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

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131–140 of 326 posts

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

#131
post #78

Hey I know! IT is the backbone of our economy, so lets block a bunch of sites that programmers like. --The Indian Gov.

Maybe it's partially incentive to develop domestic equivalents?

Probably not, probably just stupidity, but then again...maybe. ("Never assign to stupidity what can be adequately explained by malice or greed" ... or something like that)

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

#132

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.

IIRC Laura Poitros's talk at the CCC a few days alluded to the fact that targets on drone "kill lists" have values assigned to them -- denoting specifically the acceptable threshold of non-combatant collateral damage.

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

#133
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is a play on the "Thanks Obama!" meme/joke in the US?

I can't seem to remember if sarcasm was invented in the US sometime around 2008 or not.

Snarky warky!

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they have any incentive to contact you? From their perspective the problem is solved -- the material offending statist is out of sight, out of mind. You're the one who wants a different situation to exist. Governments aren't in the customer service business.

I actually don't care at all, but sucks for developers in India who 1) want to use Snipt or 2) have already paid for it. Edit: on item 2, I'll happily refund any Indian developers who've already paid for Snipt and want their money back, but my point is valid.

And of course, apathy is the other big problem with US attitudes about government.

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

#136

> A Government source said the decision to block the 32 websites were taken after thorough “filtration process based on a strict regimen”, and there is a proper committee in the Department of Information Technology in place to whet complaints. [1] This is unbelievably ridiculous, if not downright stupid. Even as our Prime Minister speaks of bringing about a new digital revolution, decisions such as these show how bad…

>>Blanket bans like these are not only a form of internet censorship which flies in the face of the establishing principles of the largest democracy in the world, the lack of any details or explanation before issuing an outright ban on several important software hosting websites and content providers just evokes an image of a myopic government with incredibly poor understanding of technology.

Spot on!

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

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run https://snipt.net , one of the sites listed as being blocked, and I've never received any communication from anyone with the Indian government or ISPs. So they're not proactively doing anything to unblock these sites, as far as I can tell.

"The websites were blocked for hosting content that is pro terrorist group ISIS and not cooperating with government investigations , officials said." For some strange reason I'm inclined to believe you rather than India's government officials.

Actually that tweet was not from government official. It was from ruling political party IT cell here. Government officials from DOT and IT ministry are still silent on this issue.

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

#139
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have no problem whatsoever with removing offending content from Snipt. I regularly remove and ban users who post illegal or otherwise inappropriate content on the site. If they contact me, I'll happily remove anything even remotely "pro terrorist group ISIS", but as mentioned, I've received no such requests (and I don't proactively review private snippets for offensive content unless it's reported to me).

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

It's not pro-active, it is reactive. He explicitly states he's not doing pro-active removals.

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

#140
post #4

Arvind Gupta, the head of IT Cell, BJP Tweeted: "The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked." This is bad. archive.org by default should have all sorts of offensive things on it. Pastebin and github should…

I run https://snipt.net , one of the sites listed as being blocked, and I've never received any communication from anyone with the Indian government or ISPs. So they're not proactively doing anything to unblock these sites, as far as I can tell.

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