Flourishing as Porn Parlors

Mushrooming cyber cafés are perceived as a major driver of Internet population growth in India. According to experts, bandwidth expansion and PC penetration would be influential factors in bridging the digital divide but IT pervasiveness in the country would be defined by the number of Internet users.

And cyber cafés will be a catalyst in increasing the Internet penetration among the masses. Research organization IMRB is expecting the cyber café population to double by end 2003-04 from the current 50,000.

But these cafés are being used for a different purpose. With personal cubicles and cheap browsing tariffs, the cafés are the latest pleasure domes for thousands of voyeurs. Charging as little as Rs 10-15 an hour, these cafés have become safe haven for users accessing pornographic websites and downloading lewd material.

With almost 100,000 porn sites based out of the US alone, there is plenty for the café-goers to choose from. And the choice in adult entertainment, a money grosser on the Internet, will continue to grow. In the last four years, online porn has expanded at an approximate compounded annual growth rate of 40%.

To make matters worse, most of these cyber cafés have least or no security levels and erotica can be accessed without any interference.

Mahinder (name changed), the local administrator at a 25-seater cyber café in a posh south Delhi locality, agrees. “People come regularly to our café for this (porn) only. That is why we have bunkers here. How many times can we delete these kinds of software on the PCs.”

India’s leading cyber café–Satyam I-way–too is not unscathed by this problem even though its officials tell a different story.

I-way’s regional manager Sonaal Chopra said that porn surfing is a menace, but to counter that his company has implemented an extensive security system. 

Regulatory mechanisms, another deterrent, are also not in place as the Indian government is still in the process of identifying such procedures. At best, there is a reference to Web misuse in the Indian Information Technology Act 2000 with its Chapter XI Para 67 outlining online pornography as a punishable offence.

It states: “Whoever publishes or transmits or causes to be published in the electronic form, any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it, shall be punished on first conviction with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to five years and with fine which may extend to Rs 100,000…”

Second or subsequent convictions would attract imprisonment extendable to 10 years and a fine of up to 

Rs 200,000. Another barrier is provided in Section 293 of The Indian Penal Code 1860 which specifies that sale, hire, distribution, exhibition or circulation of such content to any person below 20 years can be punished. But the regulatory mechanisms are missing.

Pawan Duggal, a leading cyber law expert, concedes that cyber cafés have been committing an offence by keeping or allowing porn viewing on their
PCs but lays the blame on the missing regulations. He expects the law to be made more stringent to restraint such activities.

Sify’s spokesperson David Appaswamy says that as an organization, Sify tries to discourage porn website access. “Despite all our efforts we cannot stop people viewing pornographic materials. The PC is a mindless machine,” he admits.

Appaswamy feels that regulators have a role to play in quelling the growing threat. “Smaller cafés sell pornographic software and downloadables as a product, which is a menace and needs to be curbed.”

SHWETA KHANNA/CNS in New Delhi