(Please see update here. It appears our headline may have wrongly accused the Indian government for this bunble. The gov is now saying ISPs are to blame)

Censorship

We mentioned the Indian government appears to be blocking some Indian blog sites, including the Indian versions of Google Blogger and Six Apart's Typepad.

We expressed doubt this could the case, given that India is democratic, and not a Big Brother-like blog-filtering state like China.

However, as we have followed events, and people have commented on our blog and directed us to the latest developments, things haven't improved -- and we've confirmed only that this is the government's doing.

The apparent reasons behind the policy seem understandable enough. In the wake of the Mumbai bombings last week, the government sought to block certain domains in an effort to shut down the voices of some of the more radical bloggers. You can agree or disagree with that policy, but at least you know what the motivation is and you can debate it. However, some ISPs, while trying to block a particular blog on Blogspot, blocked the entire domain -- and the worse part is, there doesn't seem to be any apologies coming. According to the Indian Express:

Though the communication, dated July 13, by the telcom department to ISPs lists specific pages/websites, several ISPs have blocked all blogs because they were not equipped to filter specific pages. This could be because all websites hosted on blogspot.com, for instance, have the same IP address.

This may also have something to do with the lack of filtering technology at Indian ISPs. However, several days now after it all started, officials still don't understand the significance of what they've done. The Hindustan Times reports:

Officials defended the decision saying, "We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites."

Wow, that's some attitude. Wish the Hindustan Times had the guts to print the "officials'" names, so there could be some accountability.

Anyway, here's what Google and Six Apart said, in response to our requests for info (by the way, Geocities seems to have been blocked too, but we haven't contacted them):

Google:

We are puzzled and disappointed by reports we have seen that users in India are not able to access Blogspot. We are currently looking into the situation." Additionally, we posted an update on the Blogger blog, which you can read here: http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/07/blogger-in-india.html

Six Apart's spokeswoman Jane Anderson, late last night (July 19th, California time):

Through third party testing in Mumbai and New Delhi, we can confirm that TypePad blogs are not available for viewing in India, though the application is not experiencing problems and is still available for users to update their blog posts. We don't know a lot at this point. There is all kinds of speculation, and I should know more in the morning.

Would be a shame if this kill U.S. investments into Indian blogging software companies, which would be ironic given the rush by U.S. VC firms to invest in Chinese blogging companies.

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