BENGALURU: India’s porn ban, extending to 827

, has thousands of

up in arms. Particularly aggrieved are those who have paid

.

Pornhub, whose third largest customer base comes from India (the first two are US and UK), has created a mirror site Pornhub.net to get around the ban. Other sites like Behance.net have advised their clients to download the mobile app. The customer care divisions of Airtel, Reliance Jio and Vodafone have been flooded with calls.

Thousands of tweets hit Twitter under the hashtag #pornban, with users saying this goes against net neutrality laws in India, which prohibit discrimination against any content provider. Users feel the government should have taken strong action against child por n, rape por n and BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism types of sexual practice), and not against the more well-known porn websites like Pornhub and Xvideos.com, who ensure their content is above board.

That was a sentiment voiced also by Pornhub vice president Corey Price: “This is apparent by the fact that they only banned large sites like Pornhub’s, and didn’t block thousands of risky porn sites that may contain illegal content. There are no laws against pornography in India and watching adult content privately. It’s evident that the Indian government does not have a solution to a very serious and systemic problem in the country, and is using adult sites like ours as a scapegoat.”

Viewing of adult content in India soared 75% between March 2016 and March 2017, following data rates crashing with the entry of Reliance Jio, said video viewership tracker Vidooly’s. A lot of that increase came from smaller towns.

Lawyer PK Rajagopal, who practices in the Madras High Court, said in a mature democracy, decisions about what to watch should be left to viewers. “Banning child porn or violent content is acceptable. But a ban on nudity or porn amounts to moral policing. Our freedom of expression and right to consumption of different content is protected by article (19) of the constitution,” he said.

Sites like Pornhub say they have stringent controls when it comes to consensual content. “For the government to ban sites like ours that have compliant parental controls, a non-consensual take down page, and a strict terms of service is a disservice to the people of India, who have become one of the largest connoisseurs of adult content,” said Price.

There are supporters of the ban too, who point to studies showing clear links between porn and violence against women. “There have been many studies showing that porn addiction can lead to sexual violence against women. In the largest interests of the public, the government might have undertaken this step. Net neutrality laws have been adopted. But there’s no such thing as absolute neutrality and absolute non-interference. Reasonable restrictions can be placed if the government has concerns, “ said A Sirajudeen, senior advocate in the Supreme Court.

Big impact on telecom revenue

The ban is likely to be affecting the revenues of telecom players. Experts say 35-40% of content downloaded each day from India is pornography, and 35-40% of total data usage revenue for mobile operators comes from porn. The telecom companies declined to say anything on the matter. Indian Cyber Army, an association of ethical hackers, had said last September that in India it is estimated every second 380 people are looking for ‘adult’ content on search engines.