"You want access to my market of a billion potential consumers? Do what I say!"

Simple as that really. The government of Tuvalu making a similar request probably would have been politely ignored.

I don't know how country domains work legally, but I imagine twitch.tv might be very quick to respond to a request from Tuvalu.

The bigger (and richer) the market, the stronger a country is in negotiations. All those politicians who would like their country to leave the European Union should be reminded of this.

One solution (not an ideal solution) might be where every entity that wants to serve the citizens of a sovereign country have to have a local company that serves the local population, a local subsidiary like in most brick and mortar industries.

They may even require that all compute happen locally. And of course that all content and so on meet local regulations. Sort of like what we see with other telecommunication, be it T-mobile or other. Sure, they operate in many countries, but they have local staff and follow local rules.

Couldn't New Delhi just tell Youtube HQ to obey worldwide and enforce it on all their subsidiaries, or lose the market?

In that case it wouldn't matter how many intermediary entities are there between HQ and local operations.

Yah right now they could take that stand. In the future I can imagine an international governing body that would set rules around these things.

Seems like if you can just will an international governing body into existence, there isn't even any need for subsidiary cloak-and-dagger.

What if Alphabet calls the bluff and stops serving all of their services in the market. The population would know why which wouldn't be a good look for leaders. Google is too invested in $earch to call a bluff though.

Alphabet would be shooting themselves in the foot doing that, they'd be giving a local competitor a solid footing, which they could then expand from to the US

Google has competitors in the search space so it's understandable why they're afraid of calling bluffs.

And from what I understand Youtube isn't profitable by itself.

Why do you think it’s unprofitable? Last estimate I looked at showed YouTube as being wildly profitable.

Can you link to the estimate?

YouTube revenue got a huge bump in 2021 which is when that wildly profitable estimate was given.

I don’t have specific estimates I can link to, but I’ve seen statements like this fairly regularly: There are more questions around YouTube’s profitability, but he said the general view was that it was “modestly profitable but not dramatically so.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/technology/youtube-financ...

Of course when Google actually disclosed what percentage of their revenue came from YouTube it was well below the 20% suggested in that piece.

> YouTube revenue got a huge bump in 2021 which is when that wildly profitable estimate was given. I don’t have specific estimates I can link to...

What is 'that wildly profitable estimate' then?

They did that with China.

And Chinese entrepreneurs just kind of said, "SWEET!", then swept in with their own startups offering those services.

I'd imagine there are a lot of Indians, even here in the US, that would make a headlong rush back to India to start up web service companies if our companies said we won't service India any longer.

India is kind of moving towards this? Data security is a big discussion in whatever policy discussion is left in the country. I think legislation is in the works to mandate that all data related to indian citizens need to be in India and not leave it's virtual borders.

Mainland China already does this. The extent to which this is a real solution are pretty dubious. When the local rules are reasonable and local everything is fine, but a large enough country the government can start trying to use its weight to encroach on the severity of other countries and push across whatever fence the company has set up.

China's done similar things, the most prominent I can think of being them bullying the NBA into policing what their players can say.

And NBA franchise executives

And reporters covering the situation (The Athletic)

It was timed perfectly. 20 years later, nobody can question the documentary makers. A hitjob is hitjob.

The documentary did not even talk about how the Supreme Court of India investigated twice and the first one while the current opposition government was in power, and what conclusion they have reached. No witnesses from who were actually affected on both sides. Not sure if it should even be called a documentary.

For anyone wondering - the evidence implicating Modi "vanished". No court will convict someone without evidence and the Indian prosecution in general has a record of doing a shit job in gathering implicating evidence when influential folks are involved.

Also, the one member of the indian bureaucracy who dared to question Modi's role in the riots - Sanjiv Bhatt - was sentenced to life in prison.

I am not sure what the poster here is insinuating with the claim that the case was tried under a different government. In no reasonable democracy are the courts swayed by politics.

if courts aren’t swayed by politics, after 20 years of scrutiny and thousands of witnesses, so many days of investigations the court decided to arrest this person. We either trust the the sanctity of the court or we don’t. If anything, to be neutral the documentary should have kept a lot of time discussing the Supreme courts ruling and either bust it rulings or agree to it, but to totally ignore it.

No, i reject this idea entirely.

Court judgements are made by humans and humans err. This is not the binary you are making it out to be. Indian courts are hamstrung by the rest of the Indian legal system and are routinely used to silence dissent and harass the small fry.

This is not true. Indian courts are very much functional and is not elected by politicians. So they are not as hamstrung as any US courts if you are going to start comparing. Only issue is the long delays involved.

> not elected by politicians.

All judicial appointments need to be approved by the government. Retired judges get plum political appointments including to the Rajya Sabha.

Approved doesn't mean elected via political campaigning. So judges doesn't need to take any political stance to make any political party happy. Of course there is the issue of after retirement appointments. But not every judge does that. Things won't become better if people don't put pressure on representatives to make ethical laws.

> So judges doesn't need to take any political stance to make any political party happy.

The Centre refused to appoint Saurabh Kirpal because he is openly gay. This isn't some wild conjecture, this is the official government position: https://www.barandbench.com/news/law-ministry-says-saurabh-k...

I have 2 words for you: 2G Scam.

> In no reasonable democracy are the courts swayed by politics.

Maybe in movies.

A hitjob is a hitjob, but a pogrom is not a pogrom?

The pogrom is an internal matter. A hitjob is external interference.

Btw, I watched the documentary and it actually covers the Supreme court judgement, so the responding accounts are actually spreading misinformation.

> The pogrom is an internal matter. A hitjob is external interference.

I'm sure that line on the map is really important to the victims...

> The pogrom is an internal matter. A hitjob is external interference.

I find myself continually dumbfounded by the kind of reasoning and justifications, the supporters BJP come up with. Thousands of people killed and in many cases, even worse. Terming it an "internal matter" is being cruel beyond my comprehension.

> Btw, I watched the documentary and it actually covers the Supreme court judgement, so the responding accounts are actually spreading misinformation.

So you're implying the Supreme Court has a "Ministry of Truth" type of thing going on? How many judges transferred, maligned and were even killed for clean chits? Institutions ceased being autonomous and ethical a long time ago in India.

A pogrom is a crime against humanity and therefore not an internal matter.

But it's on the iPlayer and works perfectly? So you can watch it in your own country https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dkb144

Not outside of the UK without a VPN (And let's be honest, who buys one in a country which has restricted internet to begin with?) but if they haven't blocked this link in your locale here's an option to watch it as well:

https://archive.org/details/india.-the.-modi.-question.-s-01...

> And let's be honest, who buys one in a country which has restricted internet to begin with?

It would be the first thing I'd get in a country with restricted internet :)

You'd buy a VPN outside of that country, not inside it.

Ah but most VPNs have exit nodes in pretty much every major country in the world.

Are there VPN services that reliably work with geo-blocked content? I haven't tried many but I have currently have a Mullvad subscription and I basically can't watch anything as all the IPs are blocked. I've also done some searches about the other big VPN providers and it seems like they are all blocked too. I wonder if I can spin up a VPS and roll my own? I kinda of assume all the major cloud provider IPs would be blocked as well.

Roll your own for sure

I suggest trying out wireguard, it's a ton easier to set up than openvpn or ipsec

I haven't been blocked on decently reputed hosting providers

Kind of not the point. The BBC being unwilling to be intimidated doesn't imply that Youtube should be willing.

And I wonder if that BBC link works in India. Or if this one does: https://btdig.com/search?q=modi+question&order=2

> BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues.

BCC iPlayer doesn't work in any country other than the UK, so there isn't any question of it working in India. BTDigg is blocked in India, along with most piracy oriented websites, since long before the BBC documentary thing I think.

But for the content they make, they own the rights. Including this doc, right? So what's the problem?

They make money selling the rights to stuff they produce in other parts of the world. Maybe not for this particular show, but in general.

They presumably treat everything on the service exactly the same, because it would cost them money to do otherwise, and also because they probably don't want to pay for the bandwidth for foreign users. I suspect you probably have to have a UK TV license to watch it, too, which means they're charging for it in the UK. It'd actually be surprising if they had a way to treat different content differently, as opposed to the whole service being all or nothing.

They probably also have foreign stuff on there that they've bought only the UK rights for.

At some point BBC needs to make a streaming service for everyone. Anyone with a 100 video content library is making their own, BBC is leaving money on the table I think. Unless licensing their content makes them way more money, the only other blockers I can think of are competence related and things being slow because of BBC's semi government organization.

This would be the smart thing to do. Still baffled that they don't do it. Maybe no visionaries work there.

They already tried it and it didn't go well. I remember it because I had a meeting with the man who was running the trial service. Granted this was a few years ago now, but you also have to remember that "the BBC" isn't allowed to do this, only it's commercial entity "BBC Worldwide" can, due to the way the BBC is funded.

Many of the best shows are co-produced with other broadcasters from countries, which means the BBC doesn't have the global rights for them. Also a decent proportion of BBC content is independently produced, which also means the BBC doesn't have the rights to that content. Lastly, the contracts for performing rights were often written before the concept of streaming, so you may have to go back to each credited performer and get the rights to distribute the show online. This has impacted DVD releases before, in one instance the BBC had to actually wait for someone to die before they could release a DVD box set, because one actor in just one episode refused to sign an updated agreement. So the list of content that's actually available is much smaller than you might think.

Maintaining a paid archive of "long tail" content has long been said to be the way forward. You can monetise that huge library of content from your past, right? Actually, it turns out that people don't actually watch that long tail. Outside the top, recent content, you'll get maybe a handful of people watching the archive each week. The cost of maintaining that archive online is non-zero and because the content is largely "cold", in terms of streaming, delivery of the archive costs you more than the popular content people are actually watching. And if you hadn't noticed, streaming services aren't renowned for being profitable in the first place.

Oh, and playback performance for cold assets is worse than fresh content. So watching an old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' in Indonesia will have relatively poor streaming performance without putting in significant global investment. That investment being difficult to justify.

It's cheaper to syndicate the popular shows (old and new) to the other streaming services and see what gets watched.

Credentials: >20 years in broadcast/media technology, now working in a senior role at a major streaming service.

TIL. Thank you very much for this interesting background information.

Counterpoint: Nobody wants to subscribe to 100 services. If you're not in say somebody's top 3, that person is probably not going to buy your service. Therefore, if you don't believe that you will be in the top 3 for some fairly large number of people, you should not try to start your own consumer-facing service.

The BBC might correctly determine that, although it's a respected content producer, it doesn't have enough of that kind of power to make it work... except in the UK, where it already has a captive audience of "subscribers".

That applies at least until there is a universally adopted micropayment system, and maybe after that, too.

On edit, as a by-the-way: While it's true that everybody with a library is trying to do that, that only proves that it's trendy. Where are the numbers that say it's actually profitable?

The thing is, this is sort of the reality we are living in. People are subscribing to a 100 different services. Niche streaming services are very popular, but I do agree you have to be the best at your niche to be viable. The whole profitability point you made is completely valid. There are indeed no numbers that I am aware of that say these are profitable.

Really? I subscribe to maybe 10 services in my place. Energy, Internet, Mobile, VPS, and a couple of websites and patreons. No TV or streaming. And spotify I do on and off (when they have an offer for 3 months for 10 bucks).

As soon as a paid service goes subscription-only I drop it generally unless I really really need it.

I know not everyone is as anti-subscription as I am, but really, 100? Anything that pays "automatically" and auto-renews is something I have less control and visibility over so I'll do anything to avoid it.

I thought it was understood that 100 was an exaggeration. But yes in my circle almost everyone has 5-6 media subscriptions. Some niche some not.

BBC iPlayer is restricted to UK residents only.

It's quite sad, it's a generic "this video isn't allowed globally due to rights". That makes perfect sense when you're talking about last nights showing of Moanna, or even Eastenders (where background music in the pub might not be cleared for use outside the UK), but when it comes to a program like this you'd hope exceptions would be made.

These programs are often made by commercial entities (like BBC Worldwide, which is separate from the normal state funded BBC) who license their material to foreign streaming services like Netflix.

If every impactful documentary would be given away for free, there's no incentive for anyone to pay the company behind it to make more. Journalism is expensive and I don't think enough people would donate to a large corporation through Patreon.

I would love documentaries like these to be available without restriction, but when it comes to copyright and business model, it really does come close to Moanna or Eastenders.

Part of the BBC's remit is the world service, and serving India especially. There is a very large production office in Delhi which produces multiple TV programs each day in various languages.

i thought the whole point is that you cant watch it in india

This is, in fact, the topic of the article linked.

you can watch it easy enough

What surprises me is that these kind of thing often get treated as "all or nothing". Why remove it, instead of a geo block? 451 HTTP code is a thing.

Stories like that always make me think that this is always some kind of a political play on the side of western media platforms, likely coming from ex-spooks they like to hire so much. Especially judging by how e.g. in Russia, YouTube has learned to play nice over time and generally doesn't act like it's "delete everywhere or leave as is" kind of choice.

A geo block brings with it some issues. They are in principle and often in practice evadable. This means it looks like a half-measure by people who don't care about adhering to local laws.

I'm unsure but the original links are still available online on Twitter that go to YouTube error pages and the request from the Indian govnement is public too.

The original rush to remove the content was fueled by alot of publicity around the documentary.

My point is that YouTube could have just geoblocked the content and be fully compliant. Everything beyond that is kinda their own initiative.

Because they can? Because they don't want it to be watched outside of India either? By foreigners, by millions of Indians abroad, by millions in India on VPN?

Can they though? Because they actually can't. They can only regulate the content accessible from India IPs or hosted on their territory.

Everything beyond this is YouTube's own doing, really.

> ...it wasn't just geo blocked it was removed off YouTube.

"Later today, I have the honor of meeting with His Excellency Prime Minister Modi to discuss how we are supporting small businesses and start-ups, investing in cybersecurity, providing education and skills training, applying AI in sectors like agriculture and healthcare, and other priorities."

A message from our CEO: https://archive.is/t3f7R / https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/optimism-india...

In the same vein, YouTube and the rest of big media (to virtually no fanfare or protest) blocked The RT for their supposed ties -- which would be fine except that RT's ties were covert. Sanctions are sanctions, but is RT to simply stop paying taxes? This is like wholesale embargo, jamming, and further insulates the Russian government from the reality of their actions.

I expect the high road from my country's communications sector on freedom of speech, and even though RT has always sucked, this behavior is distasteful.

Obviously the war is an abomination, but I'd prefer that in the interim, "platform" corporations stay the hell out of the 4D-chess.

...Platform companies are the basis of power in the modern world. Essentially an unstoppable superweapon.

What makes you think those in power won't abuse them as early and often as possible?

Available on Peertube:

https://peertube.tv/search?search=The+Modi+Question+&searchT...

You can also watch it on BBC site, although it requires a VPN if you are watching from outside of UK.

We learned how to do this from the Americans and the Chinese.

Chinese i underestand. But the Americans ? The land of the free ? The hearth of democracy ? /s

> I was astonished a foreign entity can stop the world watching something

While I'm just as displeased with India censoring stuff for the rest of us, keep in mind that for most of the world, Google/YouTube is that censorious foreign entity.

Is this because of DMCA/copyright takedowns or something else?

DMCA and copyright are by far not the only reasons Youtube bans accounts.

S01E01: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3C378A82CF67A1107523CA6C647077403A1EF74D&dn=India%20The%20Modi%20Question%20S01E01%201080p%20HDTV%20H264-DARKFLiX&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.me%3A2780%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2730%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fp4p.arenabg.com%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tiny-vps.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce

S01E02: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:F55992F922B9A0E49C09E198835F0F06EE07635B&dn=India%20The%20Modi%20Question%20S01E02%201080p%20HDTV%20H264-DARKFLiX&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.coppersurfer.tk%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2710%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.me%3A2780%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.to%3A2730%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.opentrackr.org%3A1337&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fp4p.arenabg.com%3A1337%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.torrent.eu.org%3A451%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.tiny-vps.com%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce

Still seems pretty available here. =)

Everyone's anti-bittorrenting until some asshole with more power but even more insecurity comes along and refuses to be legitimately criticized or questioned.

Torrenting copyrighted material is illegal in some (democratic) countries.

That documentary is based on fake news and intended to destabilize India's social harmony. The arguments it makes have been rejected by the supreme court of India.

There are arguably untrue things said about US political leaders all of the time and in general this is allowed and should be allowed.

We have investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong.

Are you saying Supreme court of India is in bed with Modi? That is a very strong accusation. Modi didn't investigate himself and give himself a clean chit. He was been scrutinised by Supreme Court of India multiple times. And we have much better functioning courts. Many BJP party members who has been found guilty of various things have been punished by Courts. This BBC propaganda piece has been made now only because Modi didn't do as per the wishes of war mongering western governments.

> war mongering western governments

What do you mean?

ref is to India's stance on Ukraine war.

I am unaware of the official stance. Would add to the pile I guess.

> Are you saying Supreme court of India is in bed with Modi?

Ummm.... Yes

If you have some proof, then just leak it to the Indian media. They love scandals. I don't think they are in bed with Modi. Not every supreme court judge is willing to do favors for post retirement benefits.

> I don't think they are in bed with Modi

I don't know what bridge you are trying to sell here. The Indian media is known as modia for a reason. NDTV, the only center channel had a hostile takeover. The TV media is a joke focused 74% on stoking Hindu Muslim conflict and attacking anyone who passes a negative comment about Modi.

Well, as an Indian let me tell you this. We don't want a propaganda piece. I am not even a huge Modi fan, but he has been investigated by various courts including the Supreme Court of India and has not been found guilty. Will BBC make a documentary about the many crimes the British did in India? With the current geo political situation, the western nations sure want to taint his image, and even destabilize India if they can.

> Well, as an Indian let me tell you this. We don't want a propaganda piece.

Speak for yourself. As an Indian, I don't want the government telling me what I can't watch.

> investigated by various courts including the Supreme Court of India

The same Supreme Court also ruled that the 2G Scam did not happen. Would you like to acquire an ownership interest in the Bandra-Whorli Sea Link?

> Will BBC make a documentary about the many crimes the British did in India?

They did even in the face of backlash from British Nationalists: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/historians-accuse-bbc-new...

> taint his image, and even destabilize India

So, Modi is India and India is Modi?

You can say whatever you want to. I haven't said Modi is India and India is Modi. It is far from that. I have faith that India's democracy will work. It has seen darker days during times of Indira Gandhi, but we didn't turn into a dictatorship. BJP started as an answer to bad ruling by the congress party. If in the future BJP becomes the new congress, a new political party or many of the thousands of existing political party will come into power. If you want to watch the documentary it is available in the internet. Just because it is removed from youtube doesn't mean its illegal to watch it. In fact, just because Modi banned it, in many states there has been public viewing of the documentary.

Until Twitter was acquired by Musk, that was the state of that website.