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

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

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use github, and off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you how to bypass it. Is it dns based? I guess you could manually set up the correct IP addresses locally for the host names. Other than that, I'd have to read.

VPN pipe most likely. At least, that's what I would do. My guess is someone will set up a proxy service specifically for this.

So all of a sudden work being outsourced to India needs to go through a VPN located somewhere else in the world. Whoever is doing the work will need to jump through at least a couple of hoops to set that up and keep working through it. Additional costs will be introduced. It's not a show-stopper, but it seems as though it could easily have a material impact.

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

#233

I love Indian government statements, they are always so transparently incompetent, inane and corrupt, as are the accompanying actions, like blocking a random PHP project on sourceforge. I guess we'll just never know why they do these stupid things. By the time some bureaucrat has to give a statement all they can get out is terror , ISIS and anti India .

Calling everything "terrorism" reminds me of McCarthy and "communism" in the 50s. I assume we'll grow out of it soon enough.

I doubt we'll ever grow out of it. They'll just find a new word.

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

#234
post #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)

You got the stupidity/malice-greed quote entirely backwards :). You aren't supposed to attribute to malice anything that can be explained by stupidity.

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

¯\_(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).

I'm sure everything is happening very fast right now, but I hope you arrive at a policy more carefully drawn than this.

All terrorists suck, and they haven't any right to use services like yours to coordinate hurting other people. Nor does anyone have the right to incite violence. But people do have a right to political opinions, and some such might be interpreted as "remotely pro terrorist", without actually being coordination or incitement.

Finding the right lines for these determinations is hard, and I don't envy anyone the task of drawing them. And again, things may be moving fast now, and I understand that if there are real concerns about safety that a broad brush might be the first starting point for you. Even so, I hope that whatever policy you adopt iterates over the fullness of time to something that respects people's rights to express their opinions.

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