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Monthly Archives: July 2017
American tech firms are preemptively censoring content in India. – Slate Magazine (blog)
Posted: July 19, 2017 at 3:43 am
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos poses on a lorry in Bangalore.
Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images
Among big American tech companies, the race for India is on. With 355 million internet users (and rapidly growing) up for grabs, its no surprise that firms like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to make inroads in the worlds largest democracy.
But as they do, theyre running up against a particular conundrum: how to cater to the countrys cosmopolitan consumers without offending its more conservative classes, including the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a surprising number of cases, companies are erring on the side of censorshipfor instance, by blocking images of dead cows and ads for anti-nationalist home goods.
Indias approach to internet governance isnt in the same league as the heavy-handed censorship of neighbor and rival power China though, which has historically blocked popular websites including Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook through its Great Firewall. India represents a softer form of sanitization. By law, the nation offers a constitutional protection of free speech and limits the governments ability to crack down on online content. But that doesnt mean the internet has become a free-for-all. For example, India frequently leads the world in government requests to Facebook for account data and for content removal (mostly related to local laws against anti-religious or hate speech). Many companies also choose to pre-emptively clean up content to appease the government and avoid backlash from of Indias culturally conservative classes.
As noted in a post by the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi on Legally India, the practice of self-censorship is particularly widespread among international video streaming services. The authors suggest that the platforms may be trying to find their place in the Indian market without drawing attention for the wrong reasons.
This May, Netflix released a censored form of the Hindi dramedy Angry Indian Goddessesfor viewers in India, even though it made an uncensored cut available for foreign audiences in April. According to Indian digital news site MediaNama, it seems that the streaming service released the version of the filmwhich covers stigmatized issues like homosexuality, rape, and castethat had been approved for theatrical release by the Indias Central Board of Film Certification. But that body doesnt have jurisdiction over online content from platforms like Netflix and recently implied it has no intention of regulating online content in the foreseeable future.
Instead, it appears Netflixs decision was a case of self-censorship. According to the films production company and director, the American company requested the edited version of the movie first, apparently preferring to stream the version that cut references to the Indian government, blurred an image of an Indian goddess, and cut out dialogue referring to an Indian figure, the holy Hindu bovine cow, and, for unknown reasons, the words guitar and lunch.
Business is Business. They would rather censor stuff and stay on the good graces of the government of India than appease users and risk controversy, wrote one Reddit user in a discussion about the streaming services seemingly arbitrary censorship decisions in the country.
After getting complaints from confused India-based viewers, Netflix released an uncut version of the movie in June.
Amazon Prime Video also routinely eliminates nudity and other inappropriate content from its vast streaming catalog. Since its 2016 launch in India, many TV shows and films available in the region have been edited to the point where plots elude human comprehension. Among others, Amazon heavily cut an episode of Jeremy Clarksons car show The Grand Tourthat featured the host driving a car out of animal carcasses. Despite complaints, Amazon defended the move to Mashable India, saying it wanted to "keep Indian cultural sensitivities in mind. Considering the recent episodes of violence allegedly tied to beef consumption, Amazon may have thought it incendiary to show the dead body of an animal so highly revered in Hindu circles.
Amazon has also had to mind its online merchandise. The everything store came under fire in January for selling doormats with the Indian national flag design. (In India and other South Asian countries, feet on such a symbol would be considered an insult.) Upon learning of the product, Indias Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted, Amazon must tender unconditional apology. They must withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately. In a subsequent tweet, she threatened to withhold and rescind visas from Amazon employees if action was not taken quickly. The company swiftly complied.
Tinder, too, hasnt been immune. The hookup app took criticism earlier this year after releasing a seemingly tone-deaf video ad for potential Indian users, which featured a conservative mother surprisingly approve of her daughters date, saying, From my side, there is a right swipe for this."
Some criticized what they saw as a regressive message at odds with the apps reputation for facilitating casual sex. Others pointed out how not OK their parents would be with them meeting up with strangers in a culture where open dating has traditionally been taboo.
If ma knew her daughter is on a hang-and-maybe-bang app, shed kick me outta the house, not sweetly send me off to drunk-make out with a rando, one user told BuzzFeed India.
When Tinder India CEO Taru Kapoor was asked about the video by Huffington Post India, she admitted the ad might not have been perfectly executed. But, she said, it was part of a larger effort the company would continue to make to show that online dating could appeal to a broad range of Indian users. Although differing from Amazon Prime Video and Netflixs self-censorship, the advertisement tied into a broader trend of appealing to more conservative audiences.
As huge profit margins and success in the Indian markets are already demonstrating, that may not be an unwise business decision.
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American tech firms are preemptively censoring content in India. - Slate Magazine (blog)
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Is Rand Paul’s opposition to the GOP health bill principled, or cynical … – Los Angeles Times
Posted: at 3:43 am
The greatest trick any politician can pull off is to get his self-interest and his principles in perfect alignment. As Thomas More observed in Robert Bolts A Man for All Seasons, If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly.
Which brings me to Sen. Rand Paul, the GOPs would-be Man for All Seasons. Paul has managed to make his opposition to the GOPs healthcare bill a matter of high libertarian principle. The fact that the bill is terribly unpopular in his home state of Kentucky where more than 1 out of 5 Kentuckians are on Medicaid is apparently just a coincidence.
Indeed, it seems like whenever I turn on the news, hes explaining why the GOPs healthcare efforts are disappointing. Look, this is what we ran on for four elections. Republicans ran four times and won every time on repeal Obamacare, he told Fox News Neil Cavuto, and now they're going to vote to keep it. Disappointing.
Principles, meet self-interest.
But is Pauls idealism really whats driving him, or is that just a convenient excuse for doing whats politically expedient? Its tough to say.
Paul learned politics on the knee of his father, Ron Paul, a longtime Texas congressman and irrepressible presidential candidate. In the House, the elder Paul earned the nickname Dr. No because he voted against nearly everything on the grounds that it wasnt constitutional or libertarian enough. The fusion of cynicism and idealism was so complete, it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended.
Im absolutely for free trade, more so than any other member of the House, he told National Reviews John Miller in 2007. But Im against managed trade. So he opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and all other trade deals, not on Trumpian protectionist grounds but in service to his higher libertarian conscience which, in a brilliant pas de deux landed him in the protectionist position anyway.
Ron Paul loved earmarks. Hed cram pork for his district in must-pass spending bills like an overstuffed burrito and then vote against them in the name of purity, often boasting that he never approved an earmark or a spending bill.
In 2006, Republicans proposed legislation to slow the growth of entitlements by $40 billion over five years. Democrats screamed bloody murder about Republican heartlessness and voted against it. So did Ron Paul on the grounds the reform didnt go far enough.
Now I cant say for sure that Rand Paul is carrying on the family tradition.
And yet: Every time healthcare proceedings move one step in Pauls direction, he seems to move one step back. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas offered an amendment that would open up the market for more flexible and affordable plans, like Paul wants. No good, he told Foxs Chris Wallace. Those plans are still in the context of the Obamacare mandates.
My idea always was to replace it with freedom, legalize choice, legalize inexpensive insurance, allow people to join associations to buy their insurance.
Sounds good. Except a provision for exempting associations from Obamacare mandates is already in the bill.
Paul insists hes sympathetic to the GOPs plight and its need to avoid a midterm catastrophe. (It would look awful if the party did nothing on healthcare at all.) His solution? Just repeal Obamacare now, and work on a replacement later. I still think the entire 52 of us can get together on a more narrow, clean repeal, he told Wallace.
That sounds like a constructive idea, grounded in principle.
Oddly, thats what the GOP leadership wanted to do back in January.
And one senator more than any other fought to stop them and even lobbied the White House successfully to change course. Guess who?
If Congress fails to vote on a replacement at the same time as repeal, Paul wrote, the repealers risk assuming the blame for the continued unraveling of Obamacare. For mark my words, Obamacare will continue to unravel and wreak havoc for years to come.
Thats true, particularly, if Paul stays true to his principles.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
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How influential was James Buchanan among libertarians? – Washington Post
Posted: at 3:42 am
Nancy MacLeans Democracy in Chains portrays the late economist James Buchanan as a central figure in the modern libertarian movement. An individual can be influential in different ways; he can be an institution-builder, inspire strategy, or directly influence other activists and movement intellectuals with his ideas. MacLean suggests that Buchanan was a supremely important institution-builder and strategy-inspirer, though I think she greatly exaggerates his role in both spheres.
But what of his direct influence on activists and movement intellectuals? As I noted in my first post on the book, my impression is that Buchanan was a peripheral or tangential figure in the development of modern libertarianism. It eventually occurred to me that there is at least one objective contemporary indicator that I am right.
In 1988, Liberty Magazine surveyed its readers regarding which important figures influenced their political views. Liberty was a small-circulation libertarian magazine that, unlike the outreach Reason magazine, was written to appeal to activist libertarians, the sort of people who work at think tanks, who are active in the Libertarian Party, or who promote libertarian causes like drug legalization. It wasnt a scientific survey but still provides some interesting data.
Buchanan won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1986. MacLean claims that this advanced the cause as nothing else had to that point. Strange that hard-core activist libertarians didnt notice. The editors explained how they chose the names on the survey list: The names were chosen during the editorial meeting attended by Cox, Bradford, Holmes and Virkkala. An attempt was made to include on the list the most important contributors to libertarian thought, as well as figures believed by the editors to be influential among libertarians, and some individuals about whose influence that the editors were simply curious. James Buchanan wasnt on the list.
This could have been an oversight, but apparently not. Readers wrote in several names multiple times, including such now-forgotten figures as Robert Ringer, and even Buchanans sometime collaborator, Gordon Tullock. Buchanan wasnt among the write-ins, either.
For the curious, the most influential modern libertarians, in order, were Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. Note that contrary to MacLeans (almost entirely undocumented) suggestion that libertarianism was motivated to a large degree by Southern hostility to desegregation in general and Brown v. Board of Education in particular, none of these figures were Southerners, 60 percent of them were European refugees, 80 percent (all but Hayek, who had Jewish relatives) were Jews, and all lived in Chicago or New York.
Its also worth noting that despite MacLeans tracing of libertarianisms lineage to John Calhoun, he also unlike other historical figures such as Locke, Jefferson and abolitionist Lysander Spooner does not appear on the list.
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How influential was James Buchanan among libertarians? - Washington Post
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A Son’s Race to Give His Dying Father Artificial Immortality – WIRED
Posted: at 3:42 am
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