'Porn sites cause crime against women': Supreme Court demands immediate action to create a porn-free India



The Supreme Court on Monday said it wanted immediate steps taken to block websites with pornographic content, especially those featuring children.

The court asked the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) about the steps which can be taken in this regard.



A bench headed by Justice B.S. Chauhan asked the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, of which DoT is a part, to file its response within three weeks.



By June 2014, India will have 243 million internet users and will overtake the second-largest internet base in the world, the US

Porn star Sunny Leone (left) has shifted her base to Bollywood, while Angela Devi (right) is another Indian-origin porn performer.

The court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, who pleaded that although watching obscene videos was not an offence, pornographic sites should be banned as they were one of the major causes behind crimes against women.



"The absence of Internet laws encourages people to watch porn videos and over 20 crore videos or clippings are freely available in the market, which have been directly downloaded from the Internet or copied from video CDs," the petition stated.



Legal experts say the Information Technology Act does not make it illegal to view adult porn but watching child porn is an offence and the law applies to "whoever creates text or digital images, collects, seeks, browses, downloads'' child porn.



Referring to Section 67B of the IT Act added in 2008, which prescribes punishment for involvement in sexually explicit online or electronic content that depicts children, cyber law expert Pavan Duggal said: "The problem is that this law has never been invoked yet and till date there has not been any conviction."



The Centre had earlier told the SC that it was difficult to block international porn sites and sought time to consult various ministries in order to find a solution.



The court criticised the Centre for taking such a long time in dealing with a serious issue, while granting it time to devise a mechanism to block such sites, particularly those containing child pornography.



The petition pointed out that the sexual content that children are accessing today is far more graphic, violent, brutal, deviant and destructive, and has put the whole of society in danger as well as posing threats to public order in India.

Google develops blocking tech

By Press Trust of India

Google boss Eric Schmidt on Monday said that the tech giant had developed a new technology that makes it harder to find child sexual abuse images on the web.



Writing in British newspaper the Daily Mail, Google's executive chairman said more than 100,000 searches would no longer feature such material in their results.

The restrictions will initially apply to English-speaking countries, but will be expanded to the rest of the world and 158 other languages within six months.



The announcement comes ahead of Monday's Internet Safety Summit at Prime Minister David Cameron's Downing Street office, where Google and Microsoft will be joined by other Internet firms.

Government fails to curb child porn sites

By Mail Today in New Delhi

India has of late witnessed a rise in cyber crime but the government, despite having the new IT Act in place, has largely been ineffective in tackling the problem.

The Information Technology ministry, which safeguards India's cyber space, has done little to take action against child porn sites.



The I&B ministry had earlier urged the IT ministry to take necessary steps to prevent the mushrooming of child porn sites. However, a DoT official said in the absence of technology and manpower, it has not been able to take adequate action.



"It is the Constitutional obligation of the government to block porn sites and it cannot get away merely on the ground that it does not have the necessary technology to fight against it," cyber law expert Pawan Duggal said.

He added that countries like the US and China have been constantly fighting child pornography and have succeeded in minimising it. The IT ministry has also been lagging behind in developing an effective and secure network for the government's use of the Internet.