NEW DELHI: Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) on Monday told the Supreme Court that they were mere conduits for providing internet access to customers and could not ban websites featuring child pornography without orders from the court or the government.
“ISPs neither create content of any sort, nor do they own, promote, modify or edit it. They are mere authorized service providers who provide customers access to internet. ISPs are mere conduits and they cannot be made liable for the contents they do not own. It would be akin to making liable telecom companies for conversations people have on their network,” they said.
In response to a PIL filed by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani highlighting menace of child pornographic content freely available on the internet, ISPAI said, “It is impossible for an ISP to block pornographic sites without orders from the court or department of telecom (DoT). While ISPs are legally bound to comply with all orders to block pornographic or other websites as suggested by DoT, the task of identifying such websites ought not to be left to ISPs who lack institutional and logistical capacity to do the identification.”
In the absence of clear-cut definition of pornography which some could classify as literary or artistic work, ISPAI apprehended that its members could be mired in litigation if they on their own started blocking websites which they thought were offensive.
The petitioner through advocate Vijay Panjwani had alleged that in the absence of appropriate laws, people had easy access to over 20 crore porn videos or clippings freely available in the market, which were downloaded from the internet. He had sought a ban on pornographic sites saying these were one of the major causes behind spurt in crimes against women.
[…] Can’t ban child porn sites without ruling: ISPs to India’s Supreme Court […]