rights. Forums are abuzz with various conspiracy theories, including one that cites Bollywood lobbying for the ban under the pretext of piracy.

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