Shashi Tharoor, former union minister and Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, on Friday night tweeted how Government of India has ‘blocked an internet archive vital to researchers. He even posed a question what does the BJP have to hide?
https://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor/status/898582080635887616
The tweet linked to an article on a website that is notorious to publish anything and everything without deference to facts or logic. The article accused the government of attacking our privacy. And it was based on half truths and lies.
Last week only we had brought out the truth about the “inexplicable instance of censorship” which was done not on government’s orders but by Madras High Court orders. As it turns out, Prakash Jha Productions and Red Chillies Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. approached the court of Justice Anita Sumanth in an attempt to stop pirated copies of their films Lipstick Under My Burkha and Jab Harry Met Sejal from being viewed online. Following which, as many as 2,650 websites were blocked as per the Madras High Court order.
Perhaps the court allowed archive.org as one of the websites to be blocked, as the website also archives media files. But they are allowed only through proper channels. So if a movie is leaked by uploading its media files somewhere, archive.org will not preserve the media file without taking into consideration the copyright issues.
Nonetheless, archive.org seems to be up and running and for most ISPs at the time Tharoor tweeted it. And he got called out on the wrong information he tried to propagate:
https://twitter.com/UnSubtleDesi/status/898598576200142848
Alert Twitter users also pointed out it was Bollywood, not Government that brought in the ban in the first place:
https://twitter.com/rajudasonline/status/898605820593803264
https://twitter.com/IR_Baboo/status/898583227006242818
https://twitter.com/jawaman/status/898592296366522368
Perhaps Mr. Tharoor could do with a bit of fact-check and be a little more responsible by not spreading fake news.