Recently, in a press statement issued by (MOCIT) Ministry of Communication and Information technology has ordered the regulator Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) to ban porn websites.
As per the new Muluki Ain (Aparad Samhita) 2074, it is strictly prohibited to broadcast and distribute offensive sexual content.
Sudhir Sharma, director at Subisu informed, we can ban only those sites which are listed by the government, and those unlisted sites can’t be prohibited.
“We are not a regulatory body to distinguish between porn sites and non-porn sites. We will accept the government order, but we won’t investigate this matter. We are just a service provider; there is already a concerned authority to work on these things”, said Sharma.
NTA claimed that all the porn sites are going to be banned very soon since they have already ordered the ISPs to prohibit the sites that include pornographic content.
In a meeting with NTA, ISPs told that it is impossible to ban all the existing porn sites because no any technology in Nepal detects the porn sites.
Diwakar Panta, an officer at WorldLink Communication, told “it is beyond the bounds of possibility to ban the websites including pornography contents. There are thousands of porn sites in the world of internet and to ban all of them the government needs to invest a lot of money. To stop all those sites very high function software and human resources are needed which a government can’t afford”.
According to article one hundred twenty-one of the criminal code, it is strictly prohibited to carry any materials that include offensive sexual content.
The government decision on banning porn sites is getting mixed feedbacks, especially by youngsters.
Sexologist claims that the government has failed in proper consultation with experts regarding the decision of Prohibiting porn sites because there is some pornographic content which is essential for people, such kind of material makes people aware about sexual life.
As per the latest data of Alexa Ranking, – a company that provides commercial web traffic data and analytics, four pornographic sites are ranked on the list of top 50 places in Nepal.
On Ashoj 5 after getting the order from MOCIT NTA banned a few porn sites that are highly visited by the audience. Due to lack of proper system and technology, NTA couldn’t ban all the existing porn sites. NTA has blocked a total of 45 porn sites at the current scene. Among millions of porn sites, only 45 of them were prevented by the NTA.
Min Prasad Aryal, director and spokesperson at NTA, said: “very soon we are going to prohibit all the porn sites.” Aryal also informed, there are only 15 active Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Nepal, if those ISP works strictly regarding ban porn sites, then we will be successful to prohibit all the sites that contain sexual contents. NTA will take legal action against those ISP who will not ban the access to porn sites.”
While NTA is planning to ban all the porn sites, ISPs claims that it is impossible to prohibit websites that include sexual contents.
Earlier in 2015, the Indian government has banned 857 porn sites, but after facing massive criticism, the government withdrew the decision.
“Government operation of banning Porn sites will be pointless because there are so many options like VPN, Proxy, and others that could unblock the sites,” said the official from one of the ISP Company.
People have become so techno-friendly that they can unblock every kind of sites by using various techniques. Even in a country like China people uses Facebook, Viber and other through those sites are strictly prohibited to use. The Government of China is failing to ban those sites then how can Nepal become successful in prohibiting the sites.
