India's Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi, has had a long and illustrious career in the courtroom, battling wits with his opponents. However on Monday the wizened lawyer met his match in none other than the Chief Justice of India while he was presenting the government's argument in the case favouring a ban on pornographic websites.
The matter came up before a bench headed by the Chief Justice H L Dattu when Rohatgi told the apex court that the list of 857 websites was handed over to the government by petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani and the department of telecom has blocked the sites "without any verification".
The department has asked Internet Service Providers to only block websites with child porn, he said. The AG went to explain to the bench that there were various kinds of pornography -- hard-core, soft and violent porn.
It was then that the Chief Justice asked the AG: "Mr. Rohatgi how do you know all this", to which he replied: "your lordship I have not watched it, but I do plan to, since that is the only way to understand the concerns, moreover my juniors are very tech savy".
The entire conversation was reported by the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi. The AG also stated that "pornography is a grey area and there are no straight answers."
Rohatgi argued that it was almost next to impossible to block porn since new sites would pop up with new names if restrictions are imposed.
He said that although the government wanted a ban on websites peddling child pornography, it could not play the role of moral police and be present in every household to check what people are watching in private.
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The matter came up before a bench headed by the Chief Justice H L Dattu when Rohatgi told the apex court that the list of 857 websites was handed over to the government by petitioner Kamlesh Vaswani and the department of telecom has blocked the sites "without any verification".
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The department has asked Internet Service Providers to only block websites with child porn, he said. The AG went to explain to the bench that there were various kinds of pornography -- hard-core, soft and violent porn.
It was then that the Chief Justice asked the AG: "Mr. Rohatgi how do you know all this", to which he replied: "your lordship I have not watched it, but I do plan to, since that is the only way to understand the concerns, moreover my juniors are very tech savy".
The entire conversation was reported by the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi. The AG also stated that "pornography is a grey area and there are no straight answers."
Loving the fact that the Attorney General described various categories of #pornography & the Chief Justice of #India asked how he knew. 1/2
— Malavika Jayaram (@MalJayaram) August 10, 2015Rohatgi argued that it was almost next to impossible to block porn since new sites would pop up with new names if restrictions are imposed.
He said that although the government wanted a ban on websites peddling child pornography, it could not play the role of moral police and be present in every household to check what people are watching in private.
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