Blog Censorship in India

We're saddened by press reports that Gill Blog, our business blog concerning disaster planning and workplace continuity, may be blocked in India inadvertently as a result of governmental censorship in a democracy.

The country's 153 internet service providers (ISP) have blocked 17 websites since last week on federal government orders.

Some of these sites belong to Google's Blogspot, a leading international web log hosting service.

Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.

A number of them have started filing petitions under the country's new landmark freedom of information law which gives citizens the right to access information held by the government.

Bloggers say the ban has meant that people do not even have access to blogs like the one set up to help the relatives of the victims of the recent train bombings in Mumbai (Bombay), www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com.

We might be back online for our readers in India soon, according to India Times:

The Internet Service Providers Association of India, the body representing all internet service providers, on Wednesday instructed all its members to lift the blockage at the domain level.

This means that if you have a blog where the domain level is Blogspot or Typepad, this blockage will no longer apply to all users, but only at the sub-domain level. At the sub-domain level, only those 17 blogs which have been blacklisted by the government will continue to be inaccessible.

Hopefully then, blog readers in India will be able to read posts on Gill Blog, like "Mumbai Bounces Back After Blasts" our most recent post concerned about India.