It seems that hundreds of popular porn websites in India, including sites like Xvideos and Pornhub have been banned in India. And the telecom service that has probably enforced the ban in totality and thoroughly seems to Jio. It is not clear exactly what has happened but Jio users on Reddit are reporting that most of the porn websites that they access are no longer available on Jio network.

"I've been trying to load a few of the porn sites but none of them seem to load on the Jio network. Is it just me or are you people facing the same issues," one Reddit user wrote. Hundreds of people replied saying that they too were facing problems, and many commented to access the porn websites on Jio people should use a VPN, hinting that the ban is at the local and ISP level.

It is possible that popular porn sites in India have been banned by Jio -- and probably other service providers too although given that Jio is more popular its users are making more noise -- in response to a directive from Department of Telecom (DoT). News agency PTI reports that the government has directed Internet service providers to block 827 websites that host pornographic content following an order by the Uttarakhand High Court.

The order came on September 28 and the court had said that internet service providers will have to ban the sites or face cancellation of their licence. "Unlimited access to these pornographic sites is required to be blocked (or) curbed to avoid an adverse influence on the impressionable minds of children," the bench had said.

On the basis of that order, DoT reportedly issued a directive to internet service providers in the country. The directive apparently contains list of over 800 porn websites that need to be blocked in India.

It is possible that Jio and other internet service providers in the country are banning porn sites in India to comply with this DoT directive.

However, as it happens every time India decides to ban a few websites, the whole process again seems to be secretive and there is no clarity on what is happening where. In India, thousands of websites -- porn sites, sites with political content, sites with extreme content, file hosts etc -- are banned but there is clarity on how many such sites are there in the block list and why. Mostly sites in India are banned after court orders, most of the time issued in response to anti-piracy petitions filed by Bollywood movie producers.

As far as the legal status of pornography is concerned, in India producing porn is not allowed. However, accessing and watching it in a private place is allowed. The IT Act, at the same time, directs cyber cafe owners to ensure that pornography is watched or accessed in open. The exception to this is the content that relates to child pornography. child abuse, bestiality and related content.

While banning of websites in India is fairly common, often the ban is also rudimentary and not as sophisticated as what China or some other countries use. Basically, with a bit of effort -- may be a free VPN, may be change in DNS servers, may be a different browser like Opera that allows changing VPN servers on the fly -- users can most of the time access blocked websites in India. Having said that, we must caution our readers that you should not access any content that is explicitly illegal in India. That will be a crime.

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