Those guys who created this stupid fuss of blocking entire blog domains should be jailed on terms of acting in an uninformed wreckless way and as such causing huge financial loses and attempting to curb the freedom of one's expression, a fundamental duty of every citizen in a free democratic country like India. Our worldly wise, officially unwise, leaders have made but a fool of themselves in such an act of raw stupidity. AND THEY HAVE MADE A JOKE OF INDIA'S ADMINISTRATIVE CAPABILITIES... If the Government suddenly became so sensetive about improper content on the net, then why have those thousands of pornographic sites and those well known sites sponsored by terrorist organisations been spared. What is most frightening of such an incident is the realisation that the basic fundamental rights of a citizen can be curbed so easily by the whim of some pathetic ( and beyond pathetic! ) politicians of our country.
"If, for instance, DoT wanted a certain blog -- say shivam.blogspot.com --blocked, it was feasible to just block that URL, without restricting access to other blogs with the blogspot.com extension.
"An advisory is being sent from ISPAI to member ISPs saying they should configure their Domain Name Servers (DNS) in such a way that they block only the sub-domains DoT wants blocked," said Singhal, adding, "It would help if, in future, DoT could also mention the mechanism by which sites should be blocked."
Note that this is easy to circumvent even without having to resort to proxies or things like pkblogs. All one has to do is to add a host entry locally (in windows, in a "hosts" file) and voila...
I know, I know, the large majority of the public won't do it. But is it worth the effort?
> "If, for instance, DoT wanted a certain blog -- say shivam.blogspot.com > --blocked, it was feasible to just block that URL, without restricting > access to other blogs with the blogspot.com extension.
> "An advisory is being sent from ISPAI to member ISPs saying they should > configure their Domain Name Servers (DNS) in such a way that they block > only the sub-domains DoT wants blocked," said Singhal, adding, "It > would help if, in future, DoT could also mention the mechanism by which > sites should be blocked."
> Note that this is easy to circumvent even without having to resort to > proxies or things like pkblogs. All one has to do is to add a host > entry locally (in windows, in a "hosts" file) and voila...
> I know, I know, the large majority of the public won't do it. But is it > worth the effort?
> It'd be interesting to see how they block the subdomains only.
> B
> On 7/19/06, DeepakShenoy <deepakshe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > "If, for instance, DoT wanted a certain blog -- say shivam.blogspot.com > > --blocked, it was feasible to just block that URL, without restricting > > access to other blogs with the blogspot.com extension.
> > "An advisory is being sent from ISPAI to member ISPs saying they should > > configure their Domain Name Servers (DNS) in such a way that they block > > only the sub-domains DoT wants blocked," said Singhal, adding, "It > > would help if, in future, DoT could also mention the mechanism by which > > sites should be blocked."
> > Note that this is easy to circumvent even without having to resort to > > proxies or things like pkblogs. All one has to do is to add a host > > entry locally (in windows, in a "hosts" file) and voila...
> > I know, I know, the large majority of the public won't do it. But is it > > worth the effort?
> no idea, but it's been done before in the case of Yahoo! Groups
Yahoo! Groups couldn't have been blocked via DNS, because everything is under one domain.
ISPs must use fancy routers or transparent proxies to be able to filter on URL fragments. It's not technologically impossible, it's just a harder problem than DNS or IP-based blocks.
> > no idea, but it's been done before in the case of Yahoo! Groups
> Yahoo! Groups couldn't have been blocked via DNS, because everything > is under one domain.
> ISPs must use fancy routers or transparent proxies to be able to > filter on URL fragments. It's not technologically impossible, it's > just a harder problem than DNS or IP-based blocks.
Thought it might amuse you to know that I just sent the guys at Airtel a copy of your article (they'd sent me a copy of your 17th July article as 'explanation' for why I couldn't access blogspot) pointing out that it was clearly "all their fault" and demanding an explanation for why they had blocked my blog when it wasn't on the list as well as immediate restoration of access to all blogspot.com sites. :-).
> Thought it might amuse you to know that I just sent the guys at Airtel > a copy of your article (they'd sent me a copy of your 17th July article > as 'explanation' for why I couldn't access blogspot) pointing out that > it was clearly "all their fault" and demanding an explanation for why > they had blocked my blog when it wasn't on the list as well as > immediate restoration of access to all blogspot.com sites. :-).
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I don't like the way they have asked the question...has the tone of "with us or against us". But still if we want to get our point of "no censorship" across to many people, this might be the place.
