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Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

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Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#321
I don't really oppose gdpr but one of the reasons I vehemently opposed implementing GDPR at my former job is that we were not operating in the EU. Well, we had customers there, but we were an American company operating with American severs. GDPR sets another precident that other countries can make laws about what people from other jurisdictions can do..

Our lawyers said "Do it anyway, just in case".

The side effect of these very many different local regulatory bodies is you start trying to comply with multiple laws, some that can conflict each other - and this costs not just time and money, but the rigidity to stand up and say "No, our elected leaders have decided what the laws of the land are, and we follow them".

And the thing is, many countries do not have good faith laws. The majority of the people in the world live under what Americans and the EU, and the West would call lacking fundamental human rights. Some of these laws are plain BAD (hell, the US and AU even have our own bad internet laws) and some are EVIL.

Google routinely complying with the Chinese government is a great example of them wanting to take the cash first and ask questions later (or not at all). I don't want to work for that company.

I don't really think being a good 'worldwide' citizen can exist when there are conflicting views held by governments about what is right. The fact is some governments are objectively etter than others

I don't really think we aught to be involving ourselves at all with Russian officals, apparatjiks or other government bodies - but we find ourselves in this situation again, like GDPR, Russian officals have set certain rules about how data for russian citizens needs be held.

Of course Russia has no grounds to sue me in America and if it did, do you think a judge would enforce our compliance with laws that hold no water in our countries? Of course not.

Russia wants russians data - on russian servers in russia. The fact is they're probably mostly interested in being able to physically seize - without any due process - russian citizens data from servers which all happen to be in russia. It's a smart law if you're interested in putting people in gulags.

I'd rather lose all russian customers, and also all of the customers in north korea, or whatever else despotic governments that exist that think they can exert pressure on independent companies who don't operate under their jurisdictions and not have to worry about what bullshit they'll come up with next.

None of this to imply that the US and EU, Australia, Switzerland, etcdon't have a bunch of questionable laws and procedures that might not be quite fair or free either, but the world ain't perfect

What happens next is country X decides you must do one thing, and country Y decides you do another, and you come to TECHNICAL problems and BUSINESS problems and ETHICAL problems trying to comply with both.

If you're not in the EU, do not even bother with GDPR.

Rant over

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#322

I think comments about how Wikipedia is backing down when they have the right to ignore the situation doesn’t do Wikipedia justice. Getting Wikipedia banned in India, would hurt the people of India, who don’t have a say in the matter. Sure, _some_ people will still figure out a way to access it. But, they are not even the people who most need Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia’s trying to toe the line, preventing a country…

I feel like your comment is overlooking 2 pretty crucial points that I think these questions will force you to face:

1. one country's court has done something which lead Wikipedia to block content from the entire world. Why do you think every bad political leader now isn't going to be instructing their courts and lawyers to do the same thing for any unfavourable content, creating huge, unnecessary legal work, or even more globally banned content? 2. you mention it's good because they're avoiding blocking information from 1 billion people. 8 billion is more than 1 billion, and all 8 billion are impacted by this decision and potential precedence, so why is it better this way?

No disrespect intended, but you've commended a worldwide content ban by wikipedia and dismissed all other comments without articulating any solid reasons why.

I would love to understand your position a bit more, because it seems a little different.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make a new account, they'll only ban that one. I've been permanently banned from Reddit for really dumb reasons more times than I can count. The first time, I was sad. Now, I know it's a war between users and admins, and an individual account isn't worth very much.

Reddit bans are one thing, but your Gmail/Google Drive account getting banned? Not worth it, not over fucking Youtube ads. Remember, you don't have any recourse against Google bans.

Why do you assume you can only have one Google account?

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misinformation is an actual problem, so I don't know what you expect the government to do about it. Nothing at all? We saw how that idea worked out in the USA.

In a perfect world I would expect the government to stop deliberately spreading misinformation, but I know that isn’t realistic.

That wasn't the question.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#325
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

To be fair, adblockers have an inordinate amount of access. We all trust uBlock’s creator but I’ve never met him. So it’s a realistic risk but we (hope) not a threat

The ones using declarative blocking (like everything compatible with Safari or newer Manifest V3 web extensions for Chrome and Firefox) don't need access to your browsing context.

They're not as powerful as the ones that are able to inject content into visited pages or programmatically inspect and block/alter HTTP requests, but personally I think it's a reasonable tradeoff for the reasons you mentioned.

Chrome/Google got a very bad rep for pushing this change, and I don't want to speculate about their actual motivations, but the security aspect of it seems sound to me.

With uBlock Lite (which uses MV3), it's also possible to additionally grant "full site access" on a site by site base in case the rules-based blocking alone isn't enough; that seems ideal to me.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#326

I understand that Wikipedia has done this to not lose the possibility to appeal the court's decision. However, if the appeal is not successful and ANI wins, I think Wikipedia should just block India completely. I believe that will blow up spectacularly in ANI's face if everyone comes to know the reason for the block. Right now only a few people in India know about the ongoing dispute between ANI and Wikipedia. A coun…

If possible it would be better to let India block wikipedia themselves, that way the government doesn't get to shift blame on Wikipedia. Whichever way it goes the government has a lot of control over the narrative and it's a lot harder for them to hide that it is their decision to block wikipedia completely.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the newer generations. I have multiple friends who are literally afraid of using ad blockers and sideloading apps on their Macs in fear of some imaginary boogeyman out to get them. And VPNs are exclusively the domain of criminals, apparently. There are a dominating amount of people who have turned into the caricature of the perfect CONSUMER. It is so frustrating.

Mac apps have never bern restricted to the App Store, so I’m not sure the idea of “sideloading” makes sense to apply there. I still know what you mean though.

By default they are restricted since several years ago. Let's remember we are a minority, most people leave defaults as they come.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have missed the other news this week. Linux has joined the dark side too. Banning people based on nationality is certainly against freedom and any kind of ethics worthy of being called that.

> Linux has joined the dark side too. Banning people based on nationality "Linux" is not banning anybody. They must comply with the sanctions against Putin regime that many governments in the world raised, in response to insane Putin's behavior. Linux is not banning people based on nationality, is banning people based on their employers that is a different question. Linux has every right to ban somebody that would be…

> Since 2022 the Russian president is sending 1000 Russians a day to a sure death, could stop the carnage at any time, and couldn't care less about it. Most Russians support him and don't care also. I will not accept any lesson on ethics.

Could you spell out the exact relevant conditions that you believe disqualify someone from delivering a "lesson on ethics"? It seems a priori unlikely that you could find criteria that are not obviously tortured and self-serving while also granting this qualification to a typical US citizen, especially one who has worked for any major tech company (as is the case for many posters here).

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#329

Since when does Delhi high court have worldwide jurisdiction?

There is no international law. Every national court can claim anyone in the world as guilty or order anyone anything. Actual implementation is the tricky aspect though.

Re: Wikipedia article blocked worldwide by Delhi high court

#330
post #35

Does the WMF have any presence in India? Why don't they just ignore the ruling?

All of Wikipedia would likely be banned which, I assume, they want to avoid.

As an Indian, I hope they go this path to be banned. Imagine media coverage of a fight between a non functioning and corrupt government vs the most important source of knowledge for everyone.
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