Government blocks over 60 websites including github & sourceforge on anti-terror advisory

BENGALURU|DELHI: Over 60 websites and links, including popular online tools like Github and Sourceforge used by thousands of programmers have been blocked in India, triggering angry protests by Internet users. The websites were blocked for hosting content that is pro terrorist group ISIS and not cooperating with government investigations, officials said. Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: "The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terr Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked." Based on an order issued by the country's telecom department, in a letter dated December 17 and a subsequent letter on December 19, over 60 websites have been blocked by various internet service providers in the country. While some internet service providers are yet to block these websites, many users have been reporting frequent outages in these web services over the last two weeks. Websites like Pastebin don't host any content but are a platform for users to paste text. Popular video networks like Vimeo and Dailymotion are among the websites that have been blocked. Officials from the department of Information Technology and the department of telecom were not available for comment. "These are all providing very dangerous kind of cut and paste services..You can take code  cut it, paste it, remove it, delete it," said one government official who requested anonymity.