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BlackBerry Battle In India Going Down To the Wire
crimeandpunishment writes "With just days before the deadline, BlackBerry's maker was shot down by India in its latest effort to avoid having its services cut off for about a million Indian users of the device. Research in Motion's effort to broaden the debate over data encryption were rejected. The Indian government wants access to users' emails. The head of a powerful industry group in India accused RIM of taking the wrong approach to negotiations, saying, 'It need not have escalated to this level. Folks like RIM have to understand business is done differently here.'"
"business is done differently here."
sounds like a shakedown for a bribe to me
> business is done differently here.
Yeh, that's a funny thing. In Europe, we spent seven years building a movement and fighting software patents. In India, they were proposed, and fought over for three weeks, and discussed in the media for maybe one week, and the government retracted the software patents proposal.
The issue isn't over, but things are certainly done different over there. I discussed it with some locals there and they told me that foreign interference doesn't go down well. Not at all. Red Hat sent a letter to the Indian government saying that software patents are dumb. (Well done Red Hat! You were our only supporter!) Locals told me that Red Hat took a chance with that letter. Other companies that try too hard to pressure the government get kicked out.
The software patent battle there is still in progress there, but foreigners should be wary of their preconceptions of how lobbying is done.
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Please mod parent down: as of 2009, 80% of blackberry customers are non-corporate consumers: http://www.twice.com/article/295368-RIM_Majority_Of_BlackBerry_Users_Now_Consumers_Small_Businesses.php
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."