A number of users in India have reported that they have been unable to access sites including GitHub, DailyMotion ,Vimeo, Pastebin and 28 other websites if they were accessing the Internet via Vodafone or the state controlled MTNL and BSNL networks.
Users agitated
The block was first reported by Techworm, when our researchers found that Pastebin and GitHub were being blocked. Pastebin, a website where you can store text online for a set period of time, had tweeted that it was being blocked by Indian ISPs on December 19. As of December 26th, the site reported that it was still blocked in India.
A few days later, GitHub to appeared to be blocked. Now, however now it is found that the Government of India through its Internet oversite watchdog Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has asked the ISPs to block a total of 32 websites. These website have been blocked under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. DoT has also asked ISPs to submit compliance reports, however the circular contents have not been verified by either any government independent agency.
The list of websites blocked is given below
- Pastebin.com
- JustPaste.it
- Hastebin.com
- Codepad.org
- Pastie.org
- Pastee.org
- Paste2.org
- Slexy.com
- Paste4BTC.com
- Obin.com
- Heypasteit.com
- Ipaste.eu
- Snippetapp.com
- Snipt.net
- Tny.cz (Tiny Paste)
- Snipplr.com
- Termbin.com
- Snippetsource.net
- Cryptbin.com
- Sourceforge (only one link ‘Phorkie ‘ which hosts source code of Pastebin source code blocked)
- Atnsoft.com/textpaster
- Archive.org
- Hpage.com
- Ipage.com
- Webs.com
- Weebly.com
- OOOwebhost.com
- Freehosting.com
- Vimeo.com
- Dailymotion.com
- Gist.github.com
- GitHub.com
