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India’s government wants total control of the internet

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Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#121

Post by pasabagi »

29athrowaway wrote: post #62

Why is that fuck still in power? It has been 9 years. We do not need another Putin or Xi.

Wildly popular, too.

I'd love to hear somebody from India explain it: my guess is that religious politics and political religion have been India's problem from before the partition, and it's a fissure that Congress typically tried to ignore, while, rather awkwardly, it's been sticking its elephantine trunk in everybody's drinks while taking up eight tenths of the room.

Modi drives straight at the problem, takes a position, then relies on the demographics to carry him through. There are more Hindus, so in a democracy, taking a Hindu-first perspective is sound electoral strategy.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#122

Post by wkat4242 »

newswasboring wrote: post #113
Hizonner wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Nobody wants to subscribe to 100 services. If you're not in say somebody's top 3, that person is probably not going to buy your service. Therefore, if you don't believe that you will be in the top 3 for some fairly large number of people, you should not try to start your own consumer-facing service. The BBC might correctly determine that, although it's a respected content producer, it doesn't have enoug…

The thing is, this is sort of the reality we are living in. People are subscribing to a 100 different services. Niche streaming services are very popular, but I do agree you have to be the best at your niche to be viable. The whole profitability point you made is completely valid. There are indeed no numbers that I am aware of that say these are profitable.

Really? I subscribe to maybe 10 services in my place. Energy, Internet, Mobile, VPS, and a couple of websites and patreons. No TV or streaming. And spotify I do on and off (when they have an offer for 3 months for 10 bucks).

As soon as a paid service goes subscription-only I drop it generally unless I really really need it.

I know not everyone is as anti-subscription as I am, but really, 100? Anything that pays "automatically" and auto-renews is something I have less control and visibility over so I'll do anything to avoid it.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#123

Post by lenkite »

CommanderData wrote: post #13

The documentary produced by the BBC "The Modi Question", was uploaded onto YouTube several times the week of release but taken down by request of the Indian Government. I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something if they don't like it, it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.

We learned how to do this from the Americans and the Chinese.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#124

Post by klibertp »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #100

I'd suggest governments generally want total control of everything, and in the digital age they see they might finally get it.

Yes. The IT revolution that promised equal access to all of the world's information was first ignored and we - tech people - were left alone, to dream of our tech-crypto-quantum utopia. Then normal people joined, transforming the Internet into a loaded gun strapped to societies' collective heads. Efficient, personal channel of communication straight into people's brains (almost) - not weaponizing it was never an option. It didn't take long at all for someone to realize it and start pulling the trigger.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#125

Post by blululu »

mc32 wrote: post #68
scottLobster wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You want access to my market of a billion potential consumers? Do what I say!" Simple as that really. The government of Tuvalu making a similar request probably would have been politely ignored.

One solution (not an ideal solution) might be where every entity that wants to serve the citizens of a sovereign country have to have a local company that serves the local population, a local subsidiary like in most brick and mortar industries. They may even require that all compute happen locally. And of course that all content and so on meet local regulations. Sort of like what we see with other telecommunication,…

Mainland China already does this. The extent to which this is a real solution are pretty dubious. When the local rules are reasonable and local everything is fine, but a large enough country the government can start trying to use its weight to encroach on the severity of other countries and push across whatever fence the company has set up.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#127

Post by IlliOnato »

sorokod wrote: post #98
CommanderData wrote: post #13

The documentary produced by the BBC "The Modi Question", was uploaded onto YouTube several times the week of release but taken down by request of the Indian Government. I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something if they don't like it, it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.

Available on Peertube: https://peertube.tv/search?search=The+Modi+Question+&searchT...

You can also watch it on BBC site, although it requires a VPN if you are watching from outside of UK.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#128

Post by lenkite »

kneebonian wrote: post #23
msla wrote: post #5

This is the dark side of the same impulse that compels big tech companies to follow the GDPR even though they aren't headquartered in Europe: If a big enough market is run by an insane jackass, that insane jackassery will spread through the world on the wings of corporate policy. I really wonder what's going to happen when the India-China rivalry spreads to conflicting laws for tech companies that want to do business…

Based on what I've seen most tech companies are already pulling out of China or scaling back their presence so I don't think it will be a big deal.

The Chinese companies are just opening factories (lots of them!) in India. ~4k companies in India with Chinese directors.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#129

Post by CommanderData »

foverzar wrote: post #73
CommanderData wrote: post #13

The documentary produced by the BBC "The Modi Question", was uploaded onto YouTube several times the week of release but taken down by request of the Indian Government. I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something if they don't like it, it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.

What surprises me is that these kind of thing often get treated as "all or nothing". Why remove it, instead of a geo block? 451 HTTP code is a thing. Stories like that always make me think that this is always some kind of a political play on the side of western media platforms, likely coming from ex-spooks they like to hire so much. Especially judging by how e.g. in Russia, YouTube has learned to play nice over time…

I'm unsure but the original links are still available online on Twitter that go to YouTube error pages and the request from the Indian govnement is public too.

The original rush to remove the content was fueled by alot of publicity around the documentary.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#130

Post by rustedspoon »

eldaisfish wrote: post #58
rustedspoon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The documentary did not even talk about how the Supreme Court of India investigated twice and the first one while the current opposition government was in power, and what conclusion they have reached. No witnesses from who were actually affected on both sides. Not sure if it should even be called a documentary.

For anyone wondering - the evidence implicating Modi "vanished". No court will convict someone without evidence and the Indian prosecution in general has a record of doing a shit job in gathering implicating evidence when influential folks are involved. Also, the one member of the indian bureaucracy who dared to question Modi's role in the riots - Sanjiv Bhatt - was sentenced to life in prison. I am not sure what the…

if courts aren’t swayed by politics, after 20 years of scrutiny and thousands of witnesses, so many days of investigations the court decided to arrest this person. We either trust the the sanctity of the court or we don’t. If anything, to be neutral the documentary should have kept a lot of time discussing the Supreme courts ruling and either bust it rulings or agree to it, but to totally ignore it.
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