India blocks The Internet Archive - but doesn't say why

[Batu69]

Someone high up in Indian politics with something to hide?

The Indian government has blocked the Internet Archive in the country - without prior warning or explanation. 

 

Users in Delhi and Bangalore, particularly those using the Airtel ISP, are being greeted by the following message when attempting to access the Wayback Machine: "Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from the Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator for more information."

 

Unfortunately, no one at the ISP seems to know either, or if they do, they aren't telling.

For the uninitiated, the Wayback Machine has been taking snapshots of the internet for the past two decades and more, and can, therefore, show previous versions of web pages, of news stories and even revive the last known configuration of a web page long since offline.

 

In total it is estimated it allows users to access 302 billion cached web pages.

In the past, India has been responsible for blocking sites including Github and Wordpress (as well as the predictable stuff like porn sites).

 

More recently it blocked video sites such as Vimeo and Daily Motion for ‘failing to control' access to what it described as "Jihadi propaganda".

Some experts have speculated that the ban is because the Internet Archive allows citizens to access documents, since removed, from the Aadhaar citizen ID program (sort of like an NI number in the UK) managed by the Unique Identification Authority of India, and heavily criticised for being light on security and heavy on data leaking.

 

"Obviously, we are disappointed and concerned by this situation and are very eager to understand why it's happening and see full access restored," Internet Archive office manager Chris Butler told Medianama.

 

The Internet Archive has said it has had no contact with the Indian government and has had no response to its own enquiries.

Inevitably, at some point, the government is either going to have to explain or lift the block.

 

Article source

[Undertaker]

Wayback is still accessible from my ISP. 

 

While we are suspecting the govt. to be behind this all, it is entirely possible that the ISP,i.e, Airtel in itself is responsilbe for such step. Just last month, it had a wannacry hack in it's system. So, it's possible.

 

With regards to porn it's still blocked alongwith many torrent and file sharing sites.

[jayesh30202]

its accessible from my isp too 

[dcs18]

Quote

Someone high up in Indian politics with something to hide?

My pet watchdog seems to be more efficient (taller) than Narendra Modi:—

 

[Agent 86]

4 hours ago, Undertaker said:

With regards to porn it's still blocked alongwith many torrent and file sharing sites.

I could live without torrents and lockers, but WTF? No porn?  

[dcs18]

6 hours ago, Undertaker said:

Wayback is still accessible from my ISP.

Was checking with my Clients and most of them seem to have no difficulty in accessing the site.

[IronY-Man]

then its def. a ISP f#$k-up  ...&

btw @dcs18, dude can you pls. tell what or which visual style from where are you using....it looks kickass !! or What s/w (windowblinds maybe ?) is behind this kind of sorcery ? 

[dcs18]

IronY-Man, you're right — WindowBlinds . . . . . . and, the theme is the native Sublime theme {most of the other subtle enhancements are thanks to Classic Theme Restorer (CTR) on the V56 (Nightly.)}

[knowledge-Spammer]

On 09/08/2017 at 8:11 AM, dcs18 said:

My pet watchdog seems to be more efficient (taller) than Narendra Modi:—

 

adguard

but is no real problems no?

[dcs18]

No knowledge, no real problem — have employed an extremely stringent Adguard policy and hence the blocked notification.

[Batu69]

Internet Archive Blocked in 2,650 Site Anti-Piracy Sweep

Quote

Now, however, the mystery has been solved. The BBC says a local government agency provided a copy of a court order obtained by two Bollywood production companies who are attempting to slow down piracy of their films in India.

 

Issued by a local judge, the sweeping order compels local ISPs to block access to 2,650 mainly file-sharing websites, including The Pirate Bay, RARBG, the revived KickassTorrents, and hundreds of other ‘usual suspects’. However, it also includes the URL for the Internet Archive, hence the problems with accessibility this week.

 

The injunction, which appears to be another John Doe order as previously suspected, was granted by the High Court of the Judicature at Madras on August 2, 2017. Two film productions companies – Prakash Jah Productions and Red Chillies Entertainment – obtained the order to protect their films Lipstick Under My Burkha and Jab Harry Met Sejal.

 

[DKT27]

Yet another wrongful act gets blamed on the government without fact checking by the news media. I was wondering why none or almost none of the media picked up the story though, most of them like to blame government or even parliamentarians for every small issue that happens in the country here.

[dcs18]

India has always had a rich history of the ruling party of the day, pimping the presstitude — in recent years, it was the corrupt Congress government and now it's the communal भारतीय जुमला पार्टी (BJP.)

[DKT27]

27 minutes ago, dcs18 said:

India has always had a rich history of the ruling party of the day, pimping the presstitude — in recent years, it was the corrupt Congress government and now it's the communal भारतीय जुमला पार्टी (BJP.)

 

Add mister know it all, I want proof for it all, supreme leader of the almighty capital state / city of India to the list, owns more than couple of media agencies by his party himself. Also add left to it, they directly own some major media houses in India.

 

Infact, politicians own 90% of all the mainstream media, atleast on the English media side - cannot say for sure about non-English ones. Quite hard to find good non-biased sensible news here.

[straycat19]

On 8/10/2017 at 0:28 AM, dcs18 said:

No knowledge, no real problem — have employed an extremely stringent Adguard policy and hence the blocked notification.

 

You must have.  I checked all four browsers and nothing I have stops me from accessing it, not even Adguard.  If your Adguard policy is that stringent aren't you overdoing it?  After all, the object is to stop ads not access to informative websites.  The government and courts do enough of that.

[dcs18]

 

1 minute ago, straycat19 said:

On 8/10/2017 at 10:58 AM, dcs18 said:

No knowledge, no real problem — have employed an extremely stringent Adguard policy and hence the blocked notification.

You must have.  I checked all four browsers and nothing I have stops me from accessing it, not even Adguard.  If your Adguard policy is that stringent aren't you overdoing it?  After all, the object is to stop ads not access to informative websites.  The government and courts do enough of that.

I'm a SysAdmin — folks who do not possess the wherewithal for a stringent ad. blocking policy invariably find themselves spending the rest of their lives, crafting never-ending filters and rules to prevent their clients from unauthorized access (not to mention resorting to bizarre firewalling against advertisements):—

25 minutes ago, straycat19 said:

Adblockers are fine, but I have found sites that feed ads from multiple domain names, it's like the domain name changes every time a link on a page is clicked and it opens up a new window with the ad.  At first I was adding these domain names to uBlock, but since the names just kept changing I was constantly chasing them.  To stop these I found that it uses a range of IPs that are assigned to an ad company, so I just blocked that whole range in my firewall and haven't seen an ad since.  Ever since that time, anything that the adblockers don't catch goes into my firewall IP blocking. 

 

They also find their end result quite pathetic.

[dcs18]

On 8/10/2017 at 5:50 PM, dcs18 said:

India has always had a rich history of the ruling party of the day, pimping the presstitude — in recent years, it was the corrupt Congress government and now it's the communal भारतीय जुमला पार्टी (BJP.)

 

 

[DKT27]

16 minutes ago, dcs18 said:

 

 

 

I would really request you to avoid going too political for which it goes against the best interest of the forums. This even applies to me. Still, just to reply on the video - I cannot watch it right now but know the context of it. Here is a news, from a source which is hugely anti-current government, which went unnoticed by many big channels. It mentions how news from a particular channel might not be true, but other videos are real. Here is another one from the CBI itself - this proof is highly likely to be shown in the court.

 

Also, videos do not matter, intentions do - even the bad intentions of the channel do. If any person is supporting terrorists, left wing, right wing, central wing, he deserves to be brought to be book I think.

[dcs18]

28 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

 

I would really request you to avoid going too political for which it goes against the best interest of the forums. This even applies to me. Still, just to reply on the video - I cannot watch it right now but know the context of it. Here is a news, from a source which is hugely anti-current government, which went unnoticed by many big channels. It mentions how news from a particular channel might not be true, but other videos are real. Here is another one from the CBI itself - this proof is highly likely to be shown in the court.

 

Also, videos do not matter, intentions do - even the bad intentions of the channel do. If any person is supporting terrorists, left wing, right wing, central wing, he deserves to be brought to be book I think.

In that case what is this bold statement in a bold 18 pt case:—

 

On 8/9/2017 at 7:43 PM, Batu69 said:

Someone high up in Indian politics with something to hide?

 

[DKT27]

42 minutes ago, dcs18 said:

In that case what is this bold statement in a bold 18 pt case:—

 

While I'm sure you have more experience than me, for me being relatively new to this. But out of thousands if not millions, of news articles I have read throughout the years here - it was my part of the work here and also elsewhere, I can surely say British media holds no soft corner for India or it's efforts, irrespective of what party has been in power.

 

Coming back to the original subject which you have raised. Surely, everyone has their agenda, the central government does - otherwise no action would have been taken on that incident, the person belonging to the youth wing of the left, who organized the event in which slogans were shouted - infact his political connection is the reason he is the face of it on the channels, whereas the bigger culprit was his colleague, they too have their agenda. The news media too, the ones who said the video is true inspite knowing otherwise and the ones who are purposely trying to undermine the real videos too have their own agenda. The ones the middle, the common people, are the victims of these agendas. Still, what matters is truth. As a brother of lawyer, I can say, let the court decide on it.

[dcs18]

I'm neither alluding to the media nor to the politicians . . . . . . or, even who is to be faulted between those two whores — my limited interjection was that it is the member of your very own staff who is guilty on 2 counts:—

• pronouncing judgment despite being the OP, and
• including personal opinion which is absent from the source.

 

The staff frowns at political posts but does not hesitate at creating the same with undue highlights? Moreover, as one of the Admins., you have shown your own endorsement by thanking the said post.

 

Now, what kind of squint-eyed message are we sending to those who are waiting so anxiously for that slightest excuse to comment on the global political front, when our own house is in disarray?

 

I do hope you get the drift of what I'm getting at — better kick his ass yourself because my methods of conflict resolution make members look like a clueless stray cat (sorry for that awful pun.)

[DKT27]

34 minutes ago, dcs18 said:

I'm neither alluding to the media nor to the politicians . . . . . . or, even who is to be faulted between those two whores — my limited interjection was that it is the member of your very own staff who is guilty on 2 counts:—

• pronouncing judgment despite being the OP, and
• including personal opinion which is absent from the source.

 

The staff frowns at political posts but does not hesitate at creating the same with undue highlights? Moreover, as one of the Admins., you have shown your own endorsement by thanking the said post.

 

Now, what kind of squint-eyed message are we sending to those who are waiting so anxiously for that slightest excuse to comment on the global political front, when our own house is in disarray?

 

I do hope you get the drift of what I'm getting at — better kick his ass yourself because my methods of conflict resolution make members look like a clueless stray cat (sorry for that awful pun.)

 

One, check the source again - it's clearly mentioned there, though, not in bold. No personal view from the thread author is added on the first post.

 

Two, we are not blanket banning any political news here - yet, otherwise all the other General news that you see posted here would not have been posted. The issue is political arguments, which cause divide among the community. This news specifically is related to technology, something which is at the core of interest of the forums.

[Recruit]

Yeah guys, let the politics apart : you need to argue from something more funny like antiviruses, football and maybe girls....

[BioHazard]

Just now, Recruit said:

Yeah guys, let the politics apart : you need to argue from something more funny like antiviruses, football and maybe girls....

Ok ? we’ll start with girls 

[Recruit]

2 minutes ago, BioHazard said:

Ok ? we’ll start with girls 

 

Let's see : In India there are lots of nice girls, like Sania Mirza :

 

Spoiler