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India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

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101–110 of 326 posts

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are terrorizing local populations for a political goal. They are not just fighting battles they are slaughtering civilians into compliance. How is that not terrorism? Edit: He also claimed that it would be better if ISIS was in charge of the area. That is quite ridiculous.

If "terrorism" is to retain some specificity, I don't think you can include very old-fashioned war crimes in it. Slaughtering civilians during an attack or pillaging cities after a victory are millennia old types of atrocities, and I'm not sure they need to be recategorized under a neologism.

Aren't you making a mistake in assuming that those who fall under this neologism are different? Isis for example wants to be a nation, not just terrorize people. Haven't there been religious crusades of terror for that purpose in the past?

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you define US drone strikes as attempts at terrorizing the target populations?

Drone strikes explicitly try not to hit non-combatants. ISIS slaughter wantonly. Some people have a world view that needs to see the US and ISIS as equivalently evil.

> Drone strikes explicitly try not to hit non-combatants.

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/

"Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent."

ISIS seems to have a similarly broad definition. No, they're not morally equivalent, but we have serious issues with how we prosecute the War on Terror.

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you define US drone strikes as attempts at terrorizing the target populations?

Drone strikes explicitly try not to hit non-combatants. ISIS slaughter wantonly. Some people have a world view that needs to see the US and ISIS as equivalently evil.

> Drone strikes explicitly try not to hit non-combatants.

How do you know? What downsides are there to targeting non-combatants? And how do you define non-combatants. Person in the field with a stick in their hand, is that a combatant? A wedding, is it a combatant gathering.

If anything it actaully helps to target civilians because it promotes creating and perpetuating more resentment, which in turn provides more opportunities to do drone strikes, make more drones, repair more drones, get promotions based on drone operations, etc.

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#104
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may not be in your best interest, lefally. Pro-active moderation makes it very hard to argue safe harbor status.

With regards to DMCA, 512(m) seems applicable.

Applicable how?

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#106
post #30

Yes, this move is an over reaction. Especially, banning archive.org... India was just hit with a terrorist attack in Bangalore very recently. The techdirt article should mention this part. http://www.ndtv.com/article/cheat-sheet/bangalore-bomb-blast...

And the response there is just as lame:

"The Home Minister today asked the state government to install CCTVs in all key places in the city."

And they're going to ask restaurants to close at 1am on New Year's... As if that'd accomplish anything.

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#107
post #15

A lot of these sites, almost all of them, are pastebin-esque, including sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie/ which is a "PHP and Git based pastebin." I noticed Pastebin getting a fair number of mentions in the news in connection with the Sony attack as a place for hackers to dump sensitive information publicly and easily. My guess is this blacklist was assembled to mitigate such hacking damage on Indian targets, but it…

The goal of blocking the ability for someone to post text documents online is so far removed from reality. It makes no sense at all. The only thing it accomplishes is to make India appear even more incompetent.

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#109
post #72
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Tor work in India?

How will you get Tor binaries if they block Tor project website in the next wave of bans?

Here's what the Tor project recommends: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#GetTor but sadly it's a cat-and-mouse game

Re: India Orders 32 Websites Blocked, Including GitHub, Archive.Org, Pastebin

#110

Ah that explains it! Haven't been able to push to Github ever since stepping off the plane in Mumbai. Strange thing is that the website works off-and-on. Pushing results in connection refused though. There's also been ZERO information/news provided by the ISP (MTNL) in this regard. Absolute shame that a blanket ban like this is applied. It has a profound effect on everyday activities unrelated to the original reason…

I'm sure you've already thought of this, but you can use a VPS as a proxy to circumvent the ban – I've had a great experience with DigitalOcean.
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