Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alephnerd | Hacker News Reader

Notably, India has the exact same law (the Brazilian one is probably based on it), and X complies with the Indian government.

Musk is also trying to get Starlink approved in India [0], and is on extremely thin ice after ghosting Modi (and Modi's alliance partner Chandrababu Naidu who's state was going to get the Tesla gigafactory) for Xi [1].

Now India's 2nd largest oligarch (Sunil Mittal) has majority ownership in Starlink's largest competitor in the Western world - Eutelsat OneWeb [2]. They also have majority stake in British Telecom now too [3].

Ford has also been given the red carpet for an EV-first play in India [4], along with Hyundai Kia's EV expansion in CBN's state.

Edit: cannot reply to below

In India, the Judiciary has primacy over legislative.

If the judiciary rules one way or the other, legislative need to either reach a supermajority, live with it, or litigate and re-litigate in the Supreme Court.

Which is why I point out that when FIRs under IT Rules are received, X complies.

Brazil has the same separation of powers, yet X clearly fights against the top of the Judiciary in Brazil, while complying with the lowest of the Judiciary (and even before it reaches court) in India.

[0] - https://www.businesstoday.in/tech-today/news/story/elon-musk...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-shocked-musks-surp...

[2] - https://www.eutelsat.com/en/group/company-structure.html

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/indias-bharti-enterpri...

[4] - https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/ford-likely-t...

> In India, the Judiciary has primacy over legislative.

You should read the Constitution before making random statements like these. The Parliament is supreme because every part of the Supreme Court (size, age of the judges etc) is in the hands of Parliament.

Unfortunately, like most countries including the United States, politicians prefer to use the Supreme Court to tackle knotty political issues. So, from the outside, it looks as if these courts are all powerful. Till someone proves that they are not. Like Indira Gandhi did during the Emergency.

The US has Marbury v. Madison. We have the Basic Structure Doctrine. The SCI invented a "Collegium" in the same way that they did the BSD. I am not going to go into whether these things are good or bad.

If the President asked the judges to go pound sand, there is nothing can can do about it except hold a press conference.

I consider the striking down of the NJAC to be illegitimate. If the government of the day had a backbone, every single judge would have been impeached.

> You should read the Constitution before making random statements like these

The NJAC ruling still stands in 2024 and that set the precedent for judicial primacy in India.

Until a constitutional amendment gets passed that legislates a direct path forward, it will stand.

> The US has Marbury v. Madison

And India has SCAORA v. UOI 2014 which is functionally the same.

> BSD

BSD is functionally the same as the American constitution and Bill of Rights.

> If the President asked the judges to go pound sand, there is nothing can can do about it except hold a press conference

The President in the US is the executive, not the legislative branch.

> every part of the Supreme Court (size, age of the judges etc) is in the hands of Parliament

This is the same in the US, but for customary reasons Congress has not touched this can of worms.

The same showdown Modi and the Collegium had over NJAC is very similar to the showdown FDR and the Supreme Court had over the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937.

Modi ended up in the same position and the exact same kind of loss like FDR did in 1937.

I don't know about India, but in Brazil, the requests sent to X (Twitter) have no legal basis, that is, they are illegal by nature. The entire process that resulted in this blocking is secret and not even the defense lawyers had access to the investigation.

In India, if a social media platform does not provide a legal representative during litigation, the senior most employee physically located in India is held liable and down the chain if that employer is then terminated

The law that regulates internet on Brazil (marco civil da internet), does not require a platform to have a legal representation here.

My point is Musk does not even risk doing shenanigans like this in India, which is an interesting bias given how similar India and Brazil's democracy (and dysfunctions) are

Did India sent him an illegal order?

India's IT Rules are currently being litigated in the Supreme Court for free speech implications and appeals court (called high court) contradictions, but X complies to any and all FIRs filed by cybercrime branches in India, and hasn't litigated these regulations unlike in Brazil.

India has similar principles to the Marco Civil da Internet that conflict the the IT Rules (hence the Supreme Court case), yet X has never dared to poke that bear.

Edit: the Indian law was stayed (ie. paused) by the Courts [0] yet X still complies

India is just as messed up as Brazil, but Musk clearly doesn't mess around with the Indian judiciary compared to the Brazilian judiciary.

[0] - https://www.scobserver.in/cases/challenge-to-the-it-rules-20...

Again, did India sent an illegal order to X like the Brazilian Supreme Court? Since 2019 the STF is conducting an illegal investigation in secret. I bet that India did nothing like this.

> the requests sent to X (Twitter) have no legal basis

Wouldn’t sending a Brazilian lawyer to make this claim as X’s representative be the correct move? Not ignoring the court?

There is a massive difference between e.g. a U.S. district court issuing an illegal order and someone appealing for a stay and the same order being issued and the subject doing nothing.

No lawyer haves access to the documents because it’s a secret investigation.

> No lawyer haves access to the documents because it’s a secret investigation

Doesn’t matter. They just need enough to show it’s illegal—presumably that can be done given a lot of people are concluding it. Actually, scratch that. They just need to show up.

Both sides in this are being performatively dramatic. It makes the judge look tough on us imperial Americans. It makes Elon look tough on woke censorship. Win-win.

> but in Brazil, the requests sent to X (Twitter) have no legal basis, that is, they are illegal by nature.

That request was made by Brazil's supreme court.

Should we assume some guy in the internet named diegoholiveira has more knowledge of Brazilian law than the Brazilian Supreme Court?

https://noticias.r7.com/brasil/e-um-inquerito-do-fim-do-mund...

That’s a retired minister of the Brazilian Supreme Court. With a quick search you can find many others experts saying the same.

> 18/06/2020

Please check the current date on your machine. Your "news" is about something that happened 4 years ago. Quite "old" for "news", huh?

It’s the same secret process. It’s being around since 2019.

Do you have an actual argument to refute him with? Or just appeals to authority?

Baseless appeals at that, given that these judge-kings are in their position by political appointment, not by being tested and filtered by concurso público like the real judges in this country.

> Do you have an actual argument to refute him with?

Of course not. And I don't need to provide any, since there isn't anything here to "refute".

After all, he also didn't provide any argument to demonstrate that the decision was illegal. He just took an opinion out of his ass. His thesis was unsubstantiated from the start. This is a moot discussion.

Here are the arguments for why what the judge is doing is illegal:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382

diego_moita does not care about an argument. I show him an argument from the retired minister of the Supreme Court and he says: “this is old news”, ignoring that the current process is the same since 2019.

My opinion: he agree with the decision knowing that it’s destroying our legal system. You have people on right and left saying this (the brave ones, unfortunately it’s just few people that have courage to criticize the Supreme Court).

That’s ok. Brazil always fail in have solid institutions since 1889. And he is ok with that.

Elon is strongarming his positiion in Brazil because he has no property in brazil, no tesla factories, no twitter offices... All he wants in Brazil is political influence and data, to exploit Amazon, look into starlink's presence at the Amazon, all the illegal mining operations overlap with starlink's antennas and signal, plus, even the brazillian military in the amazon is now on starlink, so crucial national defense data is at the fingertips of authoritarian billionaire, plus he's got the illegal miners community all pro-neoliberalism.

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