
India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin - peter123
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141231/02075529554/indian-government-orders-32-web-sites-blocked-including-github-archiveorg-pastebin-dailymotion-vimeo.shtml
======
bbarn
Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: "The websites that have been
blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying
Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable
content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being
unblocked."

This is bad. archive.org by default should have all sorts of offensive things
on it. Pastebin and github should not be responsible for people hosting code
they don't like. May as well block google too, I'm pretty sure you can find
pro-ISIS sites on there as well.

~~~
nicksergeant
I run [https://snipt.net](https://snipt.net), one of the sites listed as being
blocked, and I've never received any communication from anyone with the Indian
government or ISPs. So they're not proactively doing anything to unblock these
sites, as far as I can tell.

~~~
DINKDINK
Why would they have any incentive to contact you? From their perspective the
problem is solved -- the material offending statist is out of sight, out of
mind. You're the one who wants a different situation to exist. Governments
aren't in the customer service business.

~~~
jusben1369
"Governments aren't in the customer service business" \- Errr actually that's
_exactly_ the business democratic governments are in. Not saying they don't
fail regularly but when you are elected by the people for the people you'd
better be prepared to provide customer service.

~~~
iopq
Except most people won't know about this or care. You get the government you
deserve, which is to say, a shitty one.

~~~
chetanahuja
Don't know why you're being downvoted. This is absolutely correct. Even more
so for India than, say, the US (source: I'm Indian). Nobody but a tiny tiny
fraction of the population cares that github is getting blocked. The
opposition wouldn't even bother making it a big issue since the numbers are so
insignificant. And even if they did, they don't really have a moral leg to
stand on because all politicians and government officials, almost without
exception (ok.. maybe with some rare exceptions) are eager to use censorship
when it suites their purposes (usually under the pretext of national
security... but even that figleaf is not always necessary).

------
cryptbin
I run Cryptbin.com, one of the sites on the banned list. As a result of the
ban we have seen our traffic surge, with roughly a 1000% increase in traffic
from India today alone.

Interesting to note is that we also own the domain cryptb.in (a TLD from
India) and that has not been banned. However, it is merely a redirect so it
does not provide an alternative entrance to the site. We use it only for short
URL's on public pastes.

~~~
sounds
Perhaps you can use this thread to recruit an India-centric team and create a
separate site at cryptb.in (not saying you have to but to quote Pirates: "if
you were looking for the perfect moment... that was it")

~~~
tjbiddle
Wouldn't even need a separate site - just update the redirect to point at the
same load balancer as the main site instead, and then add a virtual host
entry.

------
revelation
I love Indian government statements, they are always so transparently
incompetent, inane and corrupt, as are the accompanying actions, like blocking
a random PHP project on sourceforge.

I guess we'll just never know why they do these stupid things. By the time
some bureaucrat has to give a statement all they can get out is _terror_ ,
_ISIS_ and _anti India_.

~~~
lnanek2
Well, it's not exactly random. If you follow the link:
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/)

You can see it's the source code for the same sort of paste text online site
they are banning all over the place in the other bans. It seems kind of nuts
to ban all source code hosting and clipboard type hosting sites, but clearly
they are trying. Wonder what's next, blogs that allow posting comments or
signing guestbooks?

~~~
deskamess
That pro-ISIS guy that was recently id'd from Bengaluru was posting on
Twitter. Is Twitter banned? Major oversight or perhaps it is random.

This impacts the average person more than any terrorist - such a delusional
policy.

~~~
brlewis
Post the offending content as a comment somewhere on the Indian government's
own web site. They'll block themselves. Problem solved.

~~~
okpatil
Being an Indian, I wish that this was true.

~~~
peterfirefly
Would it be better if India was broken up into much smaller states, possibly
more or less along the current internal borders? Is India really seen as a
country by the Indians or is it seen more like a bunch of unwanted outside
overlords ruling over your local part of India, whichever that might be?

I'm asking partly because I live in the EU where we are explicitly trying to
create a big, state-like construction for most of our continent. In most cases
I feel mostly like a "Dane" or "Scandinavian" or "Northern European" but in
some cases I am actually starting to feel like an EU citizen, like we are all
in it together, for example regarding Russia's behaviour in the Ukraine and
elsewhere.

It is probably not correct to call the EU a country or a state yet but we are
getting closer. On the other hand, if the Republic of India is actually a
country then the European Union is too, isn't it?

~~~
lenkite
We have a national identity that is very strong. And devolving into different
nation states won't solve anything - it will lead to wars and violence and a
broken economy. We would also be easy pickings for China and Islamic states
like Pakistan. All our eastern states would be annexed by China in a couple of
years. Kashmir and Punjab would be annexed by Pakistan. It is the Indian
military and the fact that we have nuclear weapons that gives them pause.

~~~
anuraj
What country reasons its existence on paranoia and fear factor. True India
shall happen when federal states get functional and financial autonomy and
decisions are not shoved down their throats through an imperial mechanism.

------
kartikkumar
Ah that explains it! Haven't been able to push to Github ever since stepping
off the plane in Mumbai. Strange thing is that the website works off-and-on.
Pushing results in connection refused though. There's also been ZERO
information/news provided by the ISP (MTNL) in this regard.

Absolute shame that a blanket ban like this is applied. It has a profound
effect on everyday activities unrelated to the original reason for banning.
Even if there is content of a questionable nature, it's absolutely crazy to
not expose this. Let people make up their own minds about what is right or
wrong. A simple ban on these websites isn't going to stop those who mean harm
from getting to their goal.

All I can see that this results in is collateral damage, e.g., me not being
able to push the latest commits for a research tool I'm building. I might be
small fish, but that's the exact point; a ban like this necessary works like a
cluster bomb.

~~~
ChristianBundy
I'm sure you've already thought of this, but you can use a VPS as a proxy to
circumvent the ban – I've had a great experience with DigitalOcean.

~~~
kristopolous
Furthermore at the shell you can set environment variables such as
"http_proxy" which many tools will observe. Search "http_proxy" with your
favorite search engine for more info. It's pretty useful.

------
gshrikant
> A Government source said the decision to block the 32 websites were taken
> after thorough “filtration process based on a strict regimen”, and there is
> a proper committee in the Department of Information Technology in place to
> whet complaints. [1]

This is unbelievably ridiculous, if not downright stupid. Even as our Prime
Minister speaks of bringing about a new digital revolution, decisions such as
these show how badly equipped the lawmakers are in dealing with issues
relating to technology.

Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which flies
in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in the
world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright ban
on several important software hosting websites and content providers just
evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of
technology.

[1] [http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/now-modi-govt-
blocks-3...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/now-modi-govt-
blocks-32-websites/article6742372.ece?homepage=true)

~~~
rgovind
>>Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which
flies in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in
the world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright
ban on several important software hosting websites and content providers just
evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of
technology.

Spot on!

------
FrankenPC
I'm not a India software industry expert, so excuse me if this sounds like a
dumb question.

Isn't it a terrible economic idea for India to block access to Github? I
thought India was really big into software engineering?

~~~
rgovind
I am an Indian citizen so I can offer some perspective. Atleast 50% of those
in software engineering don't vote. Going to voting station, standing in queue
and voting is a painful process and most of us don't take the trouble. Hence,
their concerns are not really heard in the govt. These people will not go to
concerned authorities and explain them how it will affect the economy. They
will just whine for a few days and then find a workaround. Most of those
affected by these blockades are mom and pop shops aka startups. Govt doesn't
listen to people in startups. It only listens to big guys like Infosys and
TCS. These big guys don't use github to host their code.

In India, the moment you say security, all logic and reason stop. And police
is always looking for quick fixes. That is why google street view is still not
available in India.

~~~
crag
"Going to voting station, standing in queue and voting is a painful process
and most of us don't take the trouble."

Not exactly cupcakes and candy in America either. But I suspect the voting
process is easier here. But our numbers are also very low. In 2014 I think 36%
of the voting population voted? Which means, the current government doesn't
represent the American people.

But whose fault is that? Well ours (Americans), of course. Most don't take the
time (or care too) too vote. But man, when it comes time to bitch about issues
everyone steps to the front.

~~~
rgovind
This is news to me. I didn't know voting percentage in US was so bad. In
India, its actually much better. About 50-60% most of the time but thats
because candidates pay $20 per vote!

------
sametmax
Wow, I'm the autor of 0bin.net (it's an encrypted pastebin written in python).
Kinda feel weird to see your (really) small pastebin get caught in that. It's
insane.

Well, it's open source and easy to install, anybody can duplicate it if needed
so I guess it's ok.

Maybe we should add some way to replicate one instance content to other
trusted instances to avoid this problem.

~~~
twothamendment
It is open source on another website that is ... blocked. Funny. For the
curious: [https://github.com/sametmax/0bin](https://github.com/sametmax/0bin)

Replication would be cool feature.

~~~
sametmax
Yeah. And our blog is usually blocked too, actually even in France. Some
entreprise firewalls block our blog, some antivirus firewall too cause we mix
NSFW content with programming in our articles. Well, I guess when the big guys
start blocking you, you are probably doing something right :)

------
bdcravens
If Github is truly blocked, that could be devastating for outsourced work, on
both sides of the equation.

~~~
themonk
Those who use Github knows how to bypass the ban.

~~~
morb
I don't think it's helpful to consider this ban a non-issue because it's easy
to bypass. It's easy to bypass this time, next time it may be a bit harder,
depending on what the government orders ISP's. And there probably will be
"next time", depending on the effects of all this.

Also, someone else here asked about legality of bypassing the ban, that is a
good question I'd like to see answered, even though I think we all know the
answer to that one.

~~~
peferron
This slippery slope is exactly what happened in China.

\- First, they block a few websites: no big deal, I'll just use a VPN.

\- Then they block OpenVPN default port: no big deal, I'll just use another
port or IPSec.

\- Then international connections slow down to a crawl: no big deal, maybe
they're not throttling but just having capacity issues, let's wait a bit see
if it gets better.

Then one day your realize that what was at first a minor inconvenience is now
wasting hours of your life and killing your productivity.

~~~
netheril96
Yes, but we are powerless to change anything. It is not like that we can vote
or have any voice in the governing of ourselves.

And even China doesn't block GitHub. It tried once, but backed down soon for
unknown reasons.

------
catchmrbharath
The sites are blocked only at the DNS level. If you switch your DNS from your
ISP to either OPenDNS or Google DNS, then all these sites should work.

~~~
sounds
This probably partially explains the inconsistent reports on this thread
("it's blocked here" / "it's not blocked here")

------
giis
I live in Southern part of India, I can access archive.org or github or
pastebin from here. I don't think its a complete ban. May be some ISP
providers blocking these sites. (Checked in some code to github few minutes
back :D ) I hope they will revoke this move in upcoming days.

------
doe88
I think nowadays blocking Github is almost dumber than blocking coursera.org.
It's an invaluable resource for all CS students.

------
aselzer
This one is interesting:
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/)

According to the list it has been specifically blocked. It appears to be a
pastebin clone written in PHP.

Almost all of them are pastebin-like sites.

[http://atnsoft.com/atnsoft.com/textpaster/](http://atnsoft.com/atnsoft.com/textpaster/)
seems _very_ unrelated.

My assumption would have been that a government crawler stumbled upon some
messages it didn't like and the sites they were on ended up on the list, but
the two sites above would unlikely be affected by this.

Archive.org was probably affected because they mirrored some content of any of
them.

~~~
phit_
It is actually related, this software allows you to fill out webforms
automatically. Now these bans are mostly around websites that allow you to
host text online and this tool helps easily getting your text on tons of
websites. So I see why this is related.

~~~
aselzer
In that way it is related, but it is not in the same category as the other
sites listed. It is a tool that _can_ be used to spread spam, propaganda, and
possibly automate entry of data into inflexible systems.

If governments can justify censoring access to a program like this for those
reasons, then I am worried.

------
rajbot
I am trying to find out if archive.org is still being blocked or not, as we
are hearing conflicting reports from users.

I queried the Indian DNS servers on this list that are marked 'valid' or
'new': [http://public-dns.tk/nameserver/in.html](http://public-
dns.tk/nameserver/in.html)

Only one of them (182.59.1.235, operated by MTNL ISP) returned the fake IP
being used for blocked sites (59.185.3.14). The other 1843 servers returned
the correct IP.

I am trying to figure out if that means archive.org has been removed from the
block list, or if the DNS servers listed on that page haven't yet been updated
with the blocked sites.

If anyone can help us figure out if archive.org is still blocked, it would be
greatly appreciated!

Thanks! -raj at archive.org

~~~
meta-coder
Yes, archive.org is still being blocked by BSNL's default DNS server in
Maharashtra as of Thu Jan 1 20:40:11 IST 2015.

    
    
      $ dig +nocmd +nostats +nocomments @218.248.255.211 archive.org
      ;archive.org.			IN	A
      archive.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400

~~~
rajbot
Thanks!

------
confluence
Someone has made a huge mistake and should be fired over this.

Utterly ludicrous.

------
d0ugie
A lot of these sites, almost all of them, are pastebin-esque, including
sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ which is a "PHP and Git based pastebin."

I noticed Pastebin getting a fair number of mentions in the news in connection
with the Sony attack as a place for hackers to dump sensitive information
publicly and easily.

My guess is this blacklist was assembled to mitigate such hacking damage on
Indian targets, but it was assembled with some haste; and github and vimeo, I
doubt, will remain blocked for too long.

~~~
MichaelGG
The goal of blocking the ability for someone to post text documents online is
so far removed from reality. It makes no sense at all. The only thing it
accomplishes is to make India appear even more incompetent.

------
javajosh
"Blocking websites" is a degree-of-freedom national governments simply should
not have.

~~~
drdaeman
They could, but I strongly hope for a few things:

1\. The technical side of things would prevent anyone from blocking easily,
making it costly to censor.

2\. The sites won't bend much, understanding the full consequences of their
actions, that with every demand complied there will be another one. It starts
with evil terrorists and pedophiles but _never_ ends with those, going after
political activists, whistleblowers and just random things someone in power
thought they don't like.

3\. Eventually, we'll have less fragile societies, that won't have issues with
anyone speaking anything. Governments will adapt and instead of censorship
develop educational programs that encourage rational thinking, fact
verification and other goodness, so any ill propaganda will be pointless.

------
readme
Hey I know! IT is the backbone of our economy, so lets block a bunch of sites
that programmers like.

\--The Indian Gov.

~~~
jqm
Maybe it's partially incentive to develop domestic equivalents?

Probably not, probably just stupidity, but then again...maybe. ("Never assign
to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice or greed" ... or
something like that)

~~~
samspot
You got the stupidity/malice-greed quote entirely backwards :). You aren't
supposed to attribute to malice anything that can be explained by stupidity.

~~~
jqm
Yes, I know what the original quote says. I'm not stupid:)

I believe when big well funded parties do things that appear simply stupid,
sometimes there is more at play than stupidity. Quite often it involves money.

------
chris_wot
Oh-ho! Security is evidently high on the Indian government's priority list...
the Joint Secretary for the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, a Mr Shri
P. Kalyanasundaram, has an email address at Yahoo for official correspondence!
[1]

I'm wondering how long it will be though before the Wikipedia article gets
updated:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India)

1\. [http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx](http://pgportal.gov.in/pgo.aspx)

~~~
rvern
The Wikipedia article is already up-to-date.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#3...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India#32_websites_blocked)

------
sgarg26
Yes, this move is an over reaction. Especially, banning archive.org... India
was just hit with a terrorist attack in Bangalore very recently. The techdirt
article should mention this part.

[http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-
blast...](http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-blast-a-
terror-attack-says-union-government-641129)

~~~
MichaelGG
And the response there is just as lame:

"The Home Minister today asked the state government to install CCTVs in all
key places in the city."

And they're going to ask restaurants to close at 1am on New Year's... As if
that'd accomplish anything.

~~~
elwell
They might have specific intel on something. Just as possibility...

~~~
rgovind
As an Indian citizen who lived in bangalore. I can tell you there are couple
of more plausible reasons why police/politicians don't want late night hotels.
1) They can charge bribes from such clubs/hotels. This is single biggest
reason. 2) Politicians can tell to conservatives that they are protecting
Indian culture and get votes from them. Conservatives are more likely to vote
than these club going crowd.

Specific intelligence might have been a reason but 1am drama happens very year
in every South Indian city, so I am less likely to believe it.

------
nnain
How I wish the Indian top brass gets to read this thread! The new government
came with promises of getting rid of bureaucratic hurdles... and now this.

The guy who made this list ofcourse didn't have the guts to put Facebook,
Twitter on it because the Prime Minister / PM Office actively uses those tools
to reach out to the people.

------
pavanred
Isn't this setting a dangerous precedent, I am sure such tendency of issuing
blanket bans could be misused. Perhaps the cheapest way to attack/bring down a
big website or even quell competition, just post some offensive content on a
website and let the government issue blanket bans.

------
Nib
Come on, stop acting that shitty. I'm a proud Indian, and this is the second
time I'm condemning the state of the Internet in India in the same
month[Earlier, due to Airtel's proposal to violate net neutrality].

If you believe you're doing so as these websites contain "anti-India" stuff,
well, then screw yourself. Code that is used to run apps worldwide, API's, and
what not have been cut off access to due to your little problem. On one hand,
the guys promote the IT industry but on the other hand, they purposefully
demote the industry. Get your goals right, people.

Moreover, I don't think the telecommunications department even knows how to
cut off access to a website. I'm from Delhi, and here, both Github and
Pastebin are accessible.

------
IvyMike
The ominous part is that they blocked sites where you can easily share
information in bulk.

Is the intention to prohibit such sharing in general? Such efforts are doomed
to fail, but that doesn't mean it won't be a hell of a ride.

------
anExcitedBeast
Why stop at the domain level? India should block all *.com traffic until
Verisign takes down all objectionable content.

~~~
seanp2k2
You joke now, but e.g.
[https://pracops.com/wiki/index.php/Jon_Postel#DNS_Root_Autho...](https://pracops.com/wiki/index.php/Jon_Postel#DNS_Root_Authority_test.2C_U.S._response)

~~~
mytochar
That cert is expired...

------
arielm
Looks like India is using a cannon to kill a mosquito. Regardless of what we
think about terrorism, disabling access to entire sites companies rely on for
their daily operation is simply careless.

As noted by other commented they didn't even try to resolve the situation but
rather went the route of blindly blocking access.

This is a huge red flag, in my opinion, that the Internet as we know is has
reached a big fork in the road and where we go from here will do are if our
future will look like Biff's world in Back to the Future II or not...

------
suhair
can access github, archive.org, and pastebin through BSNL, Indian State owned
telecommunications company. EDIT: Major news paper in India reports it was b/c
of contents related to ISIS and the ban was removed later
[http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-n...](http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/smartbuy/tech-
news/centre-blocks-32-websites-for-security-reasons-restores-some-
later/article6742568.ece)

~~~
ehPReth
Are you using non-ISP provided DNS?

~~~
suhair
No, Hindu online states the ban was removed later so that may be the reason i
can access it now.

~~~
ehPReth
Ah, I see - thanks!

------
sayhar
Thanks Narendra Modi.

~~~
jusben1369
I assume this is a play on the "Thanks Obama!" meme/joke in the US?

~~~
Retra
I can't seem to remember if sarcasm was invented in the US sometime around
2008 or not.

~~~
jusben1369
Snarky warky!

------
bradleysmith
This is remedied with a simple VPN, correct?

only justification in that article:

" Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: 'The websites that have been
blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying
Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable
content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being
unblocked.' "

~~~
xanderstrike
It is, but only if you have access to a machine outside the ban. So outsourced
employees and established companies are going to be fine, but if you're a 15
year old just getting into hacking spending $5 a month on a VPN service or a
private server out of the country is going to be a problem. I can't imagine
becoming the programmer I am today without the huge resource that is Github.

~~~
ehPReth
Does Tor work in India?

~~~
minot
How will you get Tor binaries if they block Tor project website in the next
wave of bans?

~~~
ehPReth
Here's what the Tor project recommends:
[https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor)
but sadly it's a cat-and-mouse game

------
hsivonen
"However, the key nature of many of the sites affected, and the fact that
entire sites, rather than just some of their pages, were blocked, is bound to
lead to calls for this blunt instrument to be refined before it is used
again."

It would be more worrying if ISPs could block individual pages on https sites
like GitHub.

------
noisy_boy
Based on the schools Mr. Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP is following
in Linkedin[1], it seems like he studied in IIT Benaras Hindu University,
Varanasi. Assuming he didn't get in using political connections/kickbacks, he
is clearly not an idiot. I'm genuinely puzzled by this dumb decision. He is a
freaking engineer from a top technical university of India and the guy doesn't
know what github is for?!

[1]:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/argupta26](https://www.linkedin.com/in/argupta26)

------
Naushad
Not unusual in India. The IT Laws here are outdated, no ID protection and
Privacy Laws have come to effect which are still lying to be approved. The
problem is with the people in power who are just arrogant in their will to
exercise it without knowing the intricacies or the impact. Certain sections of
the IT act (Sec 66 for example) are still being abused. The way to improve it
is actually involing institutes like IIT and people from technology as their
core field to get laws drafted and processes.

------
h43k3r
I can confirm that many of these websites are still working on my university
connection in India.

And I promise, if they don't revert their decision, I will launch a proxy site
for all these websites.

------
tiatia
You have to realize that some countries don't have internet. Like China, China
does not have internet. They probably don't even know what Internet is. They
think if they can order something from Taobao then this is Internet. Regarding
communication (phone, internet, postal mail) China is not even a third world
country since third world countries actually have internet.

Now the Indian government tries to compete with China who has the most fucked
up communications. Good luck!

------
tkirby
Don't block stackoverflow. The economy will crash.

------
mavdi
Github... Narendra Modi is a total fucking idiot. There goes billions of $$$s
of lost income for indian developers with out of date skills.

------
ToastyMallows
Is this just a DNS block or do they control all of the ISPs in India? Sorry
I'm ignorant about the state of the Internet in India.

~~~
danellis
Wouldn't a DNS block also require controlling all the ISPs?

~~~
anxrn
All ISP's in India need to be licensed by the government [1]. Non-compliance
with this directive puts their license at risk.

[1] [http://www.dot.gov.in/data-services/internet-
services](http://www.dot.gov.in/data-services/internet-services)

------
bigphishy
What exactly are the consequences of banning github on a fallacious, minuscule
and largely anti-technological terrorist organization?

------
scriptle
So, you're requested to change your DNS setting to "8.8.8.8" & "8.8.4.4" \-
Google's public DNS. I guess most of the ISPs just blocked the domain names
and not the IPs those domains resolve to. It worked for me in two networks.

------
anupshinde
I can access Github, archive.org, pastebin from state owned BSNL with ISP
provided DNS (from western part of India). Have confirmed from few other parts
too and it seems to be working. Have been checking since last 6 hours and it
hasn't been down yet.

------
dagwn
Here's the change.org petition: [https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-
communication-and-it-go...](https://www.change.org/p/ministry-of-
communication-and-it-govt-of-india-unblock-github-others)

------
chhantyal
FYI, if the ban on Github is hampering your collaboration during day to day
development, you can also self host Gitlab
[https://about.gitlab.com](https://about.gitlab.com) which is working great
for us.

------
anuraj
Indian bureaucracy at its whimsical best and ridiculous as always - do not
expect anything sane from them. Internet freedom in India is nonexistent.

They don't even remotely know what is the effect on business if services like
github are blocked!!

------
musesum
Have offshored some dev in India, in the past. We depend on Github. VPNs
aside, idiotic IT policy by India nudges us towards South America. Same goes
(I think) for China in blocking Google Apps.

------
edwinyzh
As a Chinese, I thought (really) India has freedom of speech and this kind of
things should never happen there, I can imagine what you might feel, my India
fellows.

------
boyter
Oddly I happen to be in India right now. Can still access every site listed.
Not sure if it has not rolled out or perhaps foreign internet has less
restrictions.

------
Zigurd
India blocks github for subversion </rimshot>

------
ghantila
I'm on Airtel Broadband, and all the 32 websites are working fine (atlease for
now). May be because I'm using Google Public DNS.

~~~
_nedR
It seems airtel hasn't yet enforced the block. I am using Google DNS and yet
most of the websites mentioned are blocked

------
AxisOfEval
The Indian government is being utterly stupid. This is tantamount to saying:
"Terrorists breathe Oxygen? Neat! Ban Oxygen."

------
known
[http://hide-ip-by-fly.appspot.com/](http://hide-ip-by-fly.appspot.com/) is
handy

------
pratnala
Well, all they have done is just DNS blocking. Change your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and
you can continue to access these sites.

------
ilamparithi
Can confirm. Github and archive.org are not accessible. (From South India)

------
grannyg00se
Does anyone have an example of ISIS supplied anti-India content?

------
sunilnandihalli
This is bad!!!! what are they thinking?? github is blocked???

------
known
A terrorist is a freedom fighter who isn't on your side.

------
sunilnandihalli
This is bad!! what are they thinking!!! github is blocked??

------
hnroops
In USA, anyone can quickly write DMCA request and after a few hours the
requested website will be offline. So, don't bother with USA. India is much
more better for internet startups.

------
thunderbong
Weebly (www.weebly.com) is currently blocked too.

------
seshakiran
Github? seriously?

------
skazka16
Seems like a good time for bitbucket.

------
vs4vijay
Everything is blocked from BSNL ISP.

------
ForFreedom
They should also block gov.in too

------
V01D-eXe
well, is this problem solved (?) because I can access each and every website
on the list.

------
chocks
Why block sites like gihub instead of issuing DMCA takedown notices? doesn't
make sense.

~~~
Havvy
DMCA is about copyright, there's no copyright violations here. Furthermore,
DMCA is an American law, and does not apply to India. Finally, even if it was
American law, it's not a law for the government to use, but rather the
citizens.

------
alokyadav15
from kolkata most of the sites are accessible .

------
meta-coder
BSNL's DNS server replying with "SOA localhost. root.localhost." to all of the
blocked domains (except sourceforge.net and atnsoft.com).

    
    
      # 218.248.255.211 is the default DNS server for BSNL DSL customers in Maharashtra, India
      $ date
      Thu Jan  1 20:21:02 IST 2015
      $ dig +nocmd +nostats +nocomments @218.248.255.211 -f blocked.txt
      ;justpaste.it.			IN	A
      justpaste.it.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;hastebin.com.			IN	A
      hastebin.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;codepad.org.			IN	A
      codepad.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;pastie.org.			IN	A
      pastie.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;pastee.org.			IN	A
      pastee.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;paste2.org.			IN	A
      paste2.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;slexy.org.			IN	A
      slexy.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;paste4btc.com.			IN	A
      paste4btc.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;0bin.net.			IN	A
      0bin.net.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.heypasteit.com.		IN	A
      heypasteit.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;sourceforge.net.		IN	A
      sourceforge.net.	154	IN	A	216.34.181.60
      sourceforge.net.	85923	IN	NS	ns4.p03.dynect.net.
      sourceforge.net.	85923	IN	NS	ns3.p03.dynect.net.
      sourceforge.net.	85923	IN	NS	ns1.p03.dynect.net.
      sourceforge.net.	85923	IN	NS	ns2.p03.dynect.net.
      ns1.p03.dynect.net.	85918	IN	A	208.78.70.3
      ns2.p03.dynect.net.	172323	IN	A	204.13.250.3
      ns3.p03.dynect.net.	85918	IN	A	208.78.71.3
      ns4.p03.dynect.net.	172323	IN	A	204.13.251.3
      ;atnsoft.com.			IN	A
      atnsoft.com.		14135	IN	A	192.185.225.228
      atnsoft.com.		86135	IN	NS	ns6616.hostgator.com.
      atnsoft.com.		86135	IN	NS	ns6615.hostgator.com.
      ns6615.hostgator.com.	172452	IN	A	192.185.225.220
      ns6616.hostgator.com.	172452	IN	A	192.185.225.221
      ;archive.org.			IN	A
      archive.org.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.hpage.com.			IN	A
      hpage.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.ipage.com.			IN	A
      ipage.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.webs.com.			IN	A
      webs.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.weebly.com.			IN	A
      weebly.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.000webhost.com.		IN	A
      000webhost.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.freehosting.com.		IN	A
      freehosting.com.	86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;vimeo.com.			IN	A
      vimeo.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.dailymotion.com.		IN	A
      dailymotion.com.	86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;pastebin.com.			IN	A
      pastebin.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;gist.github.com.		IN	A
      gist.github.com.	86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.ipaste.eu.			IN	A
      ipaste.eu.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;thesnippetapp.com.		IN	A
      thesnippetapp.com.	86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;snipt.net.			IN	A
      snipt.net.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;tny.cz.				IN	A
      tny.cz.			86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;github.com.			IN	A
      github.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;snipplr.com.			IN	A
      snipplr.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;termbin.com.			IN	A
      termbin.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;www.snippetsource.net.		IN	A
      snippetsource.net.	86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400
      ;cryptbin.com.			IN	A
      cryptbin.com.		86400	IN	SOA	localhost. root.localhost. 1997022700 28800 14400 3600000 86400

~~~
jumpwah
holy fucking shit is this actually happening. has it happened before? how long
do these last?

By the way, I'm not in India, but still, _surely_ this is not going to last? I
mean, why have they not blocked youtube and stackoverflow, do they not have
integrity? So like is everyone in india going to use gitlab and ptpb.pw now?

Edit:

May as fucking well block google right? Do they not understand the importance
of github.com and all the wealth of software that it contains? I mean yeah,
centralization of lots of important stuff is bad for this exact reason, but at
this stage, blocking github has got to really backfire here...

India has software developers right, this has to royally fuck _a lot_ of them
and their development environments am I wrong?

------
iamleppert
Good ridden to those in India. Bye bye!!!

------
nsnick
Maybe we can finally get Java off of GitHub.

------
vegabook
There is a case to be made for the idea that America-hosted, America-doctrine
birthed, websites, do not jive with everybody on the planet. The idea that
Github is beyond reproach and blocking it makes no sense is superficially
tempting, until you realise that the vast, vast majority of projects on it are
America-led. Why is it so surprising to block a culture which is permeating
the planet, to the detriment of other cultures? And of course many non-
Americans will object to this idea, but that is because they tend to me the
top of their local game and looking to be hired into (or otherwise benefit
from) the America-led capital-driven, individual first at the expense of the
community, ideology.

There is a tendency to knee-jerk condemn these blockages, including those in
China, or indeed in Europe. It is not obvious to me that some kind of barrier
to the Americanisation of the planet, including via its dominant websites, is
such a bad thing.

~~~
frozenport
>>kind of barrier to the Americanisation of the planet, including via its
dominant websites, is such a bad thing

India is a democracy, if they want to block it for 'cultural' reasons they
should get the people's approval to block it for 'cultural' reasons. Right now
they are acting on the wrong mandate. We are most likely looking at a case of
gross detachment from the constituents they serve.

~~~
vegabook
That is true, but you must also realise the ability of the world's greatest
power to influence thinking across the planet via the dominance of its
corporations, institutions, and yes, dominant sites. In this situation,
democracy is maleable by capital.

And I am not saying these blockages are good. Only that we should always
question who is served by all this openness.

