A few days back, while I was trying to access www.vimeo.com, a video sharing site similar to YouTube, I kept getting an error message stating, ‘The access to this website is denied’. Being an IT guy, I investigated the issue and realised that the problem was not at my end, but at my ISP’s – Reliance. Luckily, I also have an Airtel connection and so I logged in with that and could access Vimeo. But the problem showed up once again the next morning, even on my Airtel connection.

This left me bewildered. But after a bit of research, it became clear that due to a High Court order the ISPs had shut access to vimeo.com and quite a few other sites. Though I couldn’t find the court order, I understood that the court had blocked vimeo and other file sharing sites to combat piracy.