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Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

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Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#61

On January 18 2012, Wikipedia went black to draw attention to SOPA [0], a bill they described as one that "could fatally damage the free and open Internet". Since then, we've seen a slow and steady march in the direction we all dreaded. Country after country has decided that they have the right to block content on the "free and open Internet", and business after business (even those who joined the SOPA protests) has…

As more normies got on the web more of it becomes about how to herd them.

In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service.

The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable.

Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#62

I wonder what would be an effective countermeasure against stuff like this. Maybe we need a write-only global database and somehow separate the hosting/publisher from the organization that certifies it. Imagine if they simply sign an archive which is distributed over IPFS or some other distributed system. It would become impossible to take down content and as such impossible to comply with any blocking orders. They c…

> I wonder what would be an effective countermeasure against stuff like this.

Good, trustworthy governance.

I think its childish to try and make an ungovernable internet. Nobody actually wants to live in an ungovernable world. We want fraudulent credit card charges to be reversable. We want the parents of the victims of Sandy Hook to be able to get alex jones to shut up.

I don't think pushing further to make the law impossible to enforce on the internet is the right direction. The right direction is to step up and work to make good rules. And maybe that means sites like wikipedia or google don't function in countries where the government has values incompatible with liberal democracy. That's fine.

Maybe some day we have an internet which is actually divorced from meatspace government. When that happens, we'll need to do governance ourselves. Having no rules at all is the dream of naive children.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#63

On January 18 2012, Wikipedia went black to draw attention to SOPA [0], a bill they described as one that "could fatally damage the free and open Internet". Since then, we've seen a slow and steady march in the direction we all dreaded. Country after country has decided that they have the right to block content on the "free and open Internet", and business after business (even those who joined the SOPA protests) has…

[flagged]

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#64

On January 18 2012, Wikipedia went black to draw attention to SOPA [0], a bill they described as one that "could fatally damage the free and open Internet". Since then, we've seen a slow and steady march in the direction we all dreaded. Country after country has decided that they have the right to block content on the "free and open Internet", and business after business (even those who joined the SOPA protests) has…

As more normies got on the web more of it becomes about how to herd them. In the early days there was less gain from authoritarian actions, because you are more likely to be resisted by the users of any service. The current users don't know how to bypass restrictions, and are generally more numerous. Making authoritarian actions more valuable. Unfortunately this leads to previously useful sites declining.

The solution is to move to the dark web and make your site unpalatable to normies.

The posison slug strategy.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#66
post #3
post #2

Why is it blocked worldwide? Should the page be geofenced instead?

I agree, this makes no sense. Can the "Russian High Court" block access to all pages mentioning the invasion of Ukraine and Wikipedia will just comply worldwide?

Well, yes, they can. Just because some court ruling tells you to do something doesn't magically makes you do it. You have a choice to ignore that rulling and (maybe) face consequences:

- fine(s)

- arrest(s)

- asset confiscation

If WMF has no physical presence in Russia - there is no way to enforce this ruling and can be "ignored".

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're seeing the effects of globalisation. India has no right to control what the rest of the world sees.

[flagged]

The link you posted does not support the statement you made.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#68
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legitimacy of Indian courts is something only Indian citizens and people living in India can decide. Other people may have opinions, but they are more or less irrelevant. Anyway, the fundamental issue here is that domestic rulings often have international consequences. As a sovereign state, India obviously has the right to ban the Wikimedia Foundation, or any other foreign entity, from doing business within the c…

> As a sovereign state, India obviously has the right to ban the Wikimedia Foundation, or any other foreign entity, from doing business within the county I fundamentally disagree. The Indian State exists to serve its citizens, which are benefitted unambiguous by a free and unconstrained source like Wikipedia. The sovereignty of any state is subject to the benefit of its citizens, not the other way around. That doesn'…

That's something only Indian citizens and people living in India can decide. Outsiders may have opinions, but they cannot override the will of the people who have a legitimate standing in the matters of the state.

And note how I included "people living in India" here. Legitimacy is a fuzzy concept. Citizenship is a legal category, and it should not matter for legitimacy as such. But it is widely accepted that citizens living outside their country still have a legitimate standing in the matters of the country. But beyond that, a legitimate government should serve the interests of the people factually living within the country. India does not have a large non-citizen population, and the distinction is mostly irrelevant with them. But some other countries do. If their governments only serve the interests of their citizens, they are fundamentally illegitimate.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#69

On January 18 2012, Wikipedia went black to draw attention to SOPA [0], a bill they described as one that "could fatally damage the free and open Internet". Since then, we've seen a slow and steady march in the direction we all dreaded. Country after country has decided that they have the right to block content on the "free and open Internet", and business after business (even those who joined the SOPA protests) has…

I mean it's a pretty fundamental tenet of liberty that you have the freedom to do things only to the extent that you don't harm others.

And it's a simple consequence of scaling that the more massively you scale a communication system like the internet the more pathways there are for person A to harm person B.

So naturally there end up being more cases evaluating harm that involve the internet. Some of those cases will involve ordinary judicial things like injunctions.

And all of that is true regardless of whether you believe any one particular injunction is justified or unjustified. It's just a matter of what happens at scale.

You can, of course, try to give up the notion that liberty ends when you start causing harm, and many people have gone down that path. But for those of us who are still in the liberty camp, these questions are difficult and involve weighing a number of concerns and claims. And anyone who thinks they have easy answers is probably just deeply confused or high on rhetoric.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#70

> Long-form reports by The Caravan and The Ken, along with reports by other media watchdogs have described the agency as serving as a propaganda tool of the incumbent government.[8][7][23] I wonder how long such a description of a US news outlet like CNN, Fox, NYT or WashPo would last on English Wikipedia.

From the Fox News Wikipedia article

>Fox News has been characterized by many as a propaganda organization.[24][25][26][27][28] Its coverage has included biased and false reporting in favor of the Republican Party, its politicians, and conservative causes,[29][30][31] while portraying the Democratic Party in a negative light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News

Too lazy to check the others. The NYT undoubtedly has a lengthy section on the buildup to the Iraq War, where they would have been a "propaganda tool of the incumbent government."

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