Has the porn ban been 'lifted' in India amid coronavirus lockdown to flatten the curve?

Amid the coronavirus lockdown, there were reports that India had ‘unofficially lifted the porn ban’ to keep people inside during the 21-day lockdown.

A on IBTimes.com claimed that several porn sites were opening during the lockdown. While Pornhub.com and xvideos.com were inaccessible, the report stated that pornhub.org was accessible.

However, when we checked all the three aforementioned sites were inaccessible.

The website staid: “Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from Department of Telecommunications, Government of India. Please contact administrator information.” However, Pornhubselect appeared to be working as was ‘xvideos’ in other languages such as ‘xvideos.es’.

Interestingly, xHamster was also available at the time of writing.

In 2018, India had banned hundreds of porn websites which coincided with the downloads of VPNs. While many companies had launched mirror URLs, they were blocked on major providers like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio.

xHamster’s vice president Alex Hawkins the The Print that traffic from India started increasing in ‘early February but ramped up in the last two weeks’. Interestingly, Indians are very desi when it comes to their porn choices and ‘Indian’ was the most popular category on xHamster.

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Meanwhile, Pornhub.com made all its premium services free to ‘flatten the curve’. Corey Price, Vice President of Pornhub said: “With nearly one billion people in lockdown across the world because of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s important that we lend a hand and provide them with an enjoyable way to pass the time. We hope by expanding our offer of free Pornhub Premium worldwide, people have an extra incentive to stay home and flatten the curve.”

At the time of publishing this article, Pornhub Select appeared to be working in India even as the main site remained blocked. PM Modi had announced a 21-day lockdown on Tuesday to contain the coronavirus spread in India.