No more 'web sex' for India

India is the country that introduced the world to Kama Sutra, but it’s strange that we are still not open about the subject of sex. A latest report by Guardian says that many internet companies have secretly introduced filters to prevent Indian users from accessing sexual content

In December, the Yahoo search engine and Flickr photo-sharing site altered their sites to prevent users in India from switching off the safe-search facility. The block also applies to users in Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea. If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Hong Kong, India or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local terms of service (this means you won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off).

Even, Microsoft has banned Indian users of its Bing search engine from searching for sexual content. When you try to search for sexual material receive a notice informing them that “your country or region requires a strict Bing SafeSearch setting, which filters out results that might return adult content”

The reports suggest that users in India are responsible for more searches for “sex” than those in any other country. Its popular daily newspapers are packed with pictures of young women in states of undress and Bollywood oozes sexuality from every pore. The latest attempts to constrain Internet users come at a time when the vexed subject of sexual behavior is once again dominating the domestic headlines.

These measures are being said to be a response to recent changes to India’s Information Technology Act of 2000, which bans the publication of pornographic material. The act defines obscenity as “any content that is lascivious and that will appeal to prurient interest or the effect of which is to tend to deprave or corrupt the minds of those who are likely to see, read or hear the same”.