Really does this belong on VS?

@farhad: for the record, I think the actual video is dumb, but it's topical - because of this, the Indian government wants to block all access to YouTube from within the country. It's part of the trend of national governments censoring their citizens' internet access because they think they know what is good for them, and it's also a stunning case of making much ado about nothing, IMO.

So whether or not it's a great video is debateable, I agree, but that it has something to do with something significant is clear, again IMO.

I respect your downvote, though - I continue to think it'll be interesting to see if this makes it out of the queue. I don't have super-high hopes.

Definitely in the news...

Freedom of Access Vote.

I understand your point, but VS isn't actually providing the video, YT is. Freedom of Ease of Access doesn't sound quite so neat, and I doubt it's as significant.

Downvote.

A trend of national governments blocking access to the intertubes? Not really.

It's been a state sanctioned activity across the Middle East, India, Pakistan and China. Everything from blocking democratic discourse to blocking criticism of the goverment to blocking good old pornography (though this is ratified by Hotstar 101).

In half it's about political control of the people through access to information, in the other half it's really about misguided censorship by an aging ruling class. Like this for example, this really looks like a Indian Student Association variety show, with young indians that don't connect Gandhi to personal history of the independence struggle, while older folks would. And such is life. Especially since there is friction between the old gen and new gen in India.

I think the video is simply poor. And another excuse for Delhi to wage it's blind war on culture modernization.

farhad2000 wrote:

It's been a state sanctioned activity across the Middle East, India, Pakistan and China.

And Brazil.

*ahem* Senator, you forgot Poland.

...What's that you say? Poland doesn't ce...oh, never mind.

Video sux, but again I find myself upvoting for posterity.

Discarding because this post has less than 3 votes in its first 48 hours in the queue.