Porn Sites Make a Return in India by Tweaking Domain Name

Despite the Indian government's crackdown on porn websites, global players have found a unique way to dodge the ban and are now being watched on millions of smartphones and computers across the country without any fear.

The Department of Telecommunications had issued a letter to all Internet service licensees for disablement of porn websites (under the provisions of Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000), "as the content posted on these websites relate to morality, decency as given in Article 19(2) of the Constitution".

The order had banned 857 websites, terming their content "immoral and indecent".

However, two global porn portals - Redtube and Pornhub - are back in India and one does not need any trick to bypass the ban to watch them.

While Pornhub is available as pornhub.org, redtube can be accesses as redtube.net.

.org is largely used by non-profit organisations while .net domain name extension represents "network" -- recommended and suitable for Internet, email, and networking service providers.

Since the crackdown is on .com domain names, the porn websites can easily be accessed on various screens, without the need of a virtual private network (VPN), alternative browsers, proxies and other methods to access the blocked websites.

In December last year, following the DoT's directive, major telecom operators like Jio, Airtel and Vodafone have also banned websites showing porn and child pornographic content.

According to nation's leading cyber law expert Pavan Duggal, there is a desperate need for strict cyber-security laws in India.

"The entire issue of pornography and child pornography raise extremely complicated legal issues, which need to be carefully handled and dealt with," said Duggal.

In a recent round table organised in the Capital, experts raised concerns on issues related to cybercrime, including increasing child porn, sexting, sex trafficking, cyberbullying/trolling and violence against women.

"Sexting, sextortion on the Internet - mainly with young boys, child porn, violence against women in the form of revenge porn and cyber terrorism are turning into a huge issue in India and they should be taken care as soon as possible," said Parry Aftab, a US-based lawyer and Internet safety expert who founded the Internet safety organisation WiredSafety.