free speech for the dumb

This is not a post on the freedom of speech in India… but a feeling expressed by “dumb” as in “those who don’t speak out/up” people like me… those who found a way to express their thoughts and feelings through another medium… those peace-loving citizens who found a way of raising social issues without kindling a revolt… one of those bloody bloggers…

A couple of days after the Mumbai blasts I had put up something and wanted some close friends to read it (yes, it was a mutual agreement – u read my blog and I will read yours). But then I got some complaints that it is not accessible… I thought it was a problem as usual with our network that had a infinite number of problem points and asked them to keep trying silently cursing the poor committee in-charge of it. But even after about 24hrs when nobody claimed responsibility (a “we donno” mail which was usually sent by the committee was missing too…) it started worrying me… I started sending out test cases to my friends across the globe… result I found was that it was blocked only in India and only this domain… a little bit of research and some confirmed rumors helped me understand the reality – the DoT of India had exorcised its rights… to block the domains… and in turn the freedom of speech and expression…

Me and a few of my scratch-each-others-backs friends were thoroughly disappointed – we had just begun our writing careers… we wanted to bring in more itchy-scratchy friends… we had begun a new initiative at SPAMming and had many plans for the blogs in the future… all would go unnoticed as our friends in India (a little arm twisting made them our best friends and regular readers) would not be able to read it… Of course the DoT didn’t realize that we could still post but only the viewing was blocked… that brings us to the next paragraph…

Now this word dumb can be used in another context as well… the dictionary says it also means lacking intellectual acuity… now is that the word I should use for the IT law enforcers in the country ? A country which has suddenly shot into the limelight because of the numerous IT companies that have sprung up… a country that prides itself that a major chunk of its GDP comes from IT exports… a country that prides itself on its intellectual capital based on which it has built its IT outsourcing concept… a country that boasts of the IT infrastructure setup by the many service providers… a country whose IT law enforcers lack the acuity to discern the perpetrators of the IT crime and the innocent… a country whose IT law enforcers lack the common sense on how to punish the cyber criminals…

A few days back in Tamilnadu (and a few other states too probably) a huge quantity of pirated stuff in the form of CDs were seized and an elephant was made to walk over the pile… I fail to understand the elephant part… is it to prove that lord Ganesha in the form of the elephant disapproves piracy and we should take it as a will of god to buy the original stuff ? what do we do for Christians? nail all the CDs on a cross? And about Muslims? I seriously can’t think of any punishment there… or maybe I am wrong about the religious bent to it… maybe it was because the then chief minister could not herself walk over the pile and she sent a “representative” instead… but the big Q – was piracy stopped? It has returned in quite a short while…

I read a news report (can’t exactly remember the source), but it goes something like this… there is some guy who had some objectionable material probably porn, (I don’t think anybody would be stupid enough to have defense secrets on his comp for so long as the police to arrive… well come on guys, as soon as he gets the blueprints probably they are gone onsite already and his swiss account is already credited unless he is on a monthly payroll)… coming back to the case, the police when they sniffed out this guy, they immediately launched an offensive and seized his monitors (and left his cpu and hard disks)… man that really crippled the “criminal”… well that reminds me of a surd joke, but let us not get into the details, I have more to write…

Or how about this recent case of baazee when the CEO was arrested for allegedly selling porno material in the form of the school mms clip… the allegation was not to save that poor girl’s dignity or anything altruistic or moral… it was about baazee selling porno stuff… and how is the CEO liable to be arrested? He could probably take corrective action, but arresting him? How does this serve any purpose? Talk about understanding business models and laws… the mms clip is after all an mms clip… it will continue on its circulation via the most undetectable medium – the mms way… how does arresting the CEO help in curbing pornography circulation in India?

Well coming to the principal issue that triggered this outburst – why block blogspot domain? There were some theories put forth by the scratchy club when we were discussing what to do next… some of us even considered migrating the entire set of posts to some other blog sites… that set us thinking… all the other sites were working? Only blogspot domain was not opening up! Was it to promote the Indian blog sites? Like the Indian government slaps restrictions on MNCs from doing business in India so that it can force people to buy the products from the Indian industries. Well the Indian blogs were as comparable to blogspot as were a broken down old car and a brand new Mercedes… the user interface is plain damn shitty…

Now there could be another reason – the terrorists were using these blogs as a free medium to pass information in the form of code… well come on man… which terrorist organization has a blog? Or why should a terrorist go through all the rigmaroles of writing blogs in code? Anybody could do anything in India – it just won’t get noticed… man any terrorist could carry a shipment of arms through our railways or roadways or seaways… come on guys we have too many people that 1 or 2 extra, normally dressed terrorists would never get noticed anyways… they would just blend in with their bag of bombs with the shopping crowd…

Or was it that these blogs were raising some sort of upheaval to overthrow the government by organizing a coup – inspired with blog posts… wow that sounds like a new plot for a rang-de-basanti types movie… straight from the heart… can’t wait to see one… hey come on man, people don’t get aroused (I mean angry uprising) by the injustice meted out to them in every walk of life but would get inspired by the writings on some obscure blog?

Or was there was some objectionable content on the blogs… like a cartoon depicting something that was extremely funny about some religious icon… and are these cartoons only on these blogs… if so then there are two things to learn from this – 1) bloggers are damn creative and innovative and (2) they are not afraid to express their views. And does blocking these blogs avoid the spread of such “malicious” content? For all you know the stuff is already safely stored away in the infinite inboxes around the world (in fact the storage space they provide of the order of GBs even help people to store complete movies). And doesn’t blocking these stuff or trying to police the internet against the very principles that the entity called the internet stands for? It is an uncontrolled growth and a treasure trove of information… and it is that way because there is no restriction. I personally believe that if the internet is going to be shut down, you better be careful of the cascading effect it will have in shutting down b-schools too…

Well anyways, all that is just an excuse for sighting aliens… you know the elaborate stories spun by the US agencies that take care of people who sight alien spacecrafts or have an interaction with aliens… they give weird reasons to them saying that it was an experimental weather balloon, or a planet… the truth is probably what ET put up in the bottom of their front page a couple of days back… some 17 blogs were named heretical and blocked… now call it stupidity or callousness or autocracy the whole blogspot domain used by above 40,000 active regular users was blocked… and to think that these 17 people would not be able to cause any more harm – they would just open a new blog in another name… and they could still edit their posts remember… and in fact the worst blow for this government initiative was that a leading national daily published an article teaching people how to circumvent these bans…

Come to think of it, how many such bans actually work? Right from movies to drugs, whenever there is a restriction, people always find a way out. In fact it increases the demand for these restricted products and services… Curiosity killed the “good intentions” of the government…

PS. If anybody has a list of those 17 sites, please send them to me… I would love to read them.