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

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

#11

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]

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

#12
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-n...

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

#14
post #4

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…

I run 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.

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

#15
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.

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

#16
post #4

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…

This is what happens when you let people take any action if they scream 'terrorist'.

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

#17

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.

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.

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

#18
This one is interesting: 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/ 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.

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

#20
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.

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