Mozilla, Cloudflare and GitHub write joint open letter to Indian Government [pdf]
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
* International companies to setup a physical office in the country, with an executive, who can be legally brought to court, police station etc., if the company has more than 5 million users in India. (Indian population is a Billion strong and has more than 600 million online users)
* Wants automated censorship for unlawful content on their sites
* Wants these companies to remove any content flagged by the Government, within a time period of 24 hours. The companies should also provide user data requested by the Government within 72 hours
It's not a stretch to understand that Indians don't want foreign interference in their politics, and public discourse
As a resident Indian, I would say, America is an astrnomically more democratic nation than India. You can make fun of Trump in primetime television, share it in youtube and still live happily. In India, you cannot even talk against a small circle politician or Police and not feel threatened for your life.
The Indian Governments have been notoriously interested in removing any content that may even be slightly critical of them. Look at the Google transparency index for India and the increase in the number of items requested to be taken down in the recent past https://transparencyreport.google.com/government-removals/by...
Also, India is probably the leader in internet shutdowns across the world https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/14/opinions/india-world-lead...
These new law amendments have got nothing to do with the sovereignty of India but are just tools for censorship and intimidation.
Your circular references to transparency reports from the very same companies petitioning for a pass isn't convincing. CNN literally settled in court, not 8 hours ago for defamation against kids [8], whose politics they despise, despite no wrongdoing on part of the kids. These companies aren't neutral third parties, nor are they benign. They have their agendas - shaped by the powerful at their helm, who quite literally cried because an opposition party came to power [9]
As for Indian TV's criticism of the ruling party, I'm told that there is a healthy and powerful political opposition party, replete with a sympathetic media faction that openly takes their side (as are channels aligned with the ruling party), and Twitter seems to be teeming with criticisms of the establishment. India's press is generally considered free, and freedom of expression rankings are also generally high, apart from the hate-speech laws implemented by the previous administration?
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX6LlEcJ4nw
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzF7nBmwPso
[3]: https://youtu.be/DXyU0LOqKPM?t=5111
[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik_kzn3etsE
[5]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/30/twitter-bans-political-ads-a...
[6]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[7]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/17/obama-digital-...
[8]: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/nick-s...