141–150 of 150 posts
Lax implies that there is some kind of objective ranking system. It would be better to simply say that Angola's law allows some practices that, say, the US' law does not.
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The colonialism is attempting to enforce Western mores and laws about copyright on the Angolan population. As well as Wikipedia's own culture which is pretty Western itself. While Wikipedia may be attempting to colonize Angola with some of its community conduct values, the population there has another view of Wikipedia's purpose which might be equally valid.
It's not about Western mores, it's about people stealing other peoples stuff. I'm sure stealing in Angola is not tolerated, stealing from these "pirates" would make them angry.
The author puts encyclopedic knowledge and movies in the same category ("information") and seems to be arguing that they both should be freely available. I'm not saying that current copyright system isn't completely screwed up and in need of reform, but I don't think disregarding content creators is an optimal solution.
Maybe this is just a detail of Vice's way to sell their articles, but how is providing free services to people who could otherwise not afford them 'colonialism'?
The British sold cloth in India at lower prices, undoubtedly providing many people with cloth they could not otherwise afford, and destroying India's textile industry making India dependent on buying British cloth.
Oh, they also insisted upon opium (that China could not otherwise afford?) being legal in China, when China wanted to prohibit it, and fought a war over it, because they wanted to sell opium in China.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The colonialism is attempting to enforce Western mores and laws about copyright on the Angolan population. As well as Wikipedia's own culture which is pretty Western itself. While Wikipedia may be attempting to colonize Angola with some of its community conduct values, the population there has another view of Wikipedia's purpose which might be equally valid.
Would you express the same cultural relativistic sentiments about the validity of purpose if a small group decided to repurpose your Wiki? It's very damaging to trade with the developing world if we start accusing companies of "attempting to colonize" because they have the temerity to expect people granted subsidised access to their website to actually play by the same rules as everyone else. I mean, if we start assu…
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OK, then let's stop pretending this is a benevolent effort by Internet companies to get people on the Internet if that's not what it is. Facebook wants to have it both ways.
And the rampant profiteering entity that is Wikipedia? Are you seriously arguing the Wikimedia Foundation's intentions can't possibly be benevolent because they won't let Angolans turn their server space into a repository of pirated content?
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> play by the same rules as everyone else Actually, your "everyone else" who play by the Western rules, is probably less than half of the world population.
Nope, everybody on Facebook and Wikipedia is expected to play by Facebook and Wikipedia's rules , regardless of whether their local laws are stricter or laxer.
If the only internet I had was that, and I had no way to start my own internet sites either, I'm sure I'd be trying to find ways to use them for what I wanted regardless of their rules too. As it is, I've got the whole internet and have no reason to try and abuse facebook or wikipedia that way.
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Maybe I missed the part of the article where it said that people in Angola are being forced to use Wikipedia.
Maybe colonialism, like racism, is something much more easy to spot when you are the side suffering from it. They are not forced to use Wikipedia. They just happen to live in Africa, where most people live in 19th century by Western/Northern standards and they are hacking their way to 21st century. What would you do if you had to pay 80% of your salary for 1Gb of internet? The hacker culture is about "creatively circ…
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This is the objection to zero-rated services. Angolans get to use the internet, but they only get to use the zero-rated bits of it. And they have to use them in ways that westerners approve of. It comes down to money, really. Do we put a "you must be this rich to use the internet" sign up on the planet's communications, or do we allow people to bring their culture and ideas to the party despite their poverty? This wh…
I personally would welcome a free (as in no money) unrestricted but low bandwidth Internet connection for everyone. Paid would be faster. I'm in the UK. Free mobile broadband at something like 256Kbits with cheap USB dongles would allow access for all children & low income adults who could find a suitable client device (recycled laptop/cheap smartish phone whatever). Sort of basic income argument applied to Internet…
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There is a difference between the value of information and the price of that information. Using value to determine undercompensation ignores that markets work on price, and often things of low intrinsic value are priced higher than others with high intrinsic value. An encyclopedia with broad coverage clearly has greater intrinsic value than a Star Wars Blu-ray, yet the market has priced Star Wars Blu-rays as more exp…
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. All value is subjective. Any item has no value unless an observer is present to value it. An, unsurprisingly, different observers will value the object differently, often wildly so. Price is an extremely rough heuristic on the median or average valuation of an object. However, the majority can often be short-sighted at times, leading those who are looking more longer term to…
Would you say that the price to save a life equally matches the value of a life? Doesn't this show a disparity between the "market value" of something and its actual value?