Law enforcement in Mumbai, the Indian city that has been the scene of devastating terrorist attacks this week, invoked section 19 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act of 1995 in an attempt to clamp down upon TV networks' live reporting coming out of the city. "Coverage of the actions taken by the police against the terrorists in South Mumbai," reported India's Business Standard, "is causing impediment in the police action."

A news black out might stop TV crews from broadcasting. But it hasn't done much to stem the stream of live news about the coordinated attacks pouring out of Mumbai via all forms of social media, from Twitter to Flickr to Wikipedia. CNN's Stephanie Busari has a look at Twitter:

With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or "tweets," were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.

Many Twitter users also sent pleas for blood donors to make their way to specific hospitals in Mumbai where doctors were faced with low stocks and rising casualties.

Others sent information about helplines and contact numbers for those who had friends and relatives caught up in the attacks. Tweeters were also mobilized to help with transcribing a list of the dead and injured from hospitals, which were quickly posted online.

As Twitter user "naomieve" wrote: "Mumbai is not a city under attack as much as it is a social media experiment in action."

Since the attacks, hundreds of compelling live-from-the-scene photos from the city's Colaba district have been uploaded to Flickr -- some appearing almost immediately after the attacks began. One showing fire trucks dousing the landmark Taj Hotel, uploaded by Soumik Karon on Thursday, sparked a compassionate croos-border comment by Paidipati, based in Sengkang, Singapore: "This is very unfortunate...the commoner has no security anymore. My prayers to all those affected."

(A note: It's unfortunate that many of the Mumbai attack photos are, like Karon's powerful photo of the Taj, shared under strict copyright. Those terms make sharing them online difficult.)

A Twittering Flickr user by the handle @Vinu has made an instant name for himself by being one of the earliest to share photos of the attack. Wired.com's Sarah Lai Stirland has a brief interview with @Vina, a.k.a Vinu Ranganathan, who reported that his tweeting about his photos got his Flickr account usefully boosted. "A Flickr staff who got my twitter," said Ranganathan, "decided to give me a 3 month gift of Pro."

One factor in the stream of social media coming from Mumbai may be that mobile technologies like Twitter and cell-phone photos are particularly useful in places like India where there's an extraordinarily high comfort level with mobile phones, as the Wall Street Journal's Mei Fong and Loretta Chao suggest:

Compared with the U.S., "the cellphone system and SMS culture is stronger in Asia," said Sree Sreenivasan, a new-media professor at Columbia University.

Ranganathan was by no means alone in turning to Twitter to cover and discuss the attacks. Tweets marked with #mumbai have poured in since Wednesday -- prompting, of course, a great hashing over of how reliable such social media reports can be. The London's Times Online breathlessly reported that Tweeters were asked by authorities to stop sharing information on Twitter.

ABC News, though, has noted that the source of those reports was tracked down to a 16 year-old Boston high-school student named Mark Bao, recently profiled in a Boston Globe story on young tech entrepreneurs. Here's the twist. Bao has taken to defending his sources -- on his Twitter account, of course, saying "please don't blog and assume before emailing me at mumbaiupdates@gmail.com."

Finally, there's Wikipedia. The social encyclopedia's entry on the attacks was started by "Kensplanet," a.k.a. John Kenny. Kenny is himself a Mumbaikar and avid Wikipedian, having made more than 7600 edits. The entry on the attacks began with just 23 words: "The 26 November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks were a series of attacks by terrorists in Mumbai, India. 25 are injured and 2 killed." It's since grown into a robust news resource, complete with casualty counts by nationality, a timeline of the chaotic events -- and a section on how social media has responded.

(Photo credit under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license by Stuti)