Indian government orders ISPs to block Vimeo, Github, and 30 other sites (Update: A few websites unblocked)

(Update on January 1: The Government of India has initiated action to unblock the following sites – Dailymotion, Github, Vimeo, and Weebly. According to a press release by the government, the blocked sites were “being used for jihadi propaganda”. The remaining websites could be unblocked on “assurance that law of the land would be complied with”.

One of the blocked sites, Cryptbin, has tweeted that they did not receive any communication from the government.

Regarding website owners not cooperating, Cryptbin has never been contacted by anyone regarding any offending content related to #GOIBlocks

— Cryptbin (@cryptbin) January 1, 2015

The original post from December 31 is unchanged below.)

A number of Indian web users are reporting that they are unable to access websites such as Pastebin, DailyMotion, Vimeo, and Github while using internet providers such as BSNL, Vodafone, and Hathway.

This appears to stem from an order reportedly issued by India’s Department of Telecom on December 17, directing internet service providers to block 32 websites.

Pastebin acknowledged the block on its Twitter account on December 26. The other affected sites have yet to comment.

Pastebin is still blocked in India. We are getting many reports about this. The Indian government has blocked us,… http://t.co/6jqnHcgtIP

— Pastebin (@pastebin) December 26, 2014