End of Free Surfing?

The Internet has become a medium that enables people all over to connect to

and display information freely. In the short time that it has been around, it

has become the best medium of linking people across the world with no

constraints of distance and time. The Internet as a leveler has higher

significance for countries like India with poor infrastructure and lower

opportunities.

Unfortunately, in India an unhealthy practice of restricting access to sites

has been taking place off and on. The first instance of this was when access to

the Internet was available only through a monopoly service provider. This was

contrary to the license given by the Government of India. At that point, a suit

filed in the Supreme Court resulted in preventing this practice.

The scene has completely changed now. There are nearly 200 service providers

who have applied to the government for licenses and nearly 100–almost all in

private hands–actually operating. And there are several licensed international

telecommunications service providers now, mostly in private hands. For apparent

commercial reasons, the licensed ISP’s have now begun blocking access to sites

where other service providers have operating businesses. If this trend

continues, the Internet will soon be wiped out. The loss to the country will be

gigantic. Firstly, all current economic indicators show that for the foreseeable

future, forex inflows will be closely linked to business conducted either on the

open Internet or on securely managed data transmission over Internet links.

Secondly, the government itself is banking on using the Net to make information

available to the rural and agricultural sector, as also poorer classes. Internet

connectivity is being made available in rural areas with a view to lowering the

cost of access to communications. By limiting the provision of services within

the ambit of this medium, the service providers are directly restricting the

rights of consumers to affordable communication and means of expression.

Nasscom executive council member Vijay Mukhi says, "Regulation of

content from the Internet has been left to the choice of the consumer. What is

the point of investing so much in telecom, by both government and private, if

the benefits do not reach the common man?" Limiting access to technologies

such as voice applications will have dire consequences for emerging services

such as distance learning. If this continues there will be no way of ensuring

that consumers gain access to public information and services such as land

records, license applications and other such efficient means of governance in

the future. Converging technologies such as video, voice, graphics and data will

make the Internet the most powerful medium for business and entertainment.

Restricting access threatens Indian competitiveness in a very valuable business.

Vikram Krishna, IUCI executive council member, pegs the IT industry’s forex

earnings at $10 billion in 2008. Of this, $5 billion is expected from such

critical areas as embedded technologies for handhelds. Preventing free access to

these markets will be disastrous, he adds. The government has permitted ISPs to

offer Internet telephony effective from April 1, 2002.

During the first week of May 2002, certain ISP’s apparently denied access

to various other Internet Telephony service provider (ITSP) websites/IP

addresses that had begun offering ITSP services after obtaining the required

license and fully complying with the government’s policy in this regard.

Apparently the ones that have denied access to other ISP’s have done so with a

view to force subscribers of these ISP’s to use only their own Internet

Telephony services, which in many cases are not even available as yet.

The blocking of sites and services in the past has already cost the country

dearly in terms of development of indigenous technologies in this area.

Developers and service providers from countries such as Israel and Singapore

apart from the US now dominate this field. In retrospect, one can only term such

blocking as anti-consumer and also an unnecessary regulation of content from the

Internet. Lets hope someone sees the silver lining hidden there before its too

late!

Rahul Gupta/Cyber News Service In

Mumbai