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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

#151
post #32

I don't think there is a way around this. Companies technologically focused or not have to comply with local regulations on a number of things: privacy, age restrictions, medical, gdpr, hipaa, etc. So you can't "just follow international norms" You have to follow local norms. In the West we had tech coordinate Covid, election and other information with government. But now the West is "uncomfortable" with others wanti…

If tyrannical localities want to enforce their norms, let them block it themselves.

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

#152

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.

Chinese i underestand. But the Americans ? The land of the free ? The hearth of democracy ? /s

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

#153

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.

S01E01: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3C378A82CF67A1107523CA6C647077403A1EF74D&dn=India%20The%20Modi%20Question%20S01E01%201080p%20HDTV%20H264-DARKFLiX&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.me%3A2780%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2730%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentr…

Torrenting copyrighted material is illegal in some (democratic) countries.

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

#154

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…

> In no reasonable democracy are the courts swayed by politics.

Maybe in movies.

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

#155

I once saw a former Swiss president answer to question about US gun problem (especially schools). He just answered, well if the majority decide do that then... it is your problem. Not ours. Same here. If Indians, split from Internet - and if the majority (perhaps boomers etc), decide it is the right decision - may be OK - but likely they will lose in the long term - in terms of education, awareness, global participat…

Boomers are in no way the majority in India. Its median age is 27.

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

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's on the iPlayer and works perfectly? So you can watch it in your own country https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dkb144

Not outside of the UK without a VPN (And let's be honest, who buys one in a country which has restricted internet to begin with?) but if they haven't blocked this link in your locale here's an option to watch it as well: https://archive.org/details/india.-the.-modi.-question.-s-01...

Are there VPN services that reliably work with geo-blocked content? I haven't tried many but I have currently have a Mullvad subscription and I basically can't watch anything as all the IPs are blocked. I've also done some searches about the other big VPN providers and it seems like they are all blocked too. I wonder if I can spin up a VPS and roll my own? I kinda of assume all the major cloud provider IPs would be blocked as well.

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

#157

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 pos…

Indian here. Simple answer is that there just isn't anyone left to stand against his behemoth of a party (BJP).

The Congress/UPA's reputation was severely trampled out when BJP/NDA rose to power in 2014, and it hasn't recovered since. BJP has perfected the art of media manipulation and public politics, and is extremely competent in directing and subverting public sentiment; they are one of the biggest populist forces in the world right now with a formidable and highly-skilled marketing force backing its brand (enough to get featured on Harvard whitepapers). More importantly, they learn and adapt quickly to changing environments. For example, after the JNU fiasco they now seem to recognise the importance of moderation and avoid going gung-ho on dissent in practice (e.g. their prolonged tolerance to the Farm Law protests) while keeping a public image of firebrand rightism to maintain their brand. They are intelligent, very intelligent.

Its opposition, meanwhile, has only gone downhill and keeps embarrassing itself. Opposition parties neither have a well-built plan or timeline, nor do they invoke any significant loyalty from voters. They keep infighting and bickering among themselves while retaining dynastic figureheads from an already disgraced family. They're all so in on themselves they still try to use the same half-baked strategies that used to work in the 2000s.

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Because they can? Because they don't want it to be watched outside of India either? By foreigners, by millions of Indians abroad, by millions in India on VPN?

Can they though? Because they actually can't. They can only regulate the content accessible from India IPs or hosted on their territory.

Everything beyond this is YouTube's own doing, really.

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point is that YouTube could have just geoblocked the content and be fully compliant. Everything beyond that is kinda their own initiative.

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

#160

The Indian people want the government to have total control over the internet. You feel that's horrible? Sure, that's your right. But the moral universalism of the anglophone cultural sphere has long alienated a majority of Indians exposed to it, that at this point their opinions do not get any goodwill from Indians. Progressive media has published enough news that run absolutely opposite to the lived experience of a…

An illiberal democracy can't be a true democracy. If power can control what news and data you get, showing only positive ones, you won't really be able to judge their administration skills. If so, elections will be unjust and unfair. Countries like India and Turkey can't be really considered as true democracies at the moment, people have no more power over their governments.
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