“We cannot become a totalitarian state. Somebody wants to watch porn in the privacy of his room, can we prevent that? We are now talking Digital India. We are at a stage when the PM has asked citizens to put what he should say in his Independence Day speech... when we are going to stage... we can’t go and ban people from watching this and that,” Attorney <g data-gr-id="29">Genral</g> Mukul Rohatgi told the apex court.
However, he stressed for <g data-gr-id="30">proper</g> mechanism to ban child <g data-gr-id="31">pornography,</g> while admitting that it is a challenging job to track <g data-gr-id="32">ban</g> violators. “In the old days, there were magazines. All one had to do was stop the distribution of the publication. Now how can we stop someone from watching porn on their mobile phones?” he asked.
Last week, the government blocked over 850 portals with adult content on grounds of morality and decency, but partially revoked the order after an angry backlash on social media and amid a raging debate on censorship in a democracy. An order issued the Department of Telecom said, “The intermediaries (ISPs) are hereby directed that they are free not to disable any of the 857 URLs, as given in the list, which do not have child pornographic content.”
Earlier, with the government ordered Internet service providers to shut down sites that promote child pornography, many service providers say the order is ambiguous and not practical. During a hearing last month, Chief <g data-gr-id="28">Justive</g> HL Dattu declined to pass an interim order to block porn websites and said the court could not stop an adult from exercising his fundamental right to personal liberty to watch porn within the privacy of his room. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the matter in detail on a later date.
Withdraw notices, refer matter to NBSA: Broadcasters
Urging the government to withdraw its show cause notices to three TV channels for their coverage related to Yakub Memon hanging, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) on Sunday said the matter should be instead referred to News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA).
Expressing its concern over the matter, the NBA said that since the government has said it believes in independence of media, it should refer the matter to NBSA, which is a self-regulatory mechanism set up by the broadcasters. In a statement released here, the NBA – a body comprising leading TV news channels– said that it is “deeply concerned” at the show cause notices issued to three channels NDTV 24x7/NDTV India, Aajtak and ABP News.