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Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

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221–230 of 506 posts

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have less access? When I visit my national healthcare website extensions can look at my traffic, but there are no ads. I'm not saying ad blockers are bad, but it's not like we didn't have extensions being subverted in the past.

You're taking about access you're afraid an extension might be exploited to expose versus ad networks and social media plugins that are known to expose. I'll take the potential bogeyman over the real one, thanks.

Since you missed it: theyre talking about extensions having access to portals where no ads exist

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#222
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

While I agree with you, I think it's inevitable that governments, maybe eventually all, will abuse the power they have to censor the internet. It is important that fraud charges can be reversed and people like Alex Jones shut up, but if the normal internet becomes too restricted and an alternative free one where crime is rampant is the only place to get a lot of information, that's where people will go. While I too w…

> I think it's inevitable that governments [..] will abuse the power they have to censor the internet.

Censoring isn't inherently an abuse of power. If nude photos of my 10 year old niece were circulating on the internet, I'd be in favour of censoring those photos too.

Dang censors HN all the time, by removing posts. Is that an abuse of power too?

> While I too want better rules, I also want insurance in place for when governments decide to jump the shark

If your government goes rogue, the insurance you really need is freedom of movement. The fact that people in Russia or Gaza can use bitcoin doesn't make them a great place to be right now.

Free, anonymous speech on the internet would make it easier to subvert and overthrow your government. But I'd much rather a government that doesn't need to be overthrown in the first place.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#224
There are a lot of lessons to learn here

1. The Streisand effect. No-one on HN gave a monkeys about this dodgy news agency till today. Now half of us have read the archive about how they promote propaganda & fake news. Your reputation takes a hit

2. There is no absolute definition of “freedom”. Wikipedia is a fantastic resource for humanity in general and I think should be defended. But as more and more of humanity come to live more and more online, then the legal and cultural norms will shift and shuffle - courts for two hundred years have assumed they can order anyone in their jurisdiction around and often not in their jurisdiction- and that’s kind of the point of courts. So what is freedom? It’s what we the demos and the courts agree …

3. An example is in the order (I mean on the Streisand effect - when the %#}#% hell would I ever read a court order from India ?!) - it says “herein to take down/delete” - this bespeaks a failure to understand the world on the level of “who are the Beatles”. Take down - fine this is part of how we agree norms and limits of courts. Delete. Are you kidding me. Does that imply from everywhere else? Wow.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#225
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Good, trustworthy governance. This example shows that you can't just shut off free speech to a few rogue nations, because states 'incompatible with liberal democracy' include the majority of the world's population. As we see, they hold enough influence to assert their censorship on all of us, regardless of where we are. What hypothetical 'trustworthy governance' would be less susceptible to India's influence than WM…

> they hold enough influence to assert their censorship on all of us, regardless of where we are.

Maybe. I don't see any reason that an Indian court order would be enforced outside of India. I wouldn't be surprised if it was just be a technical limitation. Maybe wikipedia doesn't have an easy way to censor a page in just one jurisdiction and leave it up everywhere else.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#226

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…

We must work to build an inter[dark]net which ideally fully divorces the user from the government and laws of the country the user is physically in (unless the user leaks his dox).

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#227
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

I, for example , i'm scared of using YouTube alternative clients like re(vanced) et simila, i'm personality scared to have my youtube/gmail account banned.

In case you watch on an Android phone: Newpipe doesn't even use your account, so the possibility of getting banned for it is much smaller.

You can make playlists in it and track your history (locally), so I don't think it's inferior to the official app. On the contrary.

Also, these new Android phones have the option to modify which app opens youtube links by default, so it's easy to just list Newpipe instead of the official app.

The only downside are downtimes a few times per year when YT changes something and Newpipe devs are making a fix, which never took more than a few days.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

Those friends are why I own AAPL. Limit buy order for one more share of AAPL added to my IB before posting!

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want operate in country X, you must comply with country X laws or be ready to be percecuted. (From notice, to confiscation of servers, to executions; depends on the X and how inconvenient you are)

More broadly, if country X has the capacity to enforce its rulings against you, it is risky to assume that they do not apply to you, irrespective of what you think should be the case base on how you operate, where you are located, your citizenship, etc. Many states have a wide variety of provisions applying national law in ways that might be contrary to all kinds of naive assumptions about how their jurisdiction shou…

Yup.

Jurisdiction is like good manners, there is plenty of those, but it is not some kind of fundamental law of nature.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the worst that happens for services in foreign countries is that they get blocked, and wikipedia will survive not being accessible in India.

Wikimedia India is an independent nonprofit, with executives in India who could be held in contempt by the Indian courts. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India

Wikimedia India has nothing to do with the operation of Wikipedia.org and does not appear to be a party to the case. It is just a local wikipedia editors club.
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