14 ms·

India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

796 points by peter123 12y ago

bdcravens 12y ago
If Github is truly blocked, that could be devastating for outsourced work, on both sides of the equation.
- thesagan 12y ago
  That's my initial reaction. At the very least this is destabilizing, until they can refine how courts may/may not order such blockages in such surprising ways.
- nobodyshere 12y ago
  They'll find a way to bypass that quite easily, however with the amount of outsourcing based in India it will be an inconvenience for some time. Probably not as much as it would've been if it wasn't NY.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - asocial 12y ago
    I don't think the CIA cares about our jeebs.
  - hueving 12y ago
    That makes no sense. Conservative groups are all about outsourcing. "dey took'r jeebs" groups are complaining about immigrants in the US.
    - michaelcampbell 12y ago
      > "dey took'r jeebs" groups are complaining about immigrants in the US. Which are largely conservative.
    - readme 12y ago
      The anti-immigration crowd are the conservative working class. Like it or not, immigrants are actually coming and displacing them. Where I disagree with them is their solution to the issue. The correct solution I think would be to level the playing field by making illegal immigrants citizens who pay taxes. The same conservative masterminds which influence the working class to be upset about immigration, are the ones who are outsourcing jobs. It's nuts, when you think about it. It's nothing more than a bunch of rich old guys trying to protect their bottom line. Whatever works for their profits is what they do.
      - CamperBob2 12y ago
        Exactly. "Conservatives" may want to go back in time 50 years, but their opponents want to go back 100.
      - bduerst 12y ago
        Don't you want those Indian developers living in the U.S.? At least then they would be spending their U.S. based income here.
        readme 12y ago
        Honestly I want everyone to live in the country that they are proud of and consider to be their home. If an Indian or any person feels that way about the US, then I want them to live here.
        bduerst 12y ago
        Hmm, I wasn't implying people should be forced to live where they aren't comfortable.
- mhurron 12y ago
  VPN outside India. Really easy to get around.
  - roflmyeggo 12y ago
    Would circumventing the ban be considered a serious offence? Not that it would be easy to determine who is doing so, or that they care enough to try.
- themonk 12y ago
  Those who use Github knows how to bypass the ban.
  - morb 12y ago
    I don't think it's helpful to consider this ban a non-issue because it's easy to bypass. It's easy to bypass this time, next time it may be a bit harder, depending on what the government orders ISP's. And there probably will be "next time", depending on the effects of all this. Also, someone else here asked about legality of bypassing the ban, that is a good question I'd like to see answered, even though I think we all know the answer to that one.
    - peferron 12y ago
      This slippery slope is exactly what happened in China. - First, they block a few websites: no big deal, I'll just use a VPN. - Then they block OpenVPN default port: no big deal, I'll just use another port or IPSec. - Then international connections slow down to a crawl: no big deal, maybe they're not throttling but just having capacity issues, let's wait a bit see if it gets better. Then one day your realize that what was at first a minor inconvenience is now wasting hours of your life and killing your productivity.
      - netheril96 12y ago
        Yes, but we are powerless to change anything. It is not like that we can vote or have any voice in the governing of ourselves. And even China doesn't block GitHub. It tried once, but backed down soon for unknown reasons.
  - vacri 12y ago
    It's less easy to put workarounds in place for, say, a configuration-managed CI system pulling from github than for your own dev workstation. In theory it's simple, but in practice there's a lot of boilerplate and testing.
  - recursive 12y ago
    I use github, and off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you how to bypass it. Is it dns based? I guess you could manually set up the correct IP addresses locally for the host names. Other than that, I'd have to read.
- readme 12y ago
  This just in: Indian Government is taking kickbacks from Bitbucket. /s
bbarn 12y ago
Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: "The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked." This is bad. archive.org by default should have all sorts of offensive things on it. Pastebin and github should not be responsible for people hosting code they don't like. May as well block google too, I'm pretty sure you can find pro-ISIS sites on there as well.
- nicksergeant 12y ago
  I run https://snipt.net https://snipt.net, one of the sites listed as being blocked, and I've never received any communication from anyone with the Indian government or ISPs. So they're not proactively doing anything to unblock these sites, as far as I can tell.
  - DINKDINK 12y ago
    Why would they have any incentive to contact you? From their perspective the problem is solved -- the material offending statist is out of sight, out of mind. You're the one who wants a different situation to exist. Governments aren't in the customer service business.
    - nicksergeant 12y ago
      I actually don't care at all, but sucks for developers in India who 1) want to use Snipt or 2) have already paid for it. Edit: on item 2, I'll happily refund any Indian developers who've already paid for Snipt and want their money back, but my point is valid.
      - seanp2k2 12y ago
        And of course, apathy is the other big problem with US attitudes about government.
confluence 12y ago
Someone has made a huge mistake and should be fired over this. Utterly ludicrous.
sayhar 12y ago
Thanks Narendra Modi.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  I assume this is a play on the "Thanks Obama!" meme/joke in the US?
  - Retra 12y ago
    I can't seem to remember if sarcasm was invented in the US sometime around 2008 or not.
    - jusben1369 12y ago
      Snarky warky!
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    Yes. Modi is coming into office with the same enthusiasm behind him that Obama had. 6 months in and Modi is already disappointing.
    - peterfirefly 12y ago
      But isn't a win to Modi precisely what is needed to get the Congress Party to behave better?
ToastyMallows 12y ago
Is this just a DNS block or do they control all of the ISPs in India? Sorry I'm ignorant about the state of the Internet in India.
- ewzimm 12y ago
  From what I have seen, this is a DNS block. Anyone not using their ISP's DNS or the DNS of an ISP that has not yet implemented the block will not see them blocked.
- danellis 12y ago
  Wouldn't a DNS block also require controlling all the ISPs?
  - ToastyMallows 12y ago
    Depends on if the DNS is state-run or not. Again, I'm not sure what the situation in India is.
  - anxrn 12y ago
    All ISP's in India need to be licensed by the government [1]. Non-compliance with this directive puts their license at risk. [1] http://www.dot.gov.in/data-services/internet-services http://www.dot.gov.in/data-services/internet-services
- aselzer 12y ago
  If it is a DNS block it wouldn't make much sense to write the full URLs.
  - hueving 12y ago
    The full URLs provide the source of the problem causing the block. It doesn't mean they won't crudely cut the entire domain.
    - colinbartlett 12y ago
bradleysmith 12y ago
This is remedied with a simple VPN, correct? only justification in that article: " Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: 'The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked.' "
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- xanderstrike 12y ago
  It is, but only if you have access to a machine outside the ban. So outsourced employees and established companies are going to be fine, but if you're a 15 year old just getting into hacking spending $5 a month on a VPN service or a private server out of the country is going to be a problem. I can't imagine becoming the programmer I am today without the huge resource that is Github.
  - ehPReth 12y ago
    Does Tor work in India?
    - minot 12y ago
      How will you get Tor binaries if they block Tor project website in the next wave of bans?
      - ehPReth 12y ago
        Here's what the Tor project recommends: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor but sadly it's a cat-and-mouse game
giis 12y ago
I live in Southern part of India, I can access archive.org or github or pastebin from here. I don't think its a complete ban. May be some ISP providers blocking these sites. (Checked in some code to github few minutes back :D ) I hope they will revoke this move in upcoming days.
suhair 12y ago
can access github, archive.org, and pastebin through BSNL, Indian State owned telecommunications company. EDIT: Major news paper in India reports it was b/c of contents related to ISIS and the ban was removed later http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-news/centre-blocks-32-websites-for-security-reasons-restores-some-later/article6742568.ece http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-n...
- ehPReth 12y ago
  Are you using non-ISP provided DNS?
  - suhair 12y ago
    No, Hindu online states the ban was removed later so that may be the reason i can access it now.
    - ehPReth 12y ago
      Ah, I see - thanks!
d0ugie 12y ago
A lot of these sites, almost all of them, are pastebin-esque, including sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ which is a "PHP and Git based pastebin." I noticed Pastebin getting a fair number of mentions in the news in connection with the Sony attack as a place for hackers to dump sensitive information publicly and easily. My guess is this blacklist was assembled to mitigate such hacking damage on Indian targets, but it was assembled with some haste; and github and vimeo, I doubt, will remain blocked for too long.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  The goal of blocking the ability for someone to post text documents online is so far removed from reality. It makes no sense at all. The only thing it accomplishes is to make India appear even more incompetent.
aselzer 12y ago
This one is interesting: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ According to the list it has been specifically blocked. It appears to be a pastebin clone written in PHP. Almost all of them are pastebin-like sites. http://atnsoft.com/atnsoft.com/textpaster/ http://atnsoft.com/atnsoft.com/textpaster/ seems very unrelated. My assumption would have been that a government crawler stumbled upon some messages it didn't like and the sites they were on ended up on the list, but the two sites above would unlikely be affected by this. Archive.org was probably affected because they mirrored some content of any of them.
- phit_ 12y ago
  It is actually related, this software allows you to fill out webforms automatically. Now these bans are mostly around websites that allow you to host text online and this tool helps easily getting your text on tons of websites. So I see why this is related.
  - aselzer 12y ago
    In that way it is related, but it is not in the same category as the other sites listed. It is a tool that can be used to spread spam, propaganda, and possibly automate entry of data into inflexible systems. If governments can justify censoring access to a program like this for those reasons, then I am worried.
kartikkumar 12y ago
Ah that explains it! Haven't been able to push to Github ever since stepping off the plane in Mumbai. Strange thing is that the website works off-and-on. Pushing results in connection refused though. There's also been ZERO information/news provided by the ISP (MTNL) in this regard. Absolute shame that a blanket ban like this is applied. It has a profound effect on everyday activities unrelated to the original reason for banning. Even if there is content of a questionable nature, it's absolutely crazy to not expose this. Let people make up their own minds about what is right or wrong. A simple ban on these websites isn't going to stop those who mean harm from getting to their goal. All I can see that this results in is collateral damage, e.g., me not being able to push the latest commits for a research tool I'm building. I might be small fish, but that's the exact point; a ban like this necessary works like a cluster bomb.
- aksx 12y ago
  I also started having problems with github which reminded me to update my DNS settings setting to Google's, now everything works. Didn't even know till a few hours ago that thses sites were being blocked since they display a blank page.
- mikeash 12y ago
  It's crazy. They're substantially impacting their competitiveness in an important industry, just so they can make a futile attempt to silence something that hardly matters. You're small fish, but add up the impact on millions of similar small fish in India and it's a big problem.
- ChristianBundy 12y ago
  I'm sure you've already thought of this, but you can use a VPS as a proxy to circumvent the ban – I've had a great experience with DigitalOcean.
  - kristopolous 12y ago
    Furthermore at the shell you can set environment variables such as "http_proxy" which many tools will observe. Search "http_proxy" with your favorite search engine for more info. It's pretty useful.
justicezyx 12y ago
not like this india...
javajosh 12y ago
"Blocking websites" is a degree-of-freedom national governments simply should not have.
- drdaeman 12y ago
  They could, but I strongly hope for a few things: 1. The technical side of things would prevent anyone from blocking easily, making it costly to censor. 2. The sites won't bend much, understanding the full consequences of their actions, that with every demand complied there will be another one. It starts with evil terrorists and pedophiles but never ends with those, going after political activists, whistleblowers and just random things someone in power thought they don't like. 3. Eventually, we'll have less fragile societies, that won't have issues with anyone speaking anything. Governments will adapt and instead of censorship develop educational programs that encourage rational thinking, fact verification and other goodness, so any ill propaganda will be pointless.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
doe88 12y ago
I think nowadays blocking Github is almost dumber than blocking coursera.org. It's an invaluable resource for all CS students.
revelation 12y ago
I love Indian government statements, they are always so transparently incompetent, inane and corrupt, as are the accompanying actions, like blocking a random PHP project on sourceforge. I guess we'll just never know why they do these stupid things. By the time some bureaucrat has to give a statement all they can get out is terror, ISIS and anti India.
- lnanek2 12y ago
  Well, it's not exactly random. If you follow the link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ You can see it's the source code for the same sort of paste text online site they are banning all over the place in the other bans. It seems kind of nuts to ban all source code hosting and clipboard type hosting sites, but clearly they are trying. Wonder what's next, blogs that allow posting comments or signing guestbooks?
  - deskamess 12y ago
    That pro-ISIS guy that was recently id'd from Bengaluru was posting on Twitter. Is Twitter banned? Major oversight or perhaps it is random. This impacts the average person more than any terrorist - such a delusional policy.
    - brlewis 12y ago
      Post the offending content as a comment somewhere on the Indian government's own web site. They'll block themselves. Problem solved.
      - okpatil 12y ago
        Being an Indian, I wish that this was true.
        peterfirefly 12y ago
        Would it be better if India was broken up into much smaller states, possibly more or less along the current internal borders? Is India really seen as a country by the Indians or is it seen more like a bunch of unwanted outside overlords ruling over your local part of India, whichever that might be? I'm asking partly because I live in the EU where we are explicitly trying to create a big, state-like construction for most of our continent. In most cases I feel mostly like a "Dane" or "Scandinavian" or "Northern European" but in some cases I am actually starting to feel like an EU citizen, like we are all in it together, for example regarding Russia's behaviour in the Ukraine and elsewhere. It is probably not correct to call the EU a country or a state yet but we are getting closer. On the other hand, if the Republic of India is actually a country then the European Union is too, isn't it?
sgarg26 12y ago
Yes, this move is an over reaction. Especially, banning archive.org... India was just hit with a terrorist attack in Bangalore very recently. The techdirt article should mention this part. http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-blast-a-terror-attack-says-union-government-641129 http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-blast...
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  And the response there is just as lame: "The Home Minister today asked the state government to install CCTVs in all key places in the city." And they're going to ask restaurants to close at 1am on New Year's... As if that'd accomplish anything.
  - elwell 12y ago
    They might have specific intel on something. Just as possibility...
    - rgovind 12y ago
      As an Indian citizen who lived in bangalore. I can tell you there are couple of more plausible reasons why police/politicians don't want late night hotels. 1) They can charge bribes from such clubs/hotels. This is single biggest reason. 2) Politicians can tell to conservatives that they are protecting Indian culture and get votes from them. Conservatives are more likely to vote than these club going crowd. Specific intelligence might have been a reason but 1am drama happens very year in every South Indian city, so I am less likely to believe it.
    - scott_karana 12y ago
      And... wouldn't publicly asking all restaurants to close before 1AM reveal the nature of their intel to those they're trying to counteract?
    - serf 12y ago
      specific intel which would require city-wide CCTV? that's some pretty non-specific specific intel.
hsivonen 12y ago
"However, the key nature of many of the sites affected, and the fact that entire sites, rather than just some of their pages, were blocked, is bound to lead to calls for this blunt instrument to be refined before it is used again." It would be more worrying if ISPs could block individual pages on https sites like GitHub.
gshrikant 12y ago
> A Government source said the decision to block the 32 websites were taken after thorough “filtration process based on a strict regimen”, and there is a proper committee in the Department of Information Technology in place to whet complaints. [1] This is unbelievably ridiculous, if not downright stupid. Even as our Prime Minister speaks of bringing about a new digital revolution, decisions such as these show how badly equipped the lawmakers are in dealing with issues relating to technology. Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which flies in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in the world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright ban on several important software hosting websites and content providers just evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of technology. [1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/now-modi-govt-blocks-32-websites/article6742372.ece?homepage=true http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/now-modi-govt-blocks-3...
- rgovind 12y ago
  >>Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which flies in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in the world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright ban on several important software hosting websites and content providers just evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of technology. Spot on!
anupshinde 12y ago
I can access Github, archive.org, pastebin from state owned BSNL with ISP provided DNS (from western part of India). Have confirmed from few other parts too and it seems to be working. Have been checking since last 6 hours and it hasn't been down yet.
sametmax 12y ago
Wow, I'm the autor of 0bin.net (it's an encrypted pastebin written in python). Kinda feel weird to see your (really) small pastebin get caught in that. It's insane. Well, it's open source and easy to install, anybody can duplicate it if needed so I guess it's ok. Maybe we should add some way to replicate one instance content to other trusted instances to avoid this problem.
- twothamendment 12y ago
  It is open source on another website that is ... blocked. Funny. For the curious: https://github.com/sametmax/0bin https://github.com/sametmax/0bin Replication would be cool feature.
  - sametmax 12y ago
    Yeah. And our blog is usually blocked too, actually even in France. Some entreprise firewalls block our blog, some antivirus firewall too cause we mix NSFW content with programming in our articles. Well, I guess when the big guys start blocking you, you are probably doing something right :)
chocks 12y ago
Why block sites like gihub instead of issuing DMCA takedown notices? doesn't make sense.
- Havvy 12y ago
  DMCA is about copyright, there's no copyright violations here. Furthermore, DMCA is an American law, and does not apply to India. Finally, even if it was American law, it's not a law for the government to use, but rather the citizens.
IvyMike 12y ago
The ominous part is that they blocked sites where you can easily share information in bulk. Is the intention to prohibit such sharing in general? Such efforts are doomed to fail, but that doesn't mean it won't be a hell of a ride.
bigphishy 12y ago
What exactly are the consequences of banning github on a fallacious, minuscule and largely anti-technological terrorist organization?
cryptbin 12y ago
I run Cryptbin.com, one of the sites on the banned list. As a result of the ban we have seen our traffic surge, with roughly a 1000% increase in traffic from India today alone. Interesting to note is that we also own the domain cryptb.in (a TLD from India) and that has not been banned. However, it is merely a redirect so it does not provide an alternative entrance to the site. We use it only for short URL's on public pastes.
- sounds 12y ago
  Perhaps you can use this thread to recruit an India-centric team and create a separate site at cryptb.in (not saying you have to but to quote Pirates: "if you were looking for the perfect moment... that was it")
  - tjbiddle 12y ago
    Wouldn't even need a separate site - just update the redirect to point at the same load balancer as the main site instead, and then add a virtual host entry.
skazka16 12y ago
Seems like a good time for bitbucket.
ilamparithi 12y ago
Can confirm. Github and archive.org are not accessible. (From South India)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
readme 12y ago
Hey I know! IT is the backbone of our economy, so lets block a bunch of sites that programmers like. --The Indian Gov.
- jqm 12y ago
  Maybe it's partially incentive to develop domestic equivalents? Probably not, probably just stupidity, but then again...maybe. ("Never assign to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice or greed" ... or something like that)
  - samspot 12y ago
    You got the stupidity/malice-greed quote entirely backwards :). You aren't supposed to attribute to malice anything that can be explained by stupidity.
    - jqm 12y ago
      Yes, I know what the original quote says. I'm not stupid:) I believe when big well funded parties do things that appear simply stupid, sometimes there is more at play than stupidity. Quite often it involves money.
- mavelikara 12y ago
  Isn't "backbone" hyperbole?
ghantila 12y ago
I'm on Airtel Broadband, and all the 32 websites are working fine (atlease for now). May be because I'm using Google Public DNS.
- _nedR 12y ago
  It seems airtel hasn't yet enforced the block. I am using Google DNS and yet most of the websites mentioned are blocked
known 12y ago
A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
seshakiran 12y ago
Github? seriously?
anExcitedBeast 12y ago
Why stop at the domain level? India should block all *.com traffic until Verisign takes down all objectionable content.
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  You joke now, but e.g. https://pracops.com/wiki/index.php/Jon_Postel#DNS_Root_Authority_test.2C_U.S._response https://pracops.com/wiki/index.php/Jon_Postel#DNS_Root_Autho...
  - mytochar 12y ago
    That cert is expired...
FrankenPC 12y ago
I'm not a India software industry expert, so excuse me if this sounds like a dumb question. Isn't it a terrible economic idea for India to block access to Github? I thought India was really big into software engineering?
- nnain 12y ago
  Ofcourse it's a terrible idea. There will be an uproar. And then someone from the govt. would actually take the time to carefully look into the decision and then the govt will have to take an embarrassing U-turn.
- rgovind 12y ago
  I am an Indian citizen so I can offer some perspective. Atleast 50% of those in software engineering don't vote. Going to voting station, standing in queue and voting is a painful process and most of us don't take the trouble. Hence, their concerns are not really heard in the govt. These people will not go to concerned authorities and explain them how it will affect the economy. They will just whine for a few days and then find a workaround. Most of those affected by these blockades are mom and pop shops aka startups. Govt doesn't listen to people in startups. It only listens to big guys like Infosys and TCS. These big guys don't use github to host their code. In India, the moment you say security, all logic and reason stop. And police is always looking for quick fixes. That is why google street view is still not available in India.
  - rgovind 12y ago
    Also, one more point.. if you watch any local news item in US, the dominant theme in it is "How much money will it pump into economy". In India, The dominant question is..."How much safety and security will this cause". Unfortunately, There is never a discussion of the benefits vs costs of this security.
  - crag 12y ago
    "Going to voting station, standing in queue and voting is a painful process and most of us don't take the trouble." Not exactly cupcakes and candy in America either. But I suspect the voting process is easier here. But our numbers are also very low. In 2014 I think 36% of the voting population voted? Which means, the current government doesn't represent the American people. But whose fault is that? Well ours (Americans), of course. Most don't take the time (or care too) too vote. But man, when it comes time to bitch about issues everyone steps to the front.
nnain 12y ago
How I wish the Indian top brass gets to read this thread! The new government came with promises of getting rid of bureaucratic hurdles... and now this. The guy who made this list ofcourse didn't have the guts to put Facebook, Twitter on it because the Prime Minister / PM Office actively uses those tools to reach out to the people.
nsnick 12y ago
Maybe we can finally get Java off of GitHub.
catchmrbharath 12y ago
The sites are blocked only at the DNS level. If you switch your DNS from your ISP to either OPenDNS or Google DNS, then all these sites should work.
- sounds 12y ago
  This probably partially explains the inconsistent reports on this thread ("it's blocked here" / "it's not blocked here")
- _nedR 12y ago
  I am using google dns, but still many of the websites such as vimeo are returning a page with contents "HTTP Error 404 - File or Directory not found" (Not an actual HTTP Protocol 404 reply)
- ambrosechua 12y ago
  Seems like very bad and inconsistent banning. Gosh...
tkirby 12y ago
Don't block stackoverflow. The economy will crash.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
musesum 12y ago
Have offshored some dev in India, in the past. We depend on Github. VPNs aside, idiotic IT policy by India nudges us towards South America. Same goes (I think) for China in blocking Google Apps.
vegabook 12y ago
There is a case to be made for the idea that America-hosted, America-doctrine birthed, websites, do not jive with everybody on the planet. The idea that Github is beyond reproach and blocking it makes no sense is superficially tempting, until you realise that the vast, vast majority of projects on it are America-led. Why is it so surprising to block a culture which is permeating the planet, to the detriment of other cultures? And of course many non-Americans will object to this idea, but that is because they tend to me the top of their local game and looking to be hired into (or otherwise benefit from) the America-led capital-driven, individual first at the expense of the community, ideology. There is a tendency to knee-jerk condemn these blockages, including those in China, or indeed in Europe. It is not obvious to me that some kind of barrier to the Americanisation of the planet, including via its dominant websites, is such a bad thing.
- al2o3cr 12y ago
  I hear if you close your eyes, the whole world stops existing. Try that.
  - vegabook 12y ago
    quite the contrary - it is by opening my eyes that I question the hegemony of the current internet culture. It is not 100% obvious that a global information free-for-all has only upsides. And you will hopefully recognise that this kind of post will be a magnet for downvotes, but so be it. I wish to assess all angles, no matter how unpalatable they may be to the majority thinking.
- frozenport 12y ago
  >>kind of barrier to the Americanisation of the planet, including via its dominant websites, is such a bad thing India is a democracy, if they want to block it for 'cultural' reasons they should get the people's approval to block it for 'cultural' reasons. Right now they are acting on the wrong mandate. We are most likely looking at a case of gross detachment from the constituents they serve.
  - 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mavdi 12y ago
Github... Narendra Modi is a total fucking idiot. There goes billions of $$$s of lost income for indian developers with out of date skills.
mavdi 12y ago
Github... Narendra Modi is a total fucking idiot. There goes billions of $$$s of lost income for indian developers with out of date skills.
hnroops 12y ago
In USA, anyone can quickly write DMCA request and after a few hours the requested website will be offline. So, don't bother with USA. India is much more better for internet startups.
h43k3r 12y ago
I can confirm that many of these websites are still working on my university connection in India. And I promise, if they don't revert their decision, I will launch a proxy site for all these websites.
vithlani 12y ago
LOL... welcome to the third world, with a tinge of fascism. I would like to see what all the curry apologists on HN come up with to defend this bullshit.
- 1971genocide 12y ago
  wow "curry apologists" ! ??
  - Gigablah 12y ago
    Could have at least attempted a pun.
  - vithlani 12y ago
    Yes curry apologists.... the idiots who defend a 10,000 year old civilizations' failure to provide basic amenities to it's citizens by saying "Look!! We made it cheaper to Mars than whitey!!! YAY!! Progress!!!". They conveniently ignore the enormous patrimony of their ancestors and even recent history such as India having nuclear power and technology 40 years ago and yet having most of it's citizens missing basic sanitation every morning. They look at the hate mongering of the current Indian leadership as progress and emancipation for "Hindus", again conveniently ignoring the fact that 85% of the population has always been Hindu. Are you aware that there is a movement in the current education ministry to re-write history books to say that India invented genetics millennia ago (the current Education Minster, being a year 12 graduate and TV starlet, is obviously an expert)? Of the forced conversion of Christians and Muslims to Hinduism at the point of a knife? Of course, I expect people to defend this as righteous right off the bat... Yes...curry apologists... sounds about right....
AxisOfEval 12y ago
The Indian government is being utterly stupid. This is tantamount to saying: "Terrorists breathe Oxygen? Neat! Ban Oxygen."
iamleppert 12y ago
Good ridden to those in India. Bye bye!!!
pavanred 12y ago
Isn't this setting a dangerous precedent, I am sure such tendency of issuing blanket bans could be misused. Perhaps the cheapest way to attack/bring down a big website or even quell competition, just post some offensive content on a website and let the government issue blanket bans.
grannyg00se 12y ago
Does anyone have an example of ISIS supplied anti-India content?
chris_wot 12y ago
Oh-ho! Security is evidently high on the Indian government's priority list... the Joint Secretary for the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, a Mr Shri P. Kalyanasundaram, has an email address at Yahoo for official correspondence! [1] I'm wondering how long it will be though before the Wikipedia article gets updated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India 1. http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx
- rvern 12y ago
  The Wikipedia article is already up-to-date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#32_websites_blocked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#3...
arielm 12y ago
Looks like India is using a cannon to kill a mosquito. Regardless of what we think about terrorism, disabling access to entire sites companies rely on for their daily operation is simply careless. As noted by other commented they didn't even try to resolve the situation but rather went the route of blindly blocking access. This is a huge red flag, in my opinion, that the Internet as we know is has reached a big fork in the road and where we go from here will do are if our future will look like Biff's world in Back to the Future II or not...
byEngineer 12y ago
Who cares?
- lovelearning 12y ago
  "Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere."
  - byEngineer 12y ago
    bs. India has always been backwards, so nothing different or new. Again, who cares?
    - jumpwah 12y ago
      Oh I don't know, perhaps people in India? Edit: What, did you not think that might be a remote possibility? :D
Zigurd 12y ago
India blocks github for subversion </rimshot>
boyter 12y ago
Oddly I happen to be in India right now. Can still access every site listed. Not sure if it has not rolled out or perhaps foreign internet has less restrictions.
dagwn 12y ago
Here's the change.org petition: https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-communication-and-it-govt-of-india-unblock-github-others https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-communication-and-it-go...
scriptle 12y ago
So, you're requested to change your DNS setting to "8.8.8.8" & "8.8.4.4" - Google's public DNS. I guess most of the ISPs just blocked the domain names and not the IPs those domains resolve to. It worked for me in two networks.
pratnala 12y ago
Well, all they have done is just DNS blocking. Change your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and you can continue to access these sites.
interesting_guy 12y ago
I could not pastebin from some time directly. It was already blocked. Wtf India
interesting_guy 12y ago
Damnit...
rajbot 12y ago
I am trying to find out if archive.org is still being blocked or not, as we are hearing conflicting reports from users. I queried the Indian DNS servers on this list that are marked 'valid' or 'new': http://public-dns.tk/nameserver/in.html http://public-dns.tk/nameserver/in.html Only one of them (182.59.1.235, operated by MTNL ISP) returned the fake IP being used for blocked sites (59.185.3.14). The other 1843 servers returned the correct IP. I am trying to figure out if that means archive.org has been removed from the block list, or if the DNS servers listed on that page haven't yet been updated with the blocked sites. If anyone can help us figure out if archive.org is still blocked, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! -raj at archive.org
- Achshar 12y ago
  Well here's another data point, BSNL in Punjab still not loading archive.org.
- meta-coder 12y ago
  Yes, archive.org is still being blocked by BSNL's default DNS server in Maharashtra as of Thu Jan 1 20:40:11 IST 2015. $ dig +nocmd +nostats +nocomments @218.248.255.211 archive.org ;archive.org. IN A archive.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
  - rajbot 12y ago
    Thanks!
sunilnandihalli 12y ago
This is bad!! what are they thinking!!! github is blocked??
sunilnandihalli 12y ago
This is bad!!!! what are they thinking?? github is blocked???
V01D-eXe 12y ago
well, is this problem solved (?) because I can access each and every website on the list.
Nib 12y ago
Come on, stop acting that shitty. I'm a proud Indian, and this is the second time I'm condemning the state of the Internet in India in the same month[Earlier, due to Airtel's proposal to violate net neutrality]. If you believe you're doing so as these websites contain "anti-India" stuff, well, then screw yourself. Code that is used to run apps worldwide, API's, and what not have been cut off access to due to your little problem. On one hand, the guys promote the IT industry but on the other hand, they purposefully demote the industry. Get your goals right, people. Moreover, I don't think the telecommunications department even knows how to cut off access to a website. I'm from Delhi, and here, both Github and Pastebin are accessible.
alokyadav15 12y ago
from kolkata most of the sites are accessible .
thunderbong 12y ago
Weebly (www.weebly.com) is currently blocked too.
vs4vijay 12y ago
Everything is blocked from BSNL ISP.
known 12y ago
Feudalism + Voting in elections = India;
known 12y ago
http://hide-ip-by-fly.appspot.com/ http://hide-ip-by-fly.appspot.com/ is handy
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
iamgopal 12y ago
Its true that its blocked, but a simple change of dns server can unblock this. utterly ineffective blocking, thats what I love about India, no matter how intellectually sound laws are, the implementation is so poor, you can very easily bypass them.
noisy_boy 12y ago
Based on the schools Mr. Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP is following in Linkedin[1], it seems like he studied in IIT Benaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Assuming he didn't get in using political connections/kickbacks, he is clearly not an idiot. I'm genuinely puzzled by this dumb decision. He is a freaking engineer from a top technical university of India and the guy doesn't know what github is for?! [1]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/argupta26 https://www.linkedin.com/in/argupta26
edwinyzh 12y ago
As a Chinese, I thought (really) India has freedom of speech and this kind of things should never happen there, I can imagine what you might feel, my India fellows.
chhantyal 12y ago
FYI, if the ban on Github is hampering your collaboration during day to day development, you can also self host Gitlab https://about.gitlab.com https://about.gitlab.com which is working great for us.
Naushad 12y ago
Not unusual in India. The IT Laws here are outdated, no ID protection and Privacy Laws have come to effect which are still lying to be approved. The problem is with the people in power who are just arrogant in their will to exercise it without knowing the intricacies or the impact. Certain sections of the IT act (Sec 66 for example) are still being abused. The way to improve it is actually involing institutes like IIT and people from technology as their core field to get laws drafted and processes.
tiatia 12y ago
You have to realize that some countries don't have internet. Like China, China does not have internet. They probably don't even know what Internet is. They think if they can order something from Taobao then this is Internet. Regarding communication (phone, internet, postal mail) China is not even a third world country since third world countries actually have internet. Now the Indian government tries to compete with China who has the most fucked up communications. Good luck!
ForFreedom 12y ago
They should also block gov.in too
anuraj 12y ago
Indian bureaucracy at its whimsical best and ridiculous as always - do not expect anything sane from them. Internet freedom in India is nonexistent. They don't even remotely know what is the effect on business if services like github are blocked!!
meta-coder 12y ago
BSNL's DNS server replying with "SOA localhost. root.localhost." to all of the blocked domains (except sourceforge.net and atnsoft.com). # 218.248.255.211 is the default DNS server for BSNL DSL customers in Maharashtra, India $ date Thu Jan 1 20:21:02 IST 2015 $ dig +nocmd +nostats +nocomments @218.248.255.211 -f blocked.txt ;justpaste.it. IN A justpaste.it. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;hastebin.com. IN A hastebin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;codepad.org. IN A codepad.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;pastie.org. IN A pastie.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;pastee.org. IN A pastee.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;paste2.org. IN A paste2.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;slexy.org. IN A slexy.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;paste4btc.com. IN A paste4btc.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;0bin.net. IN A 0bin.net. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.heypasteit.com. IN A heypasteit.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;sourceforge.net. IN A sourceforge.net. 154 IN A 216.34.181.60 sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns4.p03.dynect.net. sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns3.p03.dynect.net. sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns1.p03.dynect.net. sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns2.p03.dynect.net. ns1.p03.dynect.net. 85918 IN A 208.78.70.3 ns2.p03.dynect.net. 172323 IN A 204.13.250.3 ns3.p03.dynect.net. 85918 IN A 208.78.71.3 ns4.p03.dynect.net. 172323 IN A 204.13.251.3 ;atnsoft.com. IN A atnsoft.com. 14135 IN A 192.185.225.228 atnsoft.com. 86135 IN NS ns6616.hostgator.com. atnsoft.com. 86135 IN NS ns6615.hostgator.com. ns6615.hostgator.com. 172452 IN A 192.185.225.220 ns6616.hostgator.com. 172452 IN A 192.185.225.221 ;archive.org. IN A archive.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.hpage.com. IN A hpage.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.ipage.com. IN A ipage.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.webs.com. IN A webs.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.weebly.com. IN A weebly.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.000webhost.com. IN A 000webhost.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.freehosting.com. IN A freehosting.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;vimeo.com. IN A vimeo.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.dailymotion.com. IN A dailymotion.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;pastebin.com. IN A pastebin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;gist.github.com. IN A gist.github.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.ipaste.eu. IN A ipaste.eu. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;thesnippetapp.com. IN A thesnippetapp.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;snipt.net. IN A snipt.net. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;tny.cz. IN A tny.cz. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;github.com. IN A github.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;snipplr.com. IN A snipplr.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;termbin.com. IN A termbin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.snippetsource.net. IN A snippetsource.net. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;cryptbin.com. IN A cryptbin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400

796 points by peter123 12y ago

bdcravens 12y ago

If Github is truly blocked, that could be devastating for outsourced work, on both sides of the equation.

thesagan 12y ago
That's my initial reaction. At the very least this is destabilizing, until they can refine how courts may/may not order such blockages in such surprising ways.
nobodyshere 12y ago
They'll find a way to bypass that quite easily, however with the amount of outsourcing based in India it will be an inconvenience for some time. Probably not as much as it would've been if it wasn't NY.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- asocial 12y ago
  I don't think the CIA cares about our jeebs.
- hueving 12y ago
  That makes no sense. Conservative groups are all about outsourcing. "dey took'r jeebs" groups are complaining about immigrants in the US.
  - michaelcampbell 12y ago
    > "dey took'r jeebs" groups are complaining about immigrants in the US. Which are largely conservative.
  - readme 12y ago
    The anti-immigration crowd are the conservative working class. Like it or not, immigrants are actually coming and displacing them. Where I disagree with them is their solution to the issue. The correct solution I think would be to level the playing field by making illegal immigrants citizens who pay taxes. The same conservative masterminds which influence the working class to be upset about immigration, are the ones who are outsourcing jobs. It's nuts, when you think about it. It's nothing more than a bunch of rich old guys trying to protect their bottom line. Whatever works for their profits is what they do.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      Exactly. "Conservatives" may want to go back in time 50 years, but their opponents want to go back 100.
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Don't you want those Indian developers living in the U.S.? At least then they would be spending their U.S. based income here.
      - readme 12y ago
        Honestly I want everyone to live in the country that they are proud of and consider to be their home. If an Indian or any person feels that way about the US, then I want them to live here.
        bduerst 12y ago
        Hmm, I wasn't implying people should be forced to live where they aren't comfortable.
mhurron 12y ago
VPN outside India. Really easy to get around.
- roflmyeggo 12y ago
  Would circumventing the ban be considered a serious offence? Not that it would be easy to determine who is doing so, or that they care enough to try.
themonk 12y ago
Those who use Github knows how to bypass the ban.
- morb 12y ago
  I don't think it's helpful to consider this ban a non-issue because it's easy to bypass. It's easy to bypass this time, next time it may be a bit harder, depending on what the government orders ISP's. And there probably will be "next time", depending on the effects of all this. Also, someone else here asked about legality of bypassing the ban, that is a good question I'd like to see answered, even though I think we all know the answer to that one.
  - peferron 12y ago
    This slippery slope is exactly what happened in China. - First, they block a few websites: no big deal, I'll just use a VPN. - Then they block OpenVPN default port: no big deal, I'll just use another port or IPSec. - Then international connections slow down to a crawl: no big deal, maybe they're not throttling but just having capacity issues, let's wait a bit see if it gets better. Then one day your realize that what was at first a minor inconvenience is now wasting hours of your life and killing your productivity.
    - netheril96 12y ago
      Yes, but we are powerless to change anything. It is not like that we can vote or have any voice in the governing of ourselves. And even China doesn't block GitHub. It tried once, but backed down soon for unknown reasons.
- vacri 12y ago
  It's less easy to put workarounds in place for, say, a configuration-managed CI system pulling from github than for your own dev workstation. In theory it's simple, but in practice there's a lot of boilerplate and testing.
- recursive 12y ago
  I use github, and off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you how to bypass it. Is it dns based? I guess you could manually set up the correct IP addresses locally for the host names. Other than that, I'd have to read.
readme 12y ago
This just in: Indian Government is taking kickbacks from Bitbucket. /s

bbarn 12y ago

Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: "The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked." This is bad. archive.org by default should have all sorts of offensive things on it. Pastebin and github should not be responsible for people hosting code they don't like. May as well block google too, I'm pretty sure you can find pro-ISIS sites on there as well.

nicksergeant 12y ago
I run https://snipt.net https://snipt.net, one of the sites listed as being blocked, and I've never received any communication from anyone with the Indian government or ISPs. So they're not proactively doing anything to unblock these sites, as far as I can tell.
- DINKDINK 12y ago
  Why would they have any incentive to contact you? From their perspective the problem is solved -- the material offending statist is out of sight, out of mind. You're the one who wants a different situation to exist. Governments aren't in the customer service business.
  - nicksergeant 12y ago
    I actually don't care at all, but sucks for developers in India who 1) want to use Snipt or 2) have already paid for it. Edit: on item 2, I'll happily refund any Indian developers who've already paid for Snipt and want their money back, but my point is valid.
    - seanp2k2 12y ago
      And of course, apathy is the other big problem with US attitudes about government.

confluence 12y ago

Someone has made a huge mistake and should be fired over this. Utterly ludicrous.

sayhar 12y ago

Thanks Narendra Modi.

jusben1369 12y ago
I assume this is a play on the "Thanks Obama!" meme/joke in the US?
- Retra 12y ago
  I can't seem to remember if sarcasm was invented in the US sometime around 2008 or not.
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    Snarky warky!
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  Yes. Modi is coming into office with the same enthusiasm behind him that Obama had. 6 months in and Modi is already disappointing.
  - peterfirefly 12y ago
    But isn't a win to Modi precisely what is needed to get the Congress Party to behave better?

ToastyMallows 12y ago

Is this just a DNS block or do they control all of the ISPs in India? Sorry I'm ignorant about the state of the Internet in India.

ewzimm 12y ago
From what I have seen, this is a DNS block. Anyone not using their ISP's DNS or the DNS of an ISP that has not yet implemented the block will not see them blocked.
danellis 12y ago
Wouldn't a DNS block also require controlling all the ISPs?
- ToastyMallows 12y ago
  Depends on if the DNS is state-run or not. Again, I'm not sure what the situation in India is.
- anxrn 12y ago
  All ISP's in India need to be licensed by the government [1]. Non-compliance with this directive puts their license at risk. [1] http://www.dot.gov.in/data-services/internet-services http://www.dot.gov.in/data-services/internet-services
aselzer 12y ago
If it is a DNS block it wouldn't make much sense to write the full URLs.
- hueving 12y ago
  The full URLs provide the source of the problem causing the block. It doesn't mean they won't crudely cut the entire domain.
  - colinbartlett 12y ago

bradleysmith 12y ago

This is remedied with a simple VPN, correct? only justification in that article: " Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: 'The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked.' "

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
xanderstrike 12y ago
It is, but only if you have access to a machine outside the ban. So outsourced employees and established companies are going to be fine, but if you're a 15 year old just getting into hacking spending $5 a month on a VPN service or a private server out of the country is going to be a problem. I can't imagine becoming the programmer I am today without the huge resource that is Github.
- ehPReth 12y ago
  Does Tor work in India?
  - minot 12y ago
    How will you get Tor binaries if they block Tor project website in the next wave of bans?
    - ehPReth 12y ago
      Here's what the Tor project recommends: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor but sadly it's a cat-and-mouse game

giis 12y ago

I live in Southern part of India, I can access archive.org or github or pastebin from here. I don't think its a complete ban. May be some ISP providers blocking these sites. (Checked in some code to github few minutes back :D ) I hope they will revoke this move in upcoming days.

suhair 12y ago

can access github, archive.org, and pastebin through BSNL, Indian State owned telecommunications company. EDIT: Major news paper in India reports it was b/c of contents related to ISIS and the ban was removed later http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-news/centre-blocks-32-websites-for-security-reasons-restores-some-later/article6742568.ece http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-n...

ehPReth 12y ago
Are you using non-ISP provided DNS?
- suhair 12y ago
  No, Hindu online states the ban was removed later so that may be the reason i can access it now.
  - ehPReth 12y ago
    Ah, I see - thanks!

d0ugie 12y ago

A lot of these sites, almost all of them, are pastebin-esque, including sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ which is a "PHP and Git based pastebin." I noticed Pastebin getting a fair number of mentions in the news in connection with the Sony attack as a place for hackers to dump sensitive information publicly and easily. My guess is this blacklist was assembled to mitigate such hacking damage on Indian targets, but it was assembled with some haste; and github and vimeo, I doubt, will remain blocked for too long.

MichaelGG 12y ago
The goal of blocking the ability for someone to post text documents online is so far removed from reality. It makes no sense at all. The only thing it accomplishes is to make India appear even more incompetent.

aselzer 12y ago

This one is interesting: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ According to the list it has been specifically blocked. It appears to be a pastebin clone written in PHP. Almost all of them are pastebin-like sites. http://atnsoft.com/atnsoft.com/textpaster/ http://atnsoft.com/atnsoft.com/textpaster/ seems very unrelated. My assumption would have been that a government crawler stumbled upon some messages it didn't like and the sites they were on ended up on the list, but the two sites above would unlikely be affected by this. Archive.org was probably affected because they mirrored some content of any of them.

phit_ 12y ago
It is actually related, this software allows you to fill out webforms automatically. Now these bans are mostly around websites that allow you to host text online and this tool helps easily getting your text on tons of websites. So I see why this is related.
- aselzer 12y ago
  In that way it is related, but it is not in the same category as the other sites listed. It is a tool that can be used to spread spam, propaganda, and possibly automate entry of data into inflexible systems. If governments can justify censoring access to a program like this for those reasons, then I am worried.

kartikkumar 12y ago

Ah that explains it! Haven't been able to push to Github ever since stepping off the plane in Mumbai. Strange thing is that the website works off-and-on. Pushing results in connection refused though. There's also been ZERO information/news provided by the ISP (MTNL) in this regard. Absolute shame that a blanket ban like this is applied. It has a profound effect on everyday activities unrelated to the original reason for banning. Even if there is content of a questionable nature, it's absolutely crazy to not expose this. Let people make up their own minds about what is right or wrong. A simple ban on these websites isn't going to stop those who mean harm from getting to their goal. All I can see that this results in is collateral damage, e.g., me not being able to push the latest commits for a research tool I'm building. I might be small fish, but that's the exact point; a ban like this necessary works like a cluster bomb.

aksx 12y ago
I also started having problems with github which reminded me to update my DNS settings setting to Google's, now everything works. Didn't even know till a few hours ago that thses sites were being blocked since they display a blank page.
mikeash 12y ago
It's crazy. They're substantially impacting their competitiveness in an important industry, just so they can make a futile attempt to silence something that hardly matters. You're small fish, but add up the impact on millions of similar small fish in India and it's a big problem.
ChristianBundy 12y ago
I'm sure you've already thought of this, but you can use a VPS as a proxy to circumvent the ban – I've had a great experience with DigitalOcean.
- kristopolous 12y ago
  Furthermore at the shell you can set environment variables such as "http_proxy" which many tools will observe. Search "http_proxy" with your favorite search engine for more info. It's pretty useful.

justicezyx 12y ago

not like this india...

javajosh 12y ago

"Blocking websites" is a degree-of-freedom national governments simply should not have.

drdaeman 12y ago
They could, but I strongly hope for a few things: 1. The technical side of things would prevent anyone from blocking easily, making it costly to censor. 2. The sites won't bend much, understanding the full consequences of their actions, that with every demand complied there will be another one. It starts with evil terrorists and pedophiles but never ends with those, going after political activists, whistleblowers and just random things someone in power thought they don't like. 3. Eventually, we'll have less fragile societies, that won't have issues with anyone speaking anything. Governments will adapt and instead of censorship develop educational programs that encourage rational thinking, fact verification and other goodness, so any ill propaganda will be pointless.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

doe88 12y ago

I think nowadays blocking Github is almost dumber than blocking coursera.org. It's an invaluable resource for all CS students.

revelation 12y ago

I love Indian government statements, they are always so transparently incompetent, inane and corrupt, as are the accompanying actions, like blocking a random PHP project on sourceforge. I guess we'll just never know why they do these stupid things. By the time some bureaucrat has to give a statement all they can get out is terror, ISIS and anti India.

lnanek2 12y ago
Well, it's not exactly random. If you follow the link: http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ You can see it's the source code for the same sort of paste text online site they are banning all over the place in the other bans. It seems kind of nuts to ban all source code hosting and clipboard type hosting sites, but clearly they are trying. Wonder what's next, blogs that allow posting comments or signing guestbooks?
- deskamess 12y ago
  That pro-ISIS guy that was recently id'd from Bengaluru was posting on Twitter. Is Twitter banned? Major oversight or perhaps it is random. This impacts the average person more than any terrorist - such a delusional policy.
  - brlewis 12y ago
    Post the offending content as a comment somewhere on the Indian government's own web site. They'll block themselves. Problem solved.
    - okpatil 12y ago
      Being an Indian, I wish that this was true.
      - peterfirefly 12y ago
        Would it be better if India was broken up into much smaller states, possibly more or less along the current internal borders? Is India really seen as a country by the Indians or is it seen more like a bunch of unwanted outside overlords ruling over your local part of India, whichever that might be? I'm asking partly because I live in the EU where we are explicitly trying to create a big, state-like construction for most of our continent. In most cases I feel mostly like a "Dane" or "Scandinavian" or "Northern European" but in some cases I am actually starting to feel like an EU citizen, like we are all in it together, for example regarding Russia's behaviour in the Ukraine and elsewhere. It is probably not correct to call the EU a country or a state yet but we are getting closer. On the other hand, if the Republic of India is actually a country then the European Union is too, isn't it?

sgarg26 12y ago

Yes, this move is an over reaction. Especially, banning archive.org... India was just hit with a terrorist attack in Bangalore very recently. The techdirt article should mention this part. http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-blast-a-terror-attack-says-union-government-641129 http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-blast...

MichaelGG 12y ago
And the response there is just as lame: "The Home Minister today asked the state government to install CCTVs in all key places in the city." And they're going to ask restaurants to close at 1am on New Year's... As if that'd accomplish anything.
- elwell 12y ago
  They might have specific intel on something. Just as possibility...
  - rgovind 12y ago
    As an Indian citizen who lived in bangalore. I can tell you there are couple of more plausible reasons why police/politicians don't want late night hotels. 1) They can charge bribes from such clubs/hotels. This is single biggest reason. 2) Politicians can tell to conservatives that they are protecting Indian culture and get votes from them. Conservatives are more likely to vote than these club going crowd. Specific intelligence might have been a reason but 1am drama happens very year in every South Indian city, so I am less likely to believe it.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    And... wouldn't publicly asking all restaurants to close before 1AM reveal the nature of their intel to those they're trying to counteract?
  - serf 12y ago
    specific intel which would require city-wide CCTV? that's some pretty non-specific specific intel.

hsivonen 12y ago

"However, the key nature of many of the sites affected, and the fact that entire sites, rather than just some of their pages, were blocked, is bound to lead to calls for this blunt instrument to be refined before it is used again." It would be more worrying if ISPs could block individual pages on https sites like GitHub.

gshrikant 12y ago

> A Government source said the decision to block the 32 websites were taken after thorough “filtration process based on a strict regimen”, and there is a proper committee in the Department of Information Technology in place to whet complaints. [1] This is unbelievably ridiculous, if not downright stupid. Even as our Prime Minister speaks of bringing about a new digital revolution, decisions such as these show how badly equipped the lawmakers are in dealing with issues relating to technology. Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which flies in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in the world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright ban on several important software hosting websites and content providers just evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of technology. [1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/now-modi-govt-blocks-32-websites/article6742372.ece?homepage=true http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/now-modi-govt-blocks-3...

rgovind 12y ago
>>Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which flies in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in the world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright ban on several important software hosting websites and content providers just evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of technology. Spot on!

anupshinde 12y ago

I can access Github, archive.org, pastebin from state owned BSNL with ISP provided DNS (from western part of India). Have confirmed from few other parts too and it seems to be working. Have been checking since last 6 hours and it hasn't been down yet.

sametmax 12y ago

Wow, I'm the autor of 0bin.net (it's an encrypted pastebin written in python). Kinda feel weird to see your (really) small pastebin get caught in that. It's insane. Well, it's open source and easy to install, anybody can duplicate it if needed so I guess it's ok. Maybe we should add some way to replicate one instance content to other trusted instances to avoid this problem.

twothamendment 12y ago
It is open source on another website that is ... blocked. Funny. For the curious: https://github.com/sametmax/0bin https://github.com/sametmax/0bin Replication would be cool feature.
- sametmax 12y ago
  Yeah. And our blog is usually blocked too, actually even in France. Some entreprise firewalls block our blog, some antivirus firewall too cause we mix NSFW content with programming in our articles. Well, I guess when the big guys start blocking you, you are probably doing something right :)

chocks 12y ago

Why block sites like gihub instead of issuing DMCA takedown notices? doesn't make sense.

Havvy 12y ago
DMCA is about copyright, there's no copyright violations here. Furthermore, DMCA is an American law, and does not apply to India. Finally, even if it was American law, it's not a law for the government to use, but rather the citizens.

IvyMike 12y ago

The ominous part is that they blocked sites where you can easily share information in bulk. Is the intention to prohibit such sharing in general? Such efforts are doomed to fail, but that doesn't mean it won't be a hell of a ride.

bigphishy 12y ago

What exactly are the consequences of banning github on a fallacious, minuscule and largely anti-technological terrorist organization?

cryptbin 12y ago

I run Cryptbin.com, one of the sites on the banned list. As a result of the ban we have seen our traffic surge, with roughly a 1000% increase in traffic from India today alone. Interesting to note is that we also own the domain cryptb.in (a TLD from India) and that has not been banned. However, it is merely a redirect so it does not provide an alternative entrance to the site. We use it only for short URL's on public pastes.

sounds 12y ago
Perhaps you can use this thread to recruit an India-centric team and create a separate site at cryptb.in (not saying you have to but to quote Pirates: "if you were looking for the perfect moment... that was it")
- tjbiddle 12y ago
  Wouldn't even need a separate site - just update the redirect to point at the same load balancer as the main site instead, and then add a virtual host entry.

skazka16 12y ago

Seems like a good time for bitbucket.

ilamparithi 12y ago

Can confirm. Github and archive.org are not accessible. (From South India)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

readme 12y ago

Hey I know! IT is the backbone of our economy, so lets block a bunch of sites that programmers like. --The Indian Gov.

jqm 12y ago
Maybe it's partially incentive to develop domestic equivalents? Probably not, probably just stupidity, but then again...maybe. ("Never assign to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice or greed" ... or something like that)
- samspot 12y ago
  You got the stupidity/malice-greed quote entirely backwards :). You aren't supposed to attribute to malice anything that can be explained by stupidity.
  - jqm 12y ago
    Yes, I know what the original quote says. I'm not stupid:) I believe when big well funded parties do things that appear simply stupid, sometimes there is more at play than stupidity. Quite often it involves money.
mavelikara 12y ago
Isn't "backbone" hyperbole?

ghantila 12y ago

I'm on Airtel Broadband, and all the 32 websites are working fine (atlease for now). May be because I'm using Google Public DNS.

_nedR 12y ago
It seems airtel hasn't yet enforced the block. I am using Google DNS and yet most of the websites mentioned are blocked

known 12y ago

A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

seshakiran 12y ago

Github? seriously?

anExcitedBeast 12y ago

Why stop at the domain level? India should block all *.com traffic until Verisign takes down all objectionable content.

seanp2k2 12y ago
You joke now, but e.g. https://pracops.com/wiki/index.php/Jon_Postel#DNS_Root_Authority_test.2C_U.S._response https://pracops.com/wiki/index.php/Jon_Postel#DNS_Root_Autho...
- mytochar 12y ago
  That cert is expired...

FrankenPC 12y ago

I'm not a India software industry expert, so excuse me if this sounds like a dumb question. Isn't it a terrible economic idea for India to block access to Github? I thought India was really big into software engineering?

nnain 12y ago
Ofcourse it's a terrible idea. There will be an uproar. And then someone from the govt. would actually take the time to carefully look into the decision and then the govt will have to take an embarrassing U-turn.
rgovind 12y ago
I am an Indian citizen so I can offer some perspective. Atleast 50% of those in software engineering don't vote. Going to voting station, standing in queue and voting is a painful process and most of us don't take the trouble. Hence, their concerns are not really heard in the govt. These people will not go to concerned authorities and explain them how it will affect the economy. They will just whine for a few days and then find a workaround. Most of those affected by these blockades are mom and pop shops aka startups. Govt doesn't listen to people in startups. It only listens to big guys like Infosys and TCS. These big guys don't use github to host their code. In India, the moment you say security, all logic and reason stop. And police is always looking for quick fixes. That is why google street view is still not available in India.
- rgovind 12y ago
  Also, one more point.. if you watch any local news item in US, the dominant theme in it is "How much money will it pump into economy". In India, The dominant question is..."How much safety and security will this cause". Unfortunately, There is never a discussion of the benefits vs costs of this security.
- crag 12y ago
  "Going to voting station, standing in queue and voting is a painful process and most of us don't take the trouble." Not exactly cupcakes and candy in America either. But I suspect the voting process is easier here. But our numbers are also very low. In 2014 I think 36% of the voting population voted? Which means, the current government doesn't represent the American people. But whose fault is that? Well ours (Americans), of course. Most don't take the time (or care too) too vote. But man, when it comes time to bitch about issues everyone steps to the front.

nnain 12y ago

How I wish the Indian top brass gets to read this thread! The new government came with promises of getting rid of bureaucratic hurdles... and now this. The guy who made this list ofcourse didn't have the guts to put Facebook, Twitter on it because the Prime Minister / PM Office actively uses those tools to reach out to the people.

nsnick 12y ago

Maybe we can finally get Java off of GitHub.

catchmrbharath 12y ago

The sites are blocked only at the DNS level. If you switch your DNS from your ISP to either OPenDNS or Google DNS, then all these sites should work.

sounds 12y ago
This probably partially explains the inconsistent reports on this thread ("it's blocked here" / "it's not blocked here")
_nedR 12y ago
I am using google dns, but still many of the websites such as vimeo are returning a page with contents "HTTP Error 404 - File or Directory not found" (Not an actual HTTP Protocol 404 reply)
ambrosechua 12y ago
Seems like very bad and inconsistent banning. Gosh...

tkirby 12y ago

Don't block stackoverflow. The economy will crash.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

musesum 12y ago

Have offshored some dev in India, in the past. We depend on Github. VPNs aside, idiotic IT policy by India nudges us towards South America. Same goes (I think) for China in blocking Google Apps.

vegabook 12y ago

There is a case to be made for the idea that America-hosted, America-doctrine birthed, websites, do not jive with everybody on the planet. The idea that Github is beyond reproach and blocking it makes no sense is superficially tempting, until you realise that the vast, vast majority of projects on it are America-led. Why is it so surprising to block a culture which is permeating the planet, to the detriment of other cultures? And of course many non-Americans will object to this idea, but that is because they tend to me the top of their local game and looking to be hired into (or otherwise benefit from) the America-led capital-driven, individual first at the expense of the community, ideology. There is a tendency to knee-jerk condemn these blockages, including those in China, or indeed in Europe. It is not obvious to me that some kind of barrier to the Americanisation of the planet, including via its dominant websites, is such a bad thing.

al2o3cr 12y ago
I hear if you close your eyes, the whole world stops existing. Try that.
- vegabook 12y ago
  quite the contrary - it is by opening my eyes that I question the hegemony of the current internet culture. It is not 100% obvious that a global information free-for-all has only upsides. And you will hopefully recognise that this kind of post will be a magnet for downvotes, but so be it. I wish to assess all angles, no matter how unpalatable they may be to the majority thinking.
frozenport 12y ago
>>kind of barrier to the Americanisation of the planet, including via its dominant websites, is such a bad thing India is a democracy, if they want to block it for 'cultural' reasons they should get the people's approval to block it for 'cultural' reasons. Right now they are acting on the wrong mandate. We are most likely looking at a case of gross detachment from the constituents they serve.
- 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mavdi 12y ago

Github... Narendra Modi is a total fucking idiot. There goes billions of $$$s of lost income for indian developers with out of date skills.

mavdi 12y ago

Github... Narendra Modi is a total fucking idiot. There goes billions of $$$s of lost income for indian developers with out of date skills.

hnroops 12y ago

In USA, anyone can quickly write DMCA request and after a few hours the requested website will be offline. So, don't bother with USA. India is much more better for internet startups.

h43k3r 12y ago

I can confirm that many of these websites are still working on my university connection in India. And I promise, if they don't revert their decision, I will launch a proxy site for all these websites.

vithlani 12y ago

LOL... welcome to the third world, with a tinge of fascism. I would like to see what all the curry apologists on HN come up with to defend this bullshit.

1971genocide 12y ago
wow "curry apologists" ! ??
- Gigablah 12y ago
  Could have at least attempted a pun.
- vithlani 12y ago
  Yes curry apologists.... the idiots who defend a 10,000 year old civilizations' failure to provide basic amenities to it's citizens by saying "Look!! We made it cheaper to Mars than whitey!!! YAY!! Progress!!!". They conveniently ignore the enormous patrimony of their ancestors and even recent history such as India having nuclear power and technology 40 years ago and yet having most of it's citizens missing basic sanitation every morning. They look at the hate mongering of the current Indian leadership as progress and emancipation for "Hindus", again conveniently ignoring the fact that 85% of the population has always been Hindu. Are you aware that there is a movement in the current education ministry to re-write history books to say that India invented genetics millennia ago (the current Education Minster, being a year 12 graduate and TV starlet, is obviously an expert)? Of the forced conversion of Christians and Muslims to Hinduism at the point of a knife? Of course, I expect people to defend this as righteous right off the bat... Yes...curry apologists... sounds about right....

AxisOfEval 12y ago

The Indian government is being utterly stupid. This is tantamount to saying: "Terrorists breathe Oxygen? Neat! Ban Oxygen."

iamleppert 12y ago

Good ridden to those in India. Bye bye!!!

pavanred 12y ago

Isn't this setting a dangerous precedent, I am sure such tendency of issuing blanket bans could be misused. Perhaps the cheapest way to attack/bring down a big website or even quell competition, just post some offensive content on a website and let the government issue blanket bans.

grannyg00se 12y ago

Does anyone have an example of ISIS supplied anti-India content?

chris_wot 12y ago

Oh-ho! Security is evidently high on the Indian government's priority list... the Joint Secretary for the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, a Mr Shri P. Kalyanasundaram, has an email address at Yahoo for official correspondence! [1] I'm wondering how long it will be though before the Wikipedia article gets updated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India 1. http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx

rvern 12y ago
The Wikipedia article is already up-to-date. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#32_websites_blocked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#3...

arielm 12y ago

Looks like India is using a cannon to kill a mosquito. Regardless of what we think about terrorism, disabling access to entire sites companies rely on for their daily operation is simply careless. As noted by other commented they didn't even try to resolve the situation but rather went the route of blindly blocking access. This is a huge red flag, in my opinion, that the Internet as we know is has reached a big fork in the road and where we go from here will do are if our future will look like Biff's world in Back to the Future II or not...

byEngineer 12y ago

Who cares?

lovelearning 12y ago
"Tyranny anywhere is a threat to freedom everywhere."
- byEngineer 12y ago
  bs. India has always been backwards, so nothing different or new. Again, who cares?
  - jumpwah 12y ago
    Oh I don't know, perhaps people in India? Edit: What, did you not think that might be a remote possibility? :D

Zigurd 12y ago

India blocks github for subversion </rimshot>

boyter 12y ago

Oddly I happen to be in India right now. Can still access every site listed. Not sure if it has not rolled out or perhaps foreign internet has less restrictions.

dagwn 12y ago

Here's the change.org petition: https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-communication-and-it-govt-of-india-unblock-github-others https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-communication-and-it-go...

scriptle 12y ago

So, you're requested to change your DNS setting to "8.8.8.8" & "8.8.4.4" - Google's public DNS. I guess most of the ISPs just blocked the domain names and not the IPs those domains resolve to. It worked for me in two networks.

pratnala 12y ago

Well, all they have done is just DNS blocking. Change your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and you can continue to access these sites.

interesting_guy 12y ago

I could not pastebin from some time directly. It was already blocked. Wtf India

interesting_guy 12y ago

Damnit...

rajbot 12y ago

I am trying to find out if archive.org is still being blocked or not, as we are hearing conflicting reports from users. I queried the Indian DNS servers on this list that are marked 'valid' or 'new': http://public-dns.tk/nameserver/in.html http://public-dns.tk/nameserver/in.html Only one of them (182.59.1.235, operated by MTNL ISP) returned the fake IP being used for blocked sites (59.185.3.14). The other 1843 servers returned the correct IP. I am trying to figure out if that means archive.org has been removed from the block list, or if the DNS servers listed on that page haven't yet been updated with the blocked sites. If anyone can help us figure out if archive.org is still blocked, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! -raj at archive.org

Achshar 12y ago
Well here's another data point, BSNL in Punjab still not loading archive.org.
meta-coder 12y ago
Yes, archive.org is still being blocked by BSNL's default DNS server in Maharashtra as of Thu Jan 1 20:40:11 IST 2015. $ dig +nocmd +nostats +nocomments @218.248.255.211 archive.org ;archive.org. IN A archive.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
- rajbot 12y ago
  Thanks!

sunilnandihalli 12y ago

This is bad!! what are they thinking!!! github is blocked??

sunilnandihalli 12y ago

This is bad!!!! what are they thinking?? github is blocked???

V01D-eXe 12y ago

well, is this problem solved (?) because I can access each and every website on the list.

Nib 12y ago

Come on, stop acting that shitty. I'm a proud Indian, and this is the second time I'm condemning the state of the Internet in India in the same month[Earlier, due to Airtel's proposal to violate net neutrality]. If you believe you're doing so as these websites contain "anti-India" stuff, well, then screw yourself. Code that is used to run apps worldwide, API's, and what not have been cut off access to due to your little problem. On one hand, the guys promote the IT industry but on the other hand, they purposefully demote the industry. Get your goals right, people. Moreover, I don't think the telecommunications department even knows how to cut off access to a website. I'm from Delhi, and here, both Github and Pastebin are accessible.

alokyadav15 12y ago

from kolkata most of the sites are accessible .

thunderbong 12y ago

Weebly (www.weebly.com) is currently blocked too.

vs4vijay 12y ago

Everything is blocked from BSNL ISP.

known 12y ago

Feudalism + Voting in elections = India;

known 12y ago

http://hide-ip-by-fly.appspot.com/ http://hide-ip-by-fly.appspot.com/ is handy

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

iamgopal 12y ago

Its true that its blocked, but a simple change of dns server can unblock this. utterly ineffective blocking, thats what I love about India, no matter how intellectually sound laws are, the implementation is so poor, you can very easily bypass them.

noisy_boy 12y ago

Based on the schools Mr. Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP is following in Linkedin[1], it seems like he studied in IIT Benaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Assuming he didn't get in using political connections/kickbacks, he is clearly not an idiot. I'm genuinely puzzled by this dumb decision. He is a freaking engineer from a top technical university of India and the guy doesn't know what github is for?! [1]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/argupta26 https://www.linkedin.com/in/argupta26

edwinyzh 12y ago

As a Chinese, I thought (really) India has freedom of speech and this kind of things should never happen there, I can imagine what you might feel, my India fellows.

chhantyal 12y ago

FYI, if the ban on Github is hampering your collaboration during day to day development, you can also self host Gitlab https://about.gitlab.com https://about.gitlab.com which is working great for us.

Naushad 12y ago

Not unusual in India. The IT Laws here are outdated, no ID protection and Privacy Laws have come to effect which are still lying to be approved. The problem is with the people in power who are just arrogant in their will to exercise it without knowing the intricacies or the impact. Certain sections of the IT act (Sec 66 for example) are still being abused. The way to improve it is actually involing institutes like IIT and people from technology as their core field to get laws drafted and processes.

tiatia 12y ago

You have to realize that some countries don't have internet. Like China, China does not have internet. They probably don't even know what Internet is. They think if they can order something from Taobao then this is Internet. Regarding communication (phone, internet, postal mail) China is not even a third world country since third world countries actually have internet. Now the Indian government tries to compete with China who has the most fucked up communications. Good luck!

ForFreedom 12y ago

They should also block gov.in too

anuraj 12y ago

Indian bureaucracy at its whimsical best and ridiculous as always - do not expect anything sane from them. Internet freedom in India is nonexistent. They don't even remotely know what is the effect on business if services like github are blocked!!

meta-coder 12y ago

BSNL's DNS server replying with "SOA localhost. root.localhost." to all of the blocked domains (except sourceforge.net and atnsoft.com). # 218.248.255.211 is the default DNS server for BSNL DSL customers in Maharashtra, India $ date Thu Jan 1 20:21:02 IST 2015 $ dig +nocmd +nostats +nocomments @218.248.255.211 -f blocked.txt ;justpaste.it. IN A justpaste.it. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;hastebin.com. IN A hastebin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;codepad.org. IN A codepad.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;pastie.org. IN A pastie.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;pastee.org. IN A pastee.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;paste2.org. IN A paste2.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;slexy.org. IN A slexy.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;paste4btc.com. IN A paste4btc.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;0bin.net. IN A 0bin.net. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.heypasteit.com. IN A heypasteit.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;sourceforge.net. IN A sourceforge.net. 154 IN A 216.34.181.60 sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns4.p03.dynect.net. sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns3.p03.dynect.net. sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns1.p03.dynect.net. sourceforge.net. 85923 IN NS ns2.p03.dynect.net. ns1.p03.dynect.net. 85918 IN A 208.78.70.3 ns2.p03.dynect.net. 172323 IN A 204.13.250.3 ns3.p03.dynect.net. 85918 IN A 208.78.71.3 ns4.p03.dynect.net. 172323 IN A 204.13.251.3 ;atnsoft.com. IN A atnsoft.com. 14135 IN A 192.185.225.228 atnsoft.com. 86135 IN NS ns6616.hostgator.com. atnsoft.com. 86135 IN NS ns6615.hostgator.com. ns6615.hostgator.com. 172452 IN A 192.185.225.220 ns6616.hostgator.com. 172452 IN A 192.185.225.221 ;archive.org. IN A archive.org. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.hpage.com. IN A hpage.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.ipage.com. IN A ipage.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.webs.com. IN A webs.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.weebly.com. IN A weebly.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.000webhost.com. IN A 000webhost.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.freehosting.com. IN A freehosting.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;vimeo.com. IN A vimeo.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.dailymotion.com. IN A dailymotion.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;pastebin.com. IN A pastebin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;gist.github.com. IN A gist.github.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.ipaste.eu. IN A ipaste.eu. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;thesnippetapp.com. IN A thesnippetapp.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;snipt.net. IN A snipt.net. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;tny.cz. IN A tny.cz. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;github.com. IN A github.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;snipplr.com. IN A snipplr.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;termbin.com. IN A termbin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;www.snippetsource.net. IN A snippetsource.net. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400 ;cryptbin.com. IN A cryptbin.com. 86400 IN SOA localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400