The government seems to have taken upon itself the herculean task of banning porn sites in India. Reports of internet users not being able to access porn sites since Saturday have made headlines. Those looking to access these sites were taken to a blank page instead. 
 
 This is not the first time the government crackdown on websites; Last year, they banned 32 sites, including popular sites like Vimeo, Github and DailyMotion, under Section 69A of the IT Act. The ban was lifted after a month, but some continue to be in the blocked list. 
 
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 with thousands of porn sites listed on the world wide web it remains to be seen if they can cover up enough skin. 
 
 Here is a list of things banned in the country 
 
 Beef Ban 
 
 The Maharashtra government banned the slaughter of bulls as well as bullocks earlier this year as it reintroduced the Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Bill after 19 years. Anyone found in possession of beef can be sent to jail for five years or fined Rs 10,000. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis thanked President Pranab Mukkherjee on Twitter for signing the Bill. “Our dream of ban on cow slaughter becomes a reality now,” Fadnavis tweeted. 
 
 Books 
 
 Last year, American scholar Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, was withdrawn from the shelves by her publisher Penguin House after a Delhi High Court order. A few academics petitioned the court on the grounds that few parts of the book contained factual errors on Hindu history and misrepresented the religion’s mythology. Penguin reached a settlement with the petitioners, agreeing to recall and destroy all copies of Wendy’s book within six months. 
 
 NGOs 
 
 In a clamp down on NGOs receiving foreign funds, the BJP-led government at the Centre had suspended the licences of 4,470 NGOs recently. 
 
 The govt also had a showdown of sorts with Green Peace International. The Ministry of Home Affairs froze Green Peace funds and suspended its licence to receive foreign funds citing discrepancies in their accounts. They also deplaned one of its activists, Priya Pillai, in a bid to stop her from travelling abroad. However, Green Peace won the case after the Delhi High Court quashed the government’s decision to bar Priya from travelling abroad and issuing a look-out circular in her name. Staring at a shutdown in May, Green Peace was given a temporary reprieve after the Delhi High Court granted access to donations made by Indian donors and its savings account. 
 
 Maggi 
 
 Based on the finding of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), state governments across the country have banned Maggi instant noodles, a Nestle India product, after finding that lead and MSG were beyond the permissible limit. Nestle recalled its product from the markets and destroyed all its stock. The company had recently reported its first loss in 17 years. 
 
 Films and documentaries 
 
 Documentary filmmaker Leslee Udwin courted controversy after excerpts of her documentary on the December 16 rape victim were broadcast on television. Mukesh Singh, one of the accused in the brutal gangrape and murder of Nirbhaya, was interviewed inside Tihar jail by the documentary crew. His lack of remorse over Nirbhaya’s eventual death and comments on women have caused outrage and led to its eventual ban by the government. BBC agreed to not air the documentary in India but released it internationally. 
 
 Fifty Shades of Grey was another film that did not see an India release after the Censor Board refused to certify it despite watching a watered down version. Though the government did not officially ban the film, it cannot be screened for the public without a certificate from the Censors. 
 
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 © IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd ||||| Indian authorities say they are reconsidering a massive crackdown on online pornography after blocking more than 800 websites deemed to have offensive and illegal content in recent days. 
 
 Authorities had ordered internet service providers to take down sites that officials said had become a “social nuisance.” Some accused the sites of promoting child pornography. 
 
 "A new notification will be issued shortly. The ban will be partially withdrawn. Sites that do not promote child porn will be unbanned," Information and Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told reporters Wednesday. 
 
 Indian media report the government will still ban those websites which carry "hardcore" pornographic materials, making it unclear how many sites will come back online. 
 
 Defying India’s Supreme Court 
 
 While the government says the clampdown is aimed at protecting morality and decency in the society, the move has triggered a debate about censorship and curtailment of personal liberty. 
 
 The government action also appeared to defy a recent Supreme Court statement that refused to pass a widespread ban on pornography. 
 
 The statement came during an ongoing 2013 petition from a lawyer who argued that pornographic sites should be banned as “most offenses committed against women/girls/children are fuelled by pornography.” 
 
 The lawyer, Kamlesh Vaswani, said he was motivated to bring the case by the brutal gang rape and murder of a woman in New Delhi that sparked mass protests and a national conversation about women’s rights in India. 
 
 However, last month the Supreme Court declined to pass an interim order to block websites that carried pornographic contents citing that it would amount to transgression to/of citizen’s personal liberty. 
 
 “Such interim orders cannot be passed by this court. Somebody can come to the court and say ‘Look, I am an adult and how can you stop me from watching it within the four walls of my room? It is a violation of Article 21 [right to life and personal liberty] of the Constitution.’ Yes, the issue is serious and some steps need to be taken,” the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said. 
 
 Right to Internet and cyber law expert Prashant Mali noted that the Supreme Court had not signaled any crackdown on online pornography, and the government action was a proactive step. 
 
 “The government’s proactive move of banning the sites goes against Article 19(1)(a) of the constitution i.e. Freedom of speech and expression. It should have waited for the Supreme Court’s decision in the case which is still going on.” 
 
 Regulating Pornography in Culturally Conservative India 
 
 India’s television and film industry heavily regulates the depiction of sex and for decades on-screen kissing was a rarity. 
 
 The nature of the internet makes it impossible to police content in the same way, but Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society research group said there was no evidence that any of the sites violate Indian laws. 
 
 “These sites were blocked without any prior adjudication that these are unlawful in India. The ban seems illegitimate. It is undemocratic because there doesn't seem to be any finding of unlawfulness on these websites,” Prakash said. 
 
 Following Chinese, Indians are the second largest users of the Internet. 
 
 Although Indian society is largely culturally conservative, scores of people visit pornographic websites on the largely unregulated internet. 
 
 According to Pornhub, a popular online pornography portal, Indians were the fourth largest national users of the site during last year. 
 
 Debate Follows Ban 
 
 Indian filmmaker Varma was among those who took to social media to denounce the ban. He tweeted that given the popularity of the pornographic material any government which owned up to banning porn would lose the next election. 
 
 “To ban porn saying it will be seen by who shouldn’t see it is like saying to stop traffic because there will be accidents,” Varma said in another tweet. 
 
 Former junior minister of information technology and communications of India tweeted: "The latest ban is not about liking or disliking porn. It's about government hijacking personal liberties. What'll they ban next - phones and TVs?" 
 
 However, the ban was also been welcomed by many others in India. 
 
 “Even small school-going children are watching porns secretly in India today. Senior students are also accessing the harmful sites in cyber cafes, among other places and turning sick. This government led by Modiji (Modi) has taken a bold step by banning the sites,” Ajay Nandi, an executive of Vishva Hindu Parishad, India’s largest Hindu organization, said to VOA. “There will be resistances from many quarters. The government should not bow down before those pressures because this ban is in the interest of the country.”
– The Indian Express describes banning online pornography in a country of 1.25 billion people as a "herculean task," and it is one the Indian government has decided to abandon. A pornography ban introduced this week caused outrage, with some likening the government to the Taliban, and access to 857 banned websites has now been restored, the BBC reports. A government minister says sites that "do not promote child porn will be unbanned," reports Voice of America, which notes that while Indian movies are heavily censored, porn sites abroad say they have plenty of visitors from the country. (In the only country with more Internet users, appearing in a sex video can get you arrested.)