Policing Yahoo! Groups

Yahoo! Groups, a platform for online communities to exchange information, has had the proverbial wet blanket thrown on it by the Government of India, which imposed a ban on it in mid-September. The government’s move has evoked ridicule, even anger, and achieved very little of its original purpose. What was the original purpose? Clamping down on anti-India activities being carried out on a Yahoo! Group. It started like this: the Computer Emergency Response Team, a section of the IT ministry, asked Yahoo to block http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/kynhun, a Yahoo! Group run by Naga insurgents. “Kynhun” had postings by the Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council–a banned secessionist group. As Yahoo! declined the request, in a fit of authority, a Union Ministry of Communication and Information Technology directed all leading ISPs to block this particular group.

However, and this is where technical ineptitude is highlighted, the ISPs blocked the entire Yahoo! Groups, preventing not just “Kynhun” from functioning–which probably shouldn’t function–but also thousands of other online communities from carrying out day-to-day business. 

K Srinivasan, a moderator of New Media Forum on Yahoo, calls the blocking a knee-jerk reaction by the government, which is totally unwarranted. “The Government has achieved nothing so far, it has only harassed genuine users.  It would badly reflect the image of our country.  While, we are claim to be the IT experts in the world, we are unable to handle one ban effectively,” laments
Srinivasan.

The blanket ban on groups has done more harm than good. One, it has hampers the freedom of expression, and two it does not serve the basic purpose —in the true sense mails can be still be exchanged. Smart netizens have found alternative methods to function despite the ban. Anonymizer (www.anonymizer.com) and www.proxify.com are some of the tools that provide access to
Yahoo! Groups. 

Arun Verma, who owns a Yahoo group called Creative Garh says, “The ideal way would be to set up facilities for monitoring the users of the groups rather than blocking access.” In fact not many netizens have really heard of Kynhun before the ban. “In the last two years, the group which has just 20 members and has 35 messages posted, the group can hardly be called active,” says
Verma. 

End of the day, the ban has given wide publicity for Kynhun and its movement.  

VILASINI BHARADWAJ in New Delhi