Recently, we come across a new law about blocked URL in India. This law states a penalty will be levied just for viewing a torrent file or downloading a file from a host that is banned in India. But the language used in the message is vague.
It seems this wasn’t a problem until the consequences were later revealed which shocked every one of us for 3 years of jail along with 3 lakhs of penalty which stirred everyone’s mind. Here is the good news for all of us. Here is the detailed explanation on this.
You Willn’t Be Fined For Just Viewing:
According to the warning ‘viewing’, ‘downloading’, ‘exhibiting’ or ‘duplicating’ ‘an illicit copy of content under this URL’ is deemed as a punishable offense according to Sections 63, 63-A, 65 and 65-A of the Copyright Act of 1957.
The ironic part about the language is that even visiting as termed as ‘viewing’ the content is illegal. Though it can be argued that the ‘viewing’ refers to watching an illicit copy of movies or television shows downloaded from the website.
Prasanth Sugathan, Counsel at the Software Freedom Law Centre India in an interview given to NDTV said that there is no law that can put the citizens of our country in jail for just visiting a website. Here is his official statement.
‘Visiting any website, even if it is a blocked site is not illegal either under the provisions of the Copyright Act,1957 or the Information Technology Act, 2000, the only exception could be if a person views child pornography.’
The law warned us against the Viewing, downloading, exhibiting or duplicating an illicit copy of the CONTENT, but not the website. This means that there is no restriction on visiting the blocked website via VPN or proxy site even if it is blocked at the Internet Gateway or ISPs. You can definitely use proxy websites and some VPN software to access websites to stay anonymous.