Mental blogs

At last count, over 42,000 bloggers on the Google-owned domain https://bsmedia.business-standard.comblogspot.com called themselves "Indian". Typepad.com, another popular blog-hosting domain, had over 7,000 Indians on its site. And the Yahoo!-owned geocities.com hosts over one lakh Indian homepages. These three domains normally draw 10 million Indian eyeballs per day. Last week, the CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) of the department of telecommunications demanded that Internet access to these three domains be blocked by all Indian Internet service-providers. It offered no explanations for this drastic action, and has since refused to make the list of blocked sites public. On one occasion when a media correspondent (from rediff.com) did get through to the CERT director, Gulshan Rai reportedly responded, "Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?" Who is that "somebody"? What sites were blocked? Why? It appears that the CERT doesn't believe anyone has a right to know the answers to these questions. The opacity of the blocking and the lack of accountability are astounding, given that this was done by a government organisation in what is proudly touted as the world's largest democracy.

Dr Rai may have thought the question he asked was rhetorical. But it is possible to answer it. In detail. To wit, thousands of individuals and many organisations earn an income directly and indirectly from their online presence on these three (and other) sites. The blocks imposed by the CERT interfere with their ability to earn that income. The concept of free blog-hosting is based on advertising. Free blogs display advertising targeted at their readership and receive an income from pay-per-view and click-through models. If there is no viewership because the site has been blocked, or the readership cannot be accurately tracked because it is coming through anonymising proxies, the income disappears. That affects pretty much every user of these domains. Another sort of economic hardship is incurred by writers, artists, photographers, sculptors, designers, musicians, hardware assemblers and freelance software developers, who maintain blogs as the equivalent of virtual, interactive, calling cards. This community of professionals finds it useful to archive work on blogs and homepages. The homepages and blogs are brand-building exercises and communication channels in one. Potential clients can view the work, and contact them if they so desire. By blocking access, the CERT has taken away potential custom from these people and impinged on their collective right to earn a living. The published writers affected by this specific ban include dozens of freelancers in both the media and advertising.

A third category of persons who certainly have a problem with the blocks are various non-government organisations. A free blog and homepage are perfect extensions of an NGO's presence, enabling it to showcase work-in-progress and to access aid across barriers of time and distance. Substantial aid is coordinated through NGO blogs. Blogs have proved useful in disaster relief as well. The tsunami help site at blogspot helped coordinate global aid to five nations. And the Mumbai help site, which was launched within an hour of the train bombings, helped tens of thousands contact their loved ones. Regrettably that site is now inaccessible to Indians. So, Dr Rai, there are indeed a large number of people who do have lots of problems with "somebody blocking some sites". The one good outcome of this entire episode is that the outrage it has caused may eventually force a review of this opaque process.