Pirate Bay, MegaUpload & Others Blocked By Government Order in Malaysia | Hacker News Reader

Pirate Bay, MegaUpload & Others Blocked By Government Order in Malaysia

torrentfreak.com

49 pointsUncle_Sam16 comments

... in Malaysia.

Yes, that should be in the title.

Given that governments are immune to the rule of law, why do they bother to lie about their actions? Waste of time and paper seems to me. They choose to distinguish between 'censor' and 'remove' claiming that one is not the other. I'm sure that all of the users involved will clearly understand the 'subtle' distinction involved in the Orwell-speak...

Non-totalitarian governments are not immune from public opinion, and, more relevantly, individual bureaucrats and politicians are certainly not so immune.

No government is immune from public opinion, that's why no government that rules by pure force has ever lasted a significant period of time either.

Why does the Malaysian gov bother listening to the movie and music industries? What do they lose if they don't block (i.e. have some companies threatened to move out? Threatened not to film there anymore?)?

edit: fixed my split infinitive.

US diplomatic pressure has been quietly and not-so-quietly exerted on piracy-friendly nations (China's a good example) in the past.

Lobby the US Government, lobby the world?

"Buy one, get 202 free!"

Absolutely ridiculous and myopic move by the government. Its probably a bunch of junior government workers influencing the retiring decision makers

FYI, the split infinitive 'rule' isn't actually a rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive#Current_views

FTA: Splitting infinitives with negations remains an area of contention:

    I want to not see you anymore.
    I soon learned to not provoke her.

That's interesting, because that's what I had done.

Malaysia is pretty liberal, but there's still a lot of content, like pornography, that's illegal there. It's probably not just about protecting American content providers.

They were trying to block all the copies of Zoolander they could.

These guys aren't much better in the UK. They transparently break bits of the Internet regularly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation

Look like they're going to have to rely on proxies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com