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Comment by pta2002 | Hacker News Reader

pta2002

Why would it be? Genuine question here, is there some specific legislation in India about satellite connectivity?

Yes, illegal to have a comms device that India can’t shut off (in essence): https://www.irunfar.com/trail-and-ultrarunners-warned-not-to...

This is an insane law. I thought it was an anachronism from the 1933 law but nope they kept it in as late as 2023.

There were terror attacks which caused significantly increased regulations towards them. We saw the exact same thing in the United States after the airplane strikes on the World Trade Centers but focused on air travel restrictions.

Laws follow events. This is what will eventually kill bitcoin, when someone sets up payments for the deaths of world leaders or large scale population deaths and it actually works. At that point the financial gain of participants is outweighed by everyone else calling for it's removal.

That won’t kill Bitcoin. It’s decentralized. You truly can’t kill it. That's the beauty of building decentralized applications and it's the answer whenever some tech bro wonders why "a central relational database" wouldn't be better than Bitcoin. Yes we know it would perform better but that's not the point and not what it was engineered for.

Wouldn’t want any revolutionaries communicating over uncontrolled channels that the government can’t switch off. At least that’s what I assume the law is trying to prevent.

India has a big terrorism problem. It's easier to see everything from a western perspective.

As if Western countries don't have terrorism problems?

Not as bad as India.

The west just likes to pretend the problem isn't real.

Once you stray out of 2.4GHz there are a lot of restrictions on wireless communication. In many countries, I would even suspect the US, there are restrictions on which 5GHz channels are allowed to be used outside, how certain channels may be used even indoors etc. usually your consumer router/AP handles this for you but if you purchase an item in a different jurisdiction and then travel with it you may in reality not be compliant with local laws even with wifi.

Satellite/UHF etc has even more restrictions.

Disclaimer there is actually limits on 2.4GHz as well but I’m generally referring to wifi where the conventional channels are pretty universal

Yes. For example you can't use satellite phones in India.

And who is to know? Seems a bit withouth teeth.

I have no idea how they detect it but surprised tourists get arrested there all the time for that.

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