Update: We’ve had a statement from GitHub which says Indian users are still experiencing disruption. A GitHub spokesperson says:
“We are still receiving reports that github.com is inaccessible for some users in India as of this afternoon (January 2). We have tried to reach out to the Indian government through several different channels, but so far it is still not clear to us what content caused them to put us on the list.
Our top priority is to restore access to the developer community in India that depends on GitHub every day. To that end, we would like to work with the Indian government to establish a transparent process for identifying unlawful content, restore access, and ensure that GitHub continues to remain available in the future without interruption.”
Original story follows…
The Indian government’s block of websites alleged to have hosted terrorist content has been lifted for gist.github, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Weebly – but 28 sites remain inaccessible thanks to the order, according to ZDNet.
The four sites now given a reprieve were part of an original list of 32 that included Pastebin and the Internet Archive. India’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology issued a statement saying the block has been lifted for the four sites.
Insane! Govt orders blocking of 32 websites including @internetarchive @vimeo @github @pastebin #censorship #FoEx pic.twitter.com/F75ngSGohJ
— Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh) December 31, 2014
India’s Department of Telecommunications issued an order on December 17 instructing ISPs to block the websites.
It’s not uncommon for the Indian authorities to restrict access to sites but the latest round of censorship has provoked fury, particularly from developers reliant on access to Github.
Indian citizens enraged by decision to block such significant sites have been using the hashtag #GOIblocks to express their displeasure.
➤ India lifts block on Vimeo; Pastebin, Internet Archive, others still banned [ZDNet]
Image credit: Shutterstock
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