The Supreme Court of India has today asked the Secretary of Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to file an affidavit in the court regarding whether the Centre is competent to issue direction to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block porn sites particularly those showing child pornography.
This week a bench headed by Justice B S Chauhan hearing to the case of by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, asked "The Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), may file his personal affidavit within one week on the issue whether the DoT or any other department of the Government of India is competent to issue direction to the respondent No.4 (ISPs) to call off sites showing pornography."
This has come after the January hearing in which Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) responded to the a PIL filed in the Supreme Court saying, it is impossible to ban content on network unless there is monitoring and official orders.
ISPAI explained the matter of blocking porn content by ISP’s in 4 points to the court. It explained “ Internet Service Providers (ISPs) do not create content of any sort. They neither own, nor they promote, modify or edit the content in question. They are only service providers who provide customers access to internet. The content is produced by the user. ISPs cannot be made liable for the content they do not create or own. It would be akin to making liable telecom companies for conversations people have on their network, ISPAI said.”
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