India is the latest country to be hit by the porn ban. Access to the majority of popular adult streaming sites has been completely banned leaving many Indians agitated. Twitter is flooded with the hashtag #pornban with many Indian users venting out their anger with this development. Here’s the entire list of the 857 sites that have been blocked.
At the moment, the porn block in India has affected both private and state owned internet providers adult material being reportedly blocked on MTNL Mumbai, BSNL, Vodafone, ACL and many more providers of internet services.
Legally, a citizen is allowed to view pornography in his/her own home and the Indian government’s move to block this hasn’t gone down too well. With the recent block, many users will soon opt for VPN or Virtual Private Network. This service will allow users to ‘tunnel their internet connection out of India privately and at no extra long distance cost to access content that is otherwise blocked in India.’, points out VPN Compare.
According to the report, the best VPN providers for accessing an unrestricted internet in India are IPVanish, VyprVPN and ExpressVPN. Via these services, a user simply needs to download the provided software or app and connect to any country outside of India. After this is done, any website viewed on the Internet will be encrypted. This way, users in India can access any website which includes adult material or anything else as well. This service works with PC, Mac, Android and iOS devices.
There is yet another way to view blocked websites in India too. According to a report by Quartz, users can try using a proxy. A clutch of proxy websites including HideMyAss, Free Proxy, and inCloak can allos users to bypass an internet service provider’s internet protocol (IP) address and connect to any website. The report also points out a simpler and safer method. Social networking sites such as Reddit, DailyMotion and VKontakte also host a variety of pornographic material.
In others, users can also try downloading porn via torrents.However, it might take longer and occupy a large amount of space on your hard drive as well. If everything fails, you can also buy a cheap porn DVD.
Banning porn isn’t an abrupt decision and the government has been looking at ways to do so for some time now. Late last year, a meeting was held primarily focussed on dealing with issue of pornography in India, and how the government could ensure that access to such sites could be banned completely.
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad was present, along with Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-IN) head Gulshan Rai, officials from DoT, Deity, CBI, and representatives of industry bodies like IAMAI, FICCI, ASSOCHAM, CII. ISPs were reportedly asked to make a list of sites that can be banned.
