Guy Fawkes comes to city People in masks protest the blocking of torrent sites

Guy Fawkes comes to city

People in masks protest the blocking of torrent sites

Dressed in all black and wearing Guy Fawkes masks, a group of about 100 people, mostly college students, gathered at Azad Maidan to protest against the government’s censorship of the internet. It was part of a 16-city protest called by hacktivist group Anonymous on Saturday. While the number of people who turned up may not be impressive, most of them were participating in a protest for the first time, indicating that internet censorship is an issue that finds resonance amongst youth. “I am a blogger, and I recently found out that the government can take down my tweets, or monitor my Skype conversations and make it public. This is just ridiculous,” said Nirati, who finished her Std 12 recently. Asif, a final year engineering student in Chennai, was in Mumbai on a holiday when he heard of the protests. He immediately decided to join in. “We need to refer to several international textbooks for our course. You cannot buy each and every one of them, because it gets too expensive. And our libraries are usually out of copies. Downloading the ebook from torrent sites is convenient, and what matters most is that we get access to so many books. How will we study if they block torrent sites?” he asked. Few had heard of Anonymous or its activities in India until early May. That’s when several torrent sites had been blocked by internet service providers following a court order. Anonymous India reacted by taking down the websites of the Supreme Court and Congress. The group then called for protests against the block on torrent sites as well as controversial sections of the 2011 amendments to the IT Act. In a chat with DNA, Anonymous clarified that “most of us here are not the ones organising protests. We asked people to raise their voice, and people responded by planning protests in various cities. They self-organised.” Accordingly, there were no leaders giving speeches at the gathering; everyone had their own reasons for attending. “I do realise that the internet is used by terrorists to communicate, and some people use it to propagate hate speech. I don’t mind that websites need to take down content within 36 hours as per the law. But at least explain why you are blocking the content,” said Aashish Dhivar, a BSc IT graduate who had applied for police permission for Saturday’s protest. Some seemed confused about some basic points such as copyright rules. “If I have legitimately bought a song, don’t I have the right to share it with my friends? How can the government say that’s illegal?” asked one protester. “The government has even put a limit on the number of SMSes we can send,” said another, unaware that the rules were passed to curb marketers spamming consumers. However, everyone justified Anonymous’ actions. “Defacing is the best way to spread the message,” said one protester who was dressed in a blazer, face covered by a Guy Fawkes mask. “It is only after taking sites down did the media take notice. The number here may be few, but it’s a start. We will have more the next time.”