A call from the Indian Government for Indian ISP's to block certain websites from their networks has been poorly implemented. Mistakes made by the ISP's resulted in entire blog networks being blocked rather than specific sites and, faced by a barrage of critcism, forced the government to demand fixes and request explainations from the offending net providers.

The Indian Goverment, on July 13th, notified ISP's that they were to block 17 websites and blogs, a reason for the action was not given. It soon became clear to bloggers and journalists that in actual fact most blog websites had become inaccessible.

Although only a hand full of websites were listed by the government the ISP's had taken action by blocking, not just the subdomains of the offending websites, but entire domains such as Google's blogger.com.

Faced by criticsm the government then moved to ensure it was clear where the blame lay. They ordered the ISP's to fix the blocks and explain to the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) why they should not take further action against them.

It's still unclear exactly what caused the government to request the shutdown's, although, as widely reported, some government sources have claimed that the sites in question may have been, or were being, used by terrorists to communicate with one another.

Websites can be blocked under the terms of India’s Information Technology Act 2000. This allows the DOT to act if a website is found to promote hate, violence, terrorism or pornography.

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