A monthslong legal battle between online encyclopedia Wikipedia’s parent company and Asian News International (ANI) raises concerns about free access to credible online information in the country
They already have the capability to block content locally.
If by “They” you mean Wikipedia, they don’t. Contempt of court risks excluding all Indian editors and readers from using Wikipedia along with hefty fines.
It literally doesn’t matter what Indian courts rule. Being banned from India is orders and orders of magnitude more acceptable than blocking a single article anywhere else on the planet. It single handedly eliminates all of their credibility.
India isn’t capable of enforcing fines against an organization that doesn’t operate in their country and there’s no chance a US court will enforce such an unhinged judgement. They can’t be forced to pay.
Information is the power behind revolutions and popular democracy. I’d be surprised if the WMF didn’t check a web archive before taking down the article. The court case was already all over worldwide news before that anyways. If they took the article down from archives, that’d be a different story.
India isn’t capable of enforcing fines against an organization that doesn’t operate in their country
You serve a website in that country, you operate in that country. What say you about the GDPR?
No, I have no interest in digging through their history. But it’s less than trivial to do. Any random no name site can do it in 5 minutes with any source of the geo-mapping information, with virtually no knowledge required. It is not work.
GDPR can do literally nothing but block any site that doesn’t have finances under their jurisdiction, and they shouldn’t be able to. No one else will enforce their fines for them. It’s no different than Russia fining Google more money than exists. You can’t just magically rob someone because you’re a country.
Wikipedia is one of the giants that could easily geoblock a country and call it done.
If the general populace of the country in question has a problem with that, they can address it with their government or find alternative ways to access it.
Maybe there is a middle ground to be had that I can’t see, but kowtowing to the unreasonable demands of a pushy foreign government is idiotic.
They should have just blocked India.
Censoring factual articles globally is an extremely bad precedent to set for yourself.
Indians still deserve their information
You can’t give a deranged dictatorship global censorship authority.
That keeps the entire planet from access to information.
not sure it’d be better if they wrote censorship software to protect articles based on geolocated IP for this
there’s still https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_News_International#Litigation_against_other_organisations
They already have the capability to block content locally.
There isn’t a worse option than allowing a government to globally block an article.
If by “They” you mean Wikipedia, they don’t. Contempt of court risks excluding all Indian editors and readers from using Wikipedia along with hefty fines.
Yes, they do. They’ve done it in the past.
It literally doesn’t matter what Indian courts rule. Being banned from India is orders and orders of magnitude more acceptable than blocking a single article anywhere else on the planet. It single handedly eliminates all of their credibility.
India isn’t capable of enforcing fines against an organization that doesn’t operate in their country and there’s no chance a US court will enforce such an unhinged judgement. They can’t be forced to pay.
could you link to examples of the past?
Information is the power behind revolutions and popular democracy. I’d be surprised if the WMF didn’t check a web archive before taking down the article. The court case was already all over worldwide news before that anyways. If they took the article down from archives, that’d be a different story.
You serve a website in that country, you operate in that country. What say you about the GDPR?
No, I have no interest in digging through their history. But it’s less than trivial to do. Any random no name site can do it in 5 minutes with any source of the geo-mapping information, with virtually no knowledge required. It is not work.
GDPR can do literally nothing but block any site that doesn’t have finances under their jurisdiction, and they shouldn’t be able to. No one else will enforce their fines for them. It’s no different than Russia fining Google more money than exists. You can’t just magically rob someone because you’re a country.
Agree.
Wikipedia is one of the giants that could easily geoblock a country and call it done.
If the general populace of the country in question has a problem with that, they can address it with their government or find alternative ways to access it.
Maybe there is a middle ground to be had that I can’t see, but kowtowing to the unreasonable demands of a pushy foreign government is idiotic.