Slashdot Mirror
India Lurches Toward Internet Censorship
First time accepted submitter ixarux writes "India is at a crucial crossroad at the moment. Internet censorship laws are getting stricter as it begins to ban file-sharing and video-sharing websites. It started with Indian courts allowing censorship of Google, Facebook, etc. It has now gone one step ahead and decided to ask ISPs to block file-sharing sites. It is the movie industry which is again at the forefront of this. Anonymous retaliated, and targeted the websites of various Indian government websites in protest. What India lacks at this crucial juncture are debates in the public domain about this and citizens actually organizing protests as seen in the West."
role of Internet Stewardship?
No thanks.
Pretty sure it was India. No one drinking anything else, could come up with something so cockbrained otherwise.
Om, nomnomnom...
What India lacks is indoor plumbing for much of the population. I don't even know where to start with that place, but internet censorship isn't high on the to do list. Don't get me wrong, I love India, some of the most beautiful women in the world, ancient culture etc, but so many of them are living the exact same lifestyles as people did there a thousand years ago.
This case in particular is a prime example, the sites blocked were only in certain regions and at the behest of a production studio that had a new movie coming out while also owning several ISPs. Corruption that would stagger most of us in the west is everday life in India.
and how is this different from internet censorship in belgium, the uk and the netherlands?
https://depiratenpartij.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/brein-wins-democracy-loses/
If the movie companies have enough money to bribe the number of governments that they seem to, people are not illegally downloading nearly enough movies.
Isn't social stability more important? Also, Anonymous should really stop being such tools of Western cultural hegemony, they should be more sensitive towards Indian culture.
Am I right guys?
The solution is within their grasp!
Tag every wild animal, especially monkeys, with Raspberry Pi's .onion sites.
and have some of them piggybacking the real internet, and some
an internal network where citizens may share ideas and files through a private or the regular Tor network consisting of
Almost all countries have started with some form of Internet Censorship. I guess it is nature of the people in power to have more control. Slowly govt. has started letting the people know what they can and cannot do.
Lol , perhaps India will let the U.N.run their business from now on.
That really is a lot of people to piss off all at once.
Has India ever had a revolution?
I for one welcome the entertainment of giving the U.N. enough rope to really fuck up like the bureaucratic clusterwank it is.
The revolution will be streamed live!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
It's the ruling Indian Congress Party which is supporting moves to crack down on the internet, because they view the internet as a threat to their continued rule. The Indian Congress Party likes to outwardly market itself to the world as democratic, but inwardly they really want a One Party State, with a mere token opposition as a figleaf.
The ruling party has been making a lot of predatory moves since it took office - like trying to get its own men onto the Election Commission, which under the constitution is supposed to be an independent oversight body for elections. They've also brought in dubious new inventions like Electronic Voting Machines, which they claim will allow elections to be conducted more efficiently, but which could dangerously be used to rig votes, since they could easily be tampered with while offering no paper trail.
The Congress Party has increasingly been using the courts to harass members of political opposition parties, even while blocking any criminal investigation into their own party members. They are also engaging in rampant wiretapping and eavesdropping on opposition party members. The ruling party also wants to create new security agencies which are directly under the control of the central govt where the party currently holds power, while diminishing the rights of the states.
They are doing all these things because they want to keep themselves in power in perpetuity. Oh, and this is the same party that invokes Mahatma Gandhi's name at every opportunity, since they figure that by doing so, it gives them unlimited carte blanche to do whatever they want. They're just trying to keep India safely in the arms of Gandhi, you see. :p
the west should take note: this is how it begins
First there's censorship under the guise of child porn. Then copyright, then national security, then whatever they want.
No one drinking anything else, could come up with something so cockbrained otherwise.
Oh, come on, you haven't been watching. I can easily see the same sort of crap coming from Pakistan, the Saudis, China, North Korea, the USA, (soon) Canada, the UK, France, Italy, ...
One word: OpenNic.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Has India ever had a revolution?
Wow. Go read some history. Does the name Mahatma Gandhi ring any bells?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Saw a dude in SF with the sign: human rights violation, fine= 0 cents, copyright violation of 99 cents, fine = 2000 dollars, why?
They're only blocking the more popular sites. You can still use Tor to access the blocked sites. And don't forget that if the ISPs throttle torrent file transfers, you can always point out that perfectly legitimate torrents such as Linux ISOs are being blocked. That's how I got Airtel to remove torrent throttling from my connection.
So to keep all the Indian spammers away, all I need to do is make sure my website is offensive to India?
Blogger now has .in domain at the highest level, so it makes it convenient for google to implement india specific restrictions.
Common indians don't care much about the internet, it is only companies with huge warchets that have to fight this battle, in the hope of getting a much wider userbase at a future time.
But given that the american law is being de-facto exported across the world, all victories will be short-lived.
YMMV...
That was british india not india.
.
Think about it. If the country where internet originated from, and which pretty much controls the internet, wants to monitor and control it, why wouldn't other countries want to follow suit?
In fact the very excused used by Indian government and the courts in most of above cases was "Well, these companies are doing the surveillance and censoring for USA, so how dare they deny us, when they do business on our soil?".
And considering that even Indians politicians are poor compared to their US counterparts, while being almost equally corrupt, media companies find it much easier and cheaper to bribe them to get the kind of laws they want. Bollywood media companies couldn't care less about internet piracy, since internet speed being what it is in India, it takes days to download movies and people find it cheaper to go watch a movie for just 1USD equivalent. The media companies in question here, are again the US ones.
So it seems like if you must blame anyone at all, it would be USA for starting this shit, and exporting it to other countries as well, thanks to its utterly corrupt for-corporates-and-rich-people government.
On top of that, the ruling congress party tried to play communal politics by trying to appease the muslim population which votes en masse. Muslims have always wanted to control the internet after the mohammed cartoons saga(something again started by the west... go ahead, poke a few more sleeping bears please). So there is that missing part of the equation as well.
Government controlled BSNL did not block any sites. Its the private controlled Reliance, Airtel who are blocking certain sites.
The ruling party has been making a lot of predatory moves since it took office - like trying to get its own men onto the Election Commission, which under the constitution is supposed to be an independent oversight body for elections.
On a related note, 3 FEC Commissioners are Democrats and 3 are Republicans. The Commissioners are appointed by the President, thus ensuring that a third party will never gain a seat on the FEC.
I believe the uncensored internet and open source operating systems are the last best hope for economic justice and true democracy for humanity on this planet. In view of this, I would have thought that it would be easy to equate the significance of the spinning wheel in India's recent history as somewhat analogous to the open source technologies to which the neutrality of networks and availability of the means to compete with entrenched interests is so important. I believe The Gan would agree with this position.
Brilliant connecting of the dots, that if we outsource everything else, one day we will outsource bribery, and get nice new laws in India nice and cheap.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
People in the developed world, in line with their general ignorance of developing countries, seem to not be aware of some important facts. India is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015. 7% of India has internet access, and given India's population, even 7% of its population amounts to more people than many Western European countries. Internet censorship is therefore a big deal and it will affect the lives of millions. Like all developing countries, India grapples with poverty. But on the other end, the rich and middle-class in India are at levels of Western society, in terms of both awareness and with a very major stake in the internet.
Dear Indians: you're getting the government you deserve!
Now, stop conforming and start non-violent resisting, you ding-a-ling bunch of ding dongs!
Has India ever had a revolution?
Wow. Go read some history. Does the name Mahatma Gandhi ring any bells?
That was british india not india.
India's history is just as old and colorful and barbaric and glorious as China's, Japan's, Thailand's, Indonesia's, ... Just like Europe, the despots ruled with absolute power over their peasants, and lots of peasants died for them, whether Indian Raj despots or British India despots. The peasants died. Plus ca change, ...
Alexander "The Great" showed up in India, did you know?
He who fails to learn from history, ...
Remind me, what is it we're disagreeing about? I tend to lose track ...
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
The Indian courts have not explicitly blocked file sharing sites. All they have provided is a generic order to stop the copyright infringement. The company Copyright Labs which is looking to stop the piracy of its films, maintain that they provided the ISPs with a list of specific URLs that were to be blocked. The ISPs have apparently decided (40 days after the blocks were requested) to block entire domains rather than individual URLs. One of these parties is liable for damages for the blanket blocks.
The courts haven't necessarily done anything wrong here besides being ingenuous.
Quillem : An India-centric mishmash of things.
Why don't they pray the offending sites away?
By asking for a law, they are admitting that their gods have no power over the internet while Anonymous does.
All religion is mental illness and should be treated as such.
Free internet poses risks. Risks are an opportunity for regulators to expand their fiefdom. The risk-averse public sector, if left unchecked (by unbalanced budgets) will take over the free economy like a bad antibiotic-immune staph infection, or auto-immune disease.
I deal internationally with many nations, and have repeatedly tried, but have never been able to do anything successfully in India. Despite low linguistic barriers, savvy businesspeople, educated populace, and an adorably intelligent PM (Singh), there is just an impossible number of bureaucrats to obtain approval from. I attribute it to a tipping-scale of public-sector employees set up by Indira Gandhi. Once you create a certain ratio of regulator jobs to the private sector jobs, it's very difficult to reverse it.
By 2nd analogy, regulators are like basketball referees, you need a few. but too many make it impossible to navigate the basketball court.
Public sector regulators do not get rewarded when things go right in the private sector (what did they have to do with it but stay out of the way?) but are punished for allowing it if something went wrong. It's by nature risk averse, and prone to setting limits on everything. It's easier for a public sector manager to hire a new person than to undertake the unpleasant and near-impossible task of laying off an unproductive person. To get new hires, you need a risk or danger (or type of foul) to protect the public from. At some point the public has such a stake in public sector job security (family with salaries from referee jobs) that it's nearly impossible to reverse, and the economy - the basketball game - slows and stagnates. Africa has the same problem.
Eventually, (my theory goes) incompetence sets in and almost appears to heal the public sector employment imbalance. The public bureaucracy becomes so crowded that nothing gets done, and the regulators start to feel anonymous and disenfranchised by the command-and-control network. China's Communist Party had so much corruption in the 1980s that the regulations were completely randomized, and the economy grew by accepted practice of ignoring entrenched regulators. The refs in China were blowing whistles that everyone ignored, basketball players passed and circled around them, or paid the regulator to sit off the court. Unfortunately, like (analogy 3) Lyme disease, the idled refs never really go away. Indira created lots of public sector employment. Hiring public employees is like feeding a (#4) dragon that gets bigger with every bite, and even if it's a nice dragon now, you will still be in the cage with it tomorrow.
Gently reply
the jester is indian govt guy ...just so ya know
explain who one rampages on the net as an adult , sounds like fun more fun then hollywood gives us...
Shouldn't they have attacked film websites?
And considering that even Indians politicians are poor compared to their US counterparts, while being almost equally corrupt, media companies find it much easier and cheaper to bribe them to get the kind of laws they want. Bollywood media companies couldn't care less about internet piracy, since internet speed being what it is in India, it takes days to download movies and people find it cheaper to go watch a movie for just 1USD equivalent. The media companies in question here, are again the US ones.
Slight change in the information you have.
10 Mbps is now available for 20 USD/m in many parts of India; no contracts. Most connected users around the country have atleast 2 Mbps for less than 5-6 USD/m. Thats fast enough to download your movies in a few hours. Watching a movie in the theaters still costs 6-10 USD per person per movie.
damn
I always figured that was some religious war where they finally gave the Muslims the back 40 just to go away.
Never really thought of it as being against the English.
Jolly good point watching that one "sober" this time. Pip pip.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
I always figured that was some religious war where they finally gave the Muslims the back 40 just to go away.
My recollection is the Indians were bending over backwards to attempt to accomodate the Muslim side, but the latter were having none of it. Perhaps they'd just run out of patience suffering under the British. I can respect that. Perfidious Albion's got a lot to apologize for (they were vicious brutes in so damned many ways). Then you end up with the mess of millions of people moving to "their" new country from wherever they happened to be when the starter pistol went off.
I also often puzzled over the fact that not even Bangladeshi's could stand Pakistan. That says something there, what I'm not sure.
By the way, I've no irons in that fire. I've had good friends from both camps, and known jerks from both camps as well. I look forward to learning more about both. I also look forward to hearing that the whole subcontinent has decided to stop shooting at each other. :-| Yankee, go home, please and thank you.
Jolly good point watching that one "sober" this time. Pip pip.
Er, what? And do people really still say "pip pip"?!?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Nonsense. Perhaps you should actually go and check the rates of Airtel broadband, Tata or even BSNL broadband services, instead of making things up. Here is news, most of them do not even offer speed above 4MB to home users. As for movies, you are seriously telling me that a guy in Banaras or say Damanjodi even, pays 500 INR to watch a movie? Perhaps you should come out of your fantasy world and start using the actual forex-exchange ratio that the rest of us use.