Thread: Bing India Blocks Adult-Related Searches

Bing India is blocking adult-related search terms on its search engine.

However, if you tell the search engine that you’re from the USA, or any one of the European countries (users can easily change country without even logging in), and bingo, several links are returned.

From a strictly legal point of view, however, Bing is doing the right thing, says Pawan Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate who specializes in cyber law. “They (Bing) seem to be doing this to comply with the provisions of the Information Technology Act of 2000,” Duggal said. According to the act, anyone publishing or transmitting or causing to be published or transmitted content of a pornographic nature can be punished with imprisonment up to five years and a fine of Rs1 lakh, he said.

You can read the full article here.

According to a recent Vizisense's study of 40,000 internet users in India (which I read about via afaqs!), Bing has not yet made a big impact in India.

I wonder if Bing's recent decline in both search volume and number of users in India is due to the fact that Bing India is blocking adult-related searches?

It's still possible for Bing to give Google a run for their money. It's early yet.

Indian govt is going to have to get over its denial about people and their sexual desires/curiosities. Does India really think it can effectively hamper adult related material? even on the web? i think its a losing game from the get go. If web related activites are constricted, then people will go to physical media(tapes,dvds etc)and India has >1bn people! so this is really sily of the indian govt IMO..

Originally Posted by warbux

Indian govt is going to have to get over its denial about people and their sexual desires/curiosities. Does India really think it can effectively hamper adult related material? even on the web? i think its a losing game from the get go. If web related activites are constricted, then people will go to physical media(tapes,dvds etc)and India has >1bn people! so this is really sily of the indian govt IMO..

I agree with you what you say, warbux. Adults are well…adults.. and it's not surprising that there's an interest in such adult-related activities!

As domainers, we don't really have much choice but to comply with the law of the country in which we're investing in. As you probably know, the IT (Amendment) Act 2008 just came into force, and it prohibits the publishing/transmitting of sexually explicit material in electronic form. See more info here.