Quotes of the Day

A few days after the terror attacks in Bombay, Indians found many of their favorite blogs banned. On July 13, the Department of Telecommunications had ordered Indian Internet service providers to close a reported 17 blogs that purportedly published hate speech against Muslims. But in an effort to comply, the companies mistakenly blocked hundreds of other blogs hosted on the same servers. The government issued a new directive instructing ISPs to resume "unhindered access" to all but the specified websites, but the reaction online was immediate and furious, with dozens of sites accusing Delhi of trampling free speech. The closure even drew comparisons to China's policing of websites for political and sexual content. "India," wrote Manish Vij on the blog Ultrabrown, "is now in the august company of some of the world's least free nations." The Indian government can legally block sites promoting hate speech, terrorism or pornography, but in reality, sites are rarely banned. And, as Indian ownership of computers skyrockets, new sites are blooming: Blogspot.com, one of the affected hosts, lists over 40,000 Indian bloggers, discussing everything from India-Pakistan relations to recipes for chicken biryani.

• Benjamin Siegel
• In the wake of the 7/11 bombings, India's government cracks down on offensive blogs—and thousands of others in the process