First China and now India. Here in the U.S., we talk about fundamental rights to Life, Liberty and Happiness. I’ve thought for a long time that there should also be a fundamental right to truth in the form of accurate information. People use information to control and disadvantage others and to benefit themselves all the time. Essentially, when governments try to control information like this, they are attempting to exert their power over an information monopoly and to control the perceptions of their people – and that should never be the function or purpose of government.
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Bloggers in India are getting together to protest against the sudden blocking of popular Google-owned blog-hosting site Blogger by some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Spectranet, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL), Reliance Powersurfer, Airtel Broadband and Sify.
On July 15, Mridula Dwivedi, a teacher of management studies in Gurgaon first discovered that visiting any blogspot blog — such as, say Mumbai Help — returned the message, ‘Site Blocked!’ Her ISP, Spectranet, confirmed they had blocked some sites based on government directives.
J Grewal, Spectranet’s Delhi representative at the National Internet exchange of India, told this reporter that, on July 15, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had sent ISPs a list of sites to be blocked. R H Sharma, senior engineer with MTNL, said the list ran into some 22 pages.
More… :Arrow: