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Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

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21–30 of 391 posts

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#21
post #12

No shot. The economy is already in the gutter. The productivity hit of a total internet cutoff would be a death sentence

That assumes the regime cares more about the economic prosperity of their people than about staying in power. So far they seem to care more about power. North Korea provides a model for how terrible the situation can get for every day people in that sort of arrangement.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#22

Can ROTW sanction Iran by giving it zero internet access even to "elites" by refusing to peer.

You’re proposing a world wide agreement even by their allies? Like they can just tunnel their traffic through Russia or China.

You could try to bifurcate into allied and non allied, but even that would be flawed, especially in countries like the USA where it becomes a first amendment right to try to ban such connectivity. It’s very hard to kill the Internet in terms of connecting peers - that’s kind of the point of its design.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#24
post #12

No shot. The economy is already in the gutter. The productivity hit of a total internet cutoff would be a death sentence

North Korea unfortunately has given them a path forward. If you're willing to murder your own citizens en masse, you can get away with about anything.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#25
post #21
post #12

No shot. The economy is already in the gutter. The productivity hit of a total internet cutoff would be a death sentence

That assumes the regime cares more about the economic prosperity of their people than about staying in power. So far they seem to care more about power. North Korea provides a model for how terrible the situation can get for every day people in that sort of arrangement.

You can only let that go so far, because at the end of the day you need to pay the military to keep you in power.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#26
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people wouldn't stream the games ilegally... the private entity that owns the rights to broadcasting the games can arbitrarily ban whole subnets. the end result is well... not good: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45323856

A company using legal action to protect their IP rights is so different from a theocratic dictatorship shutting down the entire Internet to prevent their overthrow. Perhaps you don't follow the news about Iran but these comments are incredibly daft.

But that's even worse... Iran is a stuck up country with huge political issues, internal and external pressures, outside countries attacking it while internally they're at the cusp of a civil war. Of course they'll shut down the internet, what else do you expect them to do? It's not like they have many options, nor the government trying to stay in power and crush a coup, even if that means blocking the internet, nor the people who are protesting against it and risking their lives.

But EU countries should be a bastion of freedom, free speech, free access to information, democracy, human rights, rights to this, rights to that... Why do we, the EU countries have to use the same playbook? Yes, banning the whole internet is in one way worse and in other easier, than just banning a list of sites where people can find a way around it, but again, the difference is just in the quantity, the censorship factor is the same. The government gets scared people will see some other propaganda from the other side, and censors it... and even that is done very selectively (daily mail is still accessible from over here, so are fox news and cnn)

With spain it's even worse, because it's not even the government doing it, but the government giving the right of censorship to a private company which clearly abuses that right and the government tolerates this... no court orders, no judges, no way to complain, no fair use, no nothing, a private company decides and the government gives them a blank stamped paper to aprove that.

Yes, i know iran has it much worse, but there's nothing we can do about it here, assuming the internet is banned for iranians and they can't read this or comment here. But EU is doing the same, and we've been tolerating it for years... a site here, a site there,... not everything, but censorship is still censorship, no matter how many sites are censored, and there are people from EU here that should argue against censorship, even if it's just a few sites and not all of them.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#27
They already have uncensored unfiltered sim cards they issue to their own people, we found that out when X (Twitter) started showing which country you made the accout from and thousands of people had Iran which normal people can't access X without VPN. Its just that they shut off the internet for normal people now, which they hadn't done before.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.

What if someone is not a certified wanker?

Head down to your local Tory office and prove it.

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes the regime cares more about the economic prosperity of their people than about staying in power. So far they seem to care more about power. North Korea provides a model for how terrible the situation can get for every day people in that sort of arrangement.

You can only let that go so far, because at the end of the day you need to pay the military to keep you in power.

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