NEW DELHI — In India’s ongoing to pursuit to block Internet porn en masse, a solicitor general involved with the case argued before the Supreme Court that censoring all Internet porn is not only impossible, but may actually pose greater harm to society.
Appearing before a bench headed by Justice BS Chauhan, additional solicitor general KV Vishwanathan explained, "Everything would be blocked, and even good literature would be blocked, and it would cause greater harm," the Times of India reported.
Vishwanathan added that blocking porn sites would require software to be installed in every computer — and that a law would need to be passed in order to mandate all computer manufacturers to include such software.
The hearing is part of an ongoing address to a petition filed last spring by Indore-based advocate Kamlesh Vaswani, who believes that pornographic sites are a major cause of crimes against women and should therefore be banned.
The petition states, "The sexual content that kids are accessing today is far more graphic, violent, brutal, deviant and destructive and has put entire society in danger and also poses threat to public order in India. Most offenses committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography. The worrying issue is that the severity and gravity of such images is increasing.”
On November 18, the apex court issued notice to the department of telecommunication (DoT) seeking its response as to how to block websites with pornographic content in the country. The DoT has since issued statements doubting the viability of such a plan, though dozens of adult sites have been shuttered.
