Dear List Members,

As you know, I was suffering with "slipped disc"
for past two months (last week of July, 2003
onwards), therefore could not be able to moderate
this list during my sickness. I apologise for the
inconvenience caused. I am feeling better now.

However, after joining at work on 29th September,
I could not access this mailing list on web.
Yahoo! Groups appeared to be blocked in India
(copy of a news item placed below). On the other
hand, storage quota of my mail program seemed to
be exhausted on 22nd August, therefore I did not
get any mail after that period, till I generated
space last week. Today, I have released all the
pending posts, as available in my mail box,
because I can not access the "Yahoo! Groups" till
the problem is rectified at Government level.

Thanks for your continued support.

Best Wishes & Regards
Kumar

==========================
Yahoo! Groups blocked in India

September 26, 2003

Some Indian internet service providers have
banned Yahoo! Groups en masse after the
government issued an order asking that access to
a single group, kynhun, be banned.

Lack of technical knowledge seems to be one of
the reasons for the mass blocking, at least in
the case of Dishnet, according to subscriber
Badri Seshadri, one of the first to notice that
the popular Yahoo! service was inaccessible.

India's Department of Telecommunications at the
Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology, issued an order on September 10
directing ISPs to block kynhun.

In a posting to the india-gii mailing list, one
that discusses telecom issues, Seshadri wrote:
"Dishnet has blocked access to groups.yahoo.com
since 13th September 2003 and on further
enquiries tell me that it is because Govt. of
India has sent them a directive to block specific
Yahoo! Groups and since Dishnet doesn't know how
to do that, it has blocked access to the entire
URL http://groups.yahoo.com."

===========================

Government of India (MIT) has by an order dated
10/09/03 blocked the website
"groups.yahoo.com/groups/kynhun". Even though the
block order was for a particular group, Dishnet
has blocked the entire groups.yahoo.com domain
thus blocking all groups including
cyberlaws4india group. The exact reasons for the
blocking are not known. It also appears that VSNL
Chennai has not blocked the site. They have
either ignored the order or have implemented it
only for the specific group. The home page of the
group does not indicate any significant activity
or activity inimical to India. It would have been
better for MIT to have been transparent on the
reasons for the blocking as this has resulted in
a censorship of the entire yahoo groups domain.

==========================



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