Not a good move, India

Okay...so you remember how I was, like, India is going to take over the world after returning from Bangalore?

Well, I finally checked the news today (as well as was pinged by Prashant, whose blog has been blocked by the Indian government, but you can still read it) and found out that India has blocked Blogspot (the service I also blog on) and Typepad. Sounds mysteriously like China's closed system, which is what will ultimately hold China back from true progress.

According to Prashant, this move was made because of the recent terrorist attacks in India and the theory that the bombers have been using these tools to communicate. From SDA-India:

The directive from the department of telecommunications was aimed at curtailing various political and religious extremes. But service providers were forced to cut all major sites, including the popular Geocities and Typepad. This step has ended in blocking all access to a number of blogging Web sites, causing outrage to thousands of bloggers. Indian bloggers say that the decision is an attack on freedom of speech.

However, enforcing this sweeping block has also shut down access to a blogspot site, which has been set up to assist victims and their families of the Mumbai attacks...not to mention countless non-terrorist related sites, which is in direct violation of freedom of speech.

I certainly understand panic and fear, but shutting down a large part of the Indian blogosphere isn't going to stop terrorist communications. In fact, wouldn't they want to keep it opened up so that it's easily monitored? By shutting down these sites, the Indian government alienates their citizens, communicates their fear and closed-ness to the rest of the world and does nothing concrete to stop terrorism.

Now my bloglines will only be half lit up, which makes me very sad. :(

::I made the suggestion to Prashant that he could send me his blogposts and I would post them for him, but he thought it would implicate me for future visits to India if I did so, and advised against it.

::Update: Dina has a hack for Indian bloggers...