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India’s government wants total control of the internet

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Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#191

Post by throwawayxx123 »

29athrowaway wrote: post #172
throwawayxx123 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he was not found guilty of any of the accusations by the Supreme Court of India. As an Indian that is more than enough proof. Also Modi cannot be compared to Putin or Xi.

Just wait. Power corrupts, like the one ring.

So if no one is safe from corruption just by becoming PM for one or more terms, then we should abolish all positions of power? That would be a really stupid thing to do. If you can't trust any system including the Supreme Court of the land, move to a country you find perfect (no such country exist, no country has perfect systems, if everything were transparent and if there were no propaganda, things would be easy to understand).

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#192

Post by throwawayxx123 »

unmole wrote: post #168
throwawayxx123 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as an Indian let me tell you this. We don't want a propaganda piece. I am not even a huge Modi fan, but he has been investigated by various courts including the Supreme Court of India and has not been found guilty. Will BBC make a documentary about the many crimes the British did in India? With the current geo political situation, the western nations sure want to taint his image, and even destabilize India if t…

> Well, as an Indian let me tell you this. We don't want a propaganda piece. Speak for yourself. As an Indian, I don't want the government telling me what I can't watch. > investigated by various courts including the Supreme Court of India The same Supreme Court also ruled that the 2G Scam did not happen. Would you like to acquire an ownership interest in the Bandra-Whorli Sea Link? > Will BBC make a documentary abou…

You can say whatever you want to. I haven't said Modi is India and India is Modi. It is far from that. I have faith that India's democracy will work. It has seen darker days during times of Indira Gandhi, but we didn't turn into a dictatorship. BJP started as an answer to bad ruling by the congress party. If in the future BJP becomes the new congress, a new political party or many of the thousands of existing political party will come into power. If you want to watch the documentary it is available in the internet. Just because it is removed from youtube doesn't mean its illegal to watch it. In fact, just because Modi banned it, in many states there has been public viewing of the documentary.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#193

Post by throwawayxx123 »

davoneus wrote: post #187
throwawayxx123 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India is okay. We have better democracy than both UK and USA.

Hell, India's democracy damn well should be; it had a chance to learn from the US and others mistakes. That said, Indian democracy is a pale imitation to post WW2 European democracies.

Very true!

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#194

Post by bobdvb »

scns wrote: post #86
newswasboring wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point BBC needs to make a streaming service for everyone. Anyone with a 100 video content library is making their own, BBC is leaving money on the table I think. Unless licensing their content makes them way more money, the only other blockers I can think of are competence related and things being slow because of BBC's semi government organization.

This would be the smart thing to do. Still baffled that they don't do it. Maybe no visionaries work there.

They already tried it and it didn't go well. I remember it because I had a meeting with the man who was running the trial service. Granted this was a few years ago now, but you also have to remember that "the BBC" isn't allowed to do this, only it's commercial entity "BBC Worldwide" can, due to the way the BBC is funded.

Many of the best shows are co-produced with other broadcasters from countries, which means the BBC doesn't have the global rights for them. Also a decent proportion of BBC content is independently produced, which also means the BBC doesn't have the rights to that content. Lastly, the contracts for performing rights were often written before the concept of streaming, so you may have to go back to each credited performer and get the rights to distribute the show online. This has impacted DVD releases before, in one instance the BBC had to actually wait for someone to die before they could release a DVD box set, because one actor in just one episode refused to sign an updated agreement. So the list of content that's actually available is much smaller than you might think.

Maintaining a paid archive of "long tail" content has long been said to be the way forward. You can monetise that huge library of content from your past, right? Actually, it turns out that people don't actually watch that long tail. Outside the top, recent content, you'll get maybe a handful of people watching the archive each week. The cost of maintaining that archive online is non-zero and because the content is largely "cold", in terms of streaming, delivery of the archive costs you more than the popular content people are actually watching. And if you hadn't noticed, streaming services aren't renowned for being profitable in the first place.

Oh, and playback performance for cold assets is worse than fresh content. So watching an old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' in Indonesia will have relatively poor streaming performance without putting in significant global investment. That investment being difficult to justify.

It's cheaper to syndicate the popular shows (old and new) to the other streaming services and see what gets watched.

Credentials: >20 years in broadcast/media technology, now working in a senior role at a major streaming service.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#195

Post by sanmon3186 »

lostmsu wrote: post #185
yutijke wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a large scale pogrom of journalists who criticise the government then there would be a chilling effect on critical coverage of the government. Large scale protests wouldn't exist and wouldn't be successful. Your statement does not jibe well with the lived reality of most Indians. We have plenty of access to critical coverage of the ruling party and its leader. Plenty of journalists are living their lives,…

> Your statement does not jibe well with the lived reality of most Indians. We have plenty of access to critical coverage of the ruling party and its leader. Still matches Russia until about 2019 (btw 5 years after initial invasion) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/06/russian-parlia... , which coincidentally was 9 years after it became clear to me personally it was a totalitarian state. > But since you Angl…

From the article you shared: > Russia passes law to jail people for 15 days for 'disrespecting' government

Pick up any 24x7 Indian news channels, and you can find govt being disrespected by half of the panel. Sure that doesn't justify certain action by the govt but I too think, one needs to be in India to understand India.

Modi or no Modi, things have been same as far I recall. Only new we have now is free internet which has amplified everything.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#196

Post by unmole »

throwawayxx123 wrote: post #190
unmole wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not elected by politicians. All judicial appointments need to be approved by the government. Retired judges get plum political appointments including to the Rajya Sabha.

Approved doesn't mean elected via political campaigning. So judges doesn't need to take any political stance to make any political party happy. Of course there is the issue of after retirement appointments. But not every judge does that. Things won't become better if people don't put pressure on representatives to make ethical laws.

> So judges doesn't need to take any political stance to make any political party happy.

The Centre refused to appoint Saurabh Kirpal because he is openly gay. This isn't some wild conjecture, this is the official government position: https://www.barandbench.com/news/law-ministry-says-saurabh-k...

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#197

Post by lostmsu »

sanmon3186 wrote: post #195
lostmsu wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your statement does not jibe well with the lived reality of most Indians. We have plenty of access to critical coverage of the ruling party and its leader. Still matches Russia until about 2019 (btw 5 years after initial invasion) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/06/russian-parlia... , which coincidentally was 9 years after it became clear to me personally it was a totalitarian state. > But since you Angl…

From the article you shared: > Russia passes law to jail people for 15 days for 'disrespecting' government Pick up any 24x7 Indian news channels, and you can find govt being disrespected by half of the panel. Sure that doesn't justify certain action by the govt but I too think, one needs to be in India to understand India. Modi or no Modi, things have been same as far I recall. Only new we have now is free internet w…

Yeah, and if you read my comment carefully, this law to jail people was only instituted 9 years into the totalitarianism started. The first move (apart from rigging election) was labeling media as "foreign agents" circa 2012.

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#198

Post by pasabagi »

dartharva wrote: post #157
pasabagi wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wildly popular, too. I'd love to hear somebody from India explain it: my guess is that religious politics and political religion have been India's problem from before the partition, and it's a fissure that Congress typically tried to ignore, while, rather awkwardly, it's been sticking its elephantine trunk in everybody's drinks while taking up eight tenths of the room. Modi drives straight at the problem, takes a pos…

Indian here. Simple answer is that there just isn't anyone left to stand against his behemoth of a party (BJP). The Congress/UPA's reputation was severely trampled out when BJP/NDA rose to power in 2014, and it hasn't recovered since. BJP has perfected the art of media manipulation and public politics, and is extremely competent in directing and subverting public sentiment; they are one of the biggest populist forces…

Yeah, the last two Ghandis in charge in the Congress party are a little baffling. I have no idea why they thought that would work, electorally.

Do you know why third parties haven't come to the fore? I can see that the Congress party has a bunch of problems that are pretty inherent to the party DNA, but did the people who used to vote Congress because they liked secularism and universalism just stop liking those things?

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#199

Post by dartharva »

pasabagi wrote: post #198
dartharva wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indian here. Simple answer is that there just isn't anyone left to stand against his behemoth of a party (BJP). The Congress/UPA's reputation was severely trampled out when BJP/NDA rose to power in 2014, and it hasn't recovered since. BJP has perfected the art of media manipulation and public politics, and is extremely competent in directing and subverting public sentiment; they are one of the biggest populist forces…

Yeah, the last two Ghandis in charge in the Congress party are a little baffling. I have no idea why they thought that would work, electorally. Do you know why third parties haven't come to the fore? I can see that the Congress party has a bunch of problems that are pretty inherent to the party DNA, but did the people who used to vote Congress because they liked secularism and universalism just stop liking those thin…

People did not vote Congress for "secularism and universalism". Most voters are not educated enough to bother about such things like political leanings and philosophies, their only outlook in choosing who to vote is their perception of what the candidate is bringing to the table for them at a local level. A lot of India's voter base does not have affiliations with "Left" or "Right" politics as we know it, and it's rather easily swayed by intelligent and targeted marketing campaigns.

BJP/NDA simply outclasses every other force in terms of its outreach and marketing prowess, and with the kind of control it now has over mainstream media, challenging them will be a herculean task at least for the time being (and filled with a very tangible risk of self-destruction).

Re: India’s government wants total control of the internet

#200

Post by dartharva »

jacooper wrote: post #119
relavir212 wrote: post #103

I think this government does not have problem with criticism, but opposition is doing very bad job of criticism itself. It fails to present proper solution/ better approach on things that matters to national security, policy and way forward for country and people dont appreciate such cynical thinking anymore. strawman arguments on high moral ground will not work after a while. As for BBC "The Modi Question", comes fr…

After all that government done to Muslims, and its intentional hatred towards them, you still say it doesn't have a problem with criticism? They are so accepting of criticism, that every time one criticizes them, they get banned from India's Twitter. This isn't a real account and should be flagged.

What has "that government" done to Muslims? Even if you assume the worst and take all main BJP leaders in power as downright islamophobes, what have they actually "done" to harm Muslims specifically?

The most I can see is fear-mongering and creating artificial victimhood against them for clout and political reasons, but that happens on both sides and has been happening since time immemorial. If this is about Kashmir, their drastic steps, albeit excessively totalitarian and cruel to Kashmiris, are for retaining their sovereignty before anything else. They would have done the same had there been any other religion.

And don't get me started on Twitter. For every account banned for "misinformation" there are a thousand others that keep on shitting on the administration. It's Twitter for God's sake.

You aren't contributing anything with your ad hominem painting of the entire government as hateful to Muslims other than fear-mongering.

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