Everybody must have laughed their hearts out while going through the first list of blocked websites in Nepal. Then came the second, updated list.
While going through the first 10 websites in the list, I found 6 out 10 sites were wrongly listed. You can guess what the rest of the list might look like (and, it is the second updated list)! I will do the remaining review later.
Second website in the list – is a parked domain. Hey, it is full of ads and nothing in it and it is blocked because the domain name is not decent-enough!
Now, the sixth site in the list! The site clearly mentions “Sex education by teens for teens”. It talks about health, love, birth control, STD, and pregnancy. I wrongly thought, the decision makers were family people!
Sixth site – it is again the same. A decent and helpful site for those who need health advices is wrongly blocked in Nepal! I don’t think HIV, Men’s health and women’s health are the taboo topics.
7th site clearly mentions – the site is intended for helping people recover from addiction. I believe it should have nothing to do with increasing social misconducts.
9th site is a website selling DVDs of “Sex and the City”, an American cable television and film series (details in Wikipedia). There is nothing indecent about the movie and our Film Board will gladly approve it to be screened in cinema halls in Kathmandu.
10th site in the blocked-list says it clear, they didn’t even opened the website they had listed. The site clearly says that it is specialist in some sort of apparel. The fact that the site’s photo gallery is hosted in Flickr, was enough to tell me the site was also wrongly listed there.
While going through the list I wished they didn’t have updated it at all. I think, some of these blocked websites are useful and people SHOULD visit them – so I have posted the screenshot of those websites here.
The second part of this post will analyze the remaining 43 website in the Nepal government’s blocked websites list. It sure is going to look like a promotion list after all (as I have guessed previously).
What can one expect from the government that can’t make a decent list of 60 out of millions of such websites in internet?
Selected related previous posts (repeating them again!):
- 5 reasons why the government plan won’t succeed
- Government announced the ban
- The government should have blocked access to temples for indecent carvings on temple tundal
- ID requirement in Cyber Cafe – will it work?
- Govt. blocked VOIP sites
- Gmail offered free calls to the US and Canada and they couldn’t block it.
- After two months of ban, still collecting opinion
- 60 P0rn sites blocked in Nepal
- First batch of website list blocked in Nepal
- Second updated list (with 56 websites)