Blocking Porn Sites Would Cause 'Greater Harm', Says Indian Government

Blocking all websites with pornographic content in the country is not possible and it would cause more harm as literary content containing such words would also not be available for public on Internet, the Centre on Monday told the Supreme Court.

Appearing before a bench headed by Justice B S Chauhan, Additional Solicitor General K V Vishwanathan submitted that blocking all such websites would cause greater harm.

"Everything would be blocked and even good literature would be blocked and it would cause greater harm," he said.

He submitted that a software has to be installed in every computer for blocking such websites and a direction has to be passed for all computer manufacturers to install software.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Indore-based 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 crime against women.

The petition filed through advocate Vijay Panjwani says that the absence of Internet laws encourages people to watch porn videos and over 20 crore porn videos or clippings are freely available in the market, which have been directly downloaded from the Internet or copied from video CDs.

The petition states, "The sexual content that kids are accessing today is far more graphic, violent, brutal, deviant and destructive and has put entire society in danger and also poses threat to public order in India. Most offences committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography. The worrying issue is that the severity and gravity of such images is increasing. It is a matter of serious concern that prepubescent children are being raped," the petition added.

The apex court had on November 18 issued notice to the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) seeking its response as to how to block websites with pornographic content in the country, particularly those featuring child pornography.