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Banned tweak in through proxy servers

From New Indian Express website

 

Wednesday October 22 2003 13:28 IST

KOCHI: It is one month after word went out that India has slapped a

ban on the entire domain through its Department of

Information Technology arm Indian Computer Emergency Response Team -

CERT all for blocking a single extremist voice on a page called

Kynhun.

 

An act which brought along condemnation from civil rights and free

media ideologues the world over.

 

But what the heck, asks hacktivists and anti-censorship junkies - so

long as you can access any ranging from that of your old

school buddy to the ``terrorist'' Kynhun being accused of ``promoting

anti-national news and containing material against the Government of

India and the State Government of Meghalaya.''

 

users are finding it increasingly convenient to take the

help of proxy servers that abound in the cyber space to bypass the

blanket ban on the . There are thousands of

sites related to and/or based in India - if you do search on

groups with the term India, it springs up a figure of 12,500.

 

Apart from professionals, study groups and organisations,

groups is a cyber sub-culture used by school and college alumnis to

stay close and exchange ideas irrespective of geographic boundaries

 

Websites that have hosted proxy servers that ``virtually'' take the

wind out of the ban include one by Citizen Lab, an

interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk Centre for

International Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, focusing

on advanced research and development at the intersection of digital

media and world civic politics.

 

Internet users in India will be able to access once they

reach the sub-domain www.india.citizenlab.org.,

www.india.indimedia.org, the Indian edition of Indymedia, a

collective of independent media ogranizations' journalists, gives

more than a few tips and links on how to bypass the censorship.

 

For technofiles there is the site www.antiproxy.org which aims at a

censorship-free internet. The site provides all information and

solutions available to bypass proxy restrictions, and give you full

access to all the resources found on the net.

 

``This is one reason why there shouldn't be censorship in net.

Internet is a free media where everyone can express their ideas. For

every restriction or filtering, there are technical work-arounds

available,'' says Amithabh Premraj, a Senior Software Engineer with

IBS, Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram.

 

One has to glance around the Kynhun webpage to know what the ban has

done to it. The forum run by a separatist group called Hynniewtrep

International Liberation Council which had about 40 members before

the ban now boasts of 226 members. Posted messages that trickled in

twos and threes every month since it went online in August 2002 now

stands at 26 in the month of October alone. It has congratulatory

messages from a group calling themselves Goan nationalist and another

from a Catalan freedom fighter in Barcelona not to mention posts by

curious cyber tourists.

 

The Government had designated CERT as the authority for blocking of

websites through a notification July this year. The Government issued

orders to ISPs to block the groups. domain using the provisions

of the IT Act 2000 - in a first such move, after refused to

comply with the request asking it to take off the Kynhun page.

 

The IT Act 2000 has provisions to block sites if they promote

pornography, slander, racism, gambling, terrorism or violence, which

cannot be challenged under laws governing freedom of expression.

 

It is not for the first time that the Indian Government has tried to

block web sites. During the Kargil war of 1999, the web site of the

prominent Pakistan daily Dawn was blocked.