6 ms·

India blocks 73 URLs criticizing IIPM, an MBA college

138 points by dotmanish 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago
It's been proven time and time again that whenever any censorship blacklist is created, for whatever "good reason", it will end up being abused for purposes that have nothing to do with the original purpose of the list. Although, in this case India actually telegraphed from the beginning that it will be used like this, when they said it will be used against "negative" comments or something like that.
shared4you 14y ago
For those of us living outside India, FakingNews and such other sites are still accessible. "The Hindu" newspaper [1] asked the right question: why weren't the defendants given a chance to explain their "defamatory" opinions? It's like, "Oh, I don't agree with you. You must be censored and punished!". Wonder how is Internet surviving in India at all. [1]: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/this-gag-order-is-no-faking-news/article4425390.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/this-gag-order-is-no-f...
lake99 14y ago
It does not look quite so bad to me. There is a big difference between saying "the food was so bad that I puked" and saying "the cook tried to poison me". The issue is being debated, both, in public and, via the court.
- nithinr6 14y ago
  What if there's actual evidence of 'the cook trying to poison'? http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims (If you are from India, you may need to use a VPN to access this.
  - vignesh_vs_in 14y ago
    you can always use google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
    - Alterlife 14y ago
      Airtel (Indian ISP) has gone ahead and blocked google cache of the page as well.
      - shared4you 14y ago
        Here you go: (PDF) https://anonfiles.com/file/ccf0d66fbf4ec550c57e7f0776e8479d https://anonfiles.com/file/ccf0d66fbf4ec550c57e7f0776e8479d Let us see how many websites can they block :)
  - balakk 14y ago
    They only do DNS-level blocking.
  - shadab_ 14y ago
    Fortunately their website doesn't redirect you to the canonical URL of the article, so you can change the URL and still access it. Like, http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-screw-censorship http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-screw-censorship
- shared4you 14y ago
  IIPM says it offers "graduate degree in management" [1] in cooperation with IMI, Belgium. But IMI and IIPM have both been de-recognized in Europe, and it happens that IMI itself is not recognized in Belgium [2]. Yet their homepage [3] claims, even today, that it is recognized by CEEMAN. [1]: http://www.iipm-india.net/iipm-joint-degree-programs.html http://www.iipm-india.net/iipm-joint-degree-programs.html [2]: (pdf): http://www.english.schwertfeger-mba-channel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IIPM_ENG.pdf http://www.english.schwertfeger-mba-channel.com/wp-content/u... [3]: (CTRL+F CEEMAN) http://www.iipm.in/ http://www.iipm.in/ [4]: Letter from Netherland's Accreditaion Organization (pdf): http://www.mediafire.com/view/?w97el537gj7rxp7 http://www.mediafire.com/view/?w97el537gj7rxp7
anirugu 14y ago
I can still access FakingNews. I use openDNS. @share4you I thing you should try with change DNS to openDNS. They just blocked it in DNS.
piyush_ranjan 14y ago
courts are completely illiterate when it comes to internet
illuminate 14y ago
"an educational institution" Aka "diploma mill", most likely.
- meaty 14y ago
  This times a million. We've had a LOT of suspicious unverifiable qualifications presented to us from that part of the world.
- aviraldg 14y ago
  Indian here. It is.
- easternmonk 14y ago
  It is not even a diploma mill. It has absolutely no recognition from any government body for anything related to education.
runarb 14y ago
IIPM, welcome to the Streisand effect :) Never heard about them before, but guess that this case will get so widespread now that it will be impossible to sue and block all the critics. Maybe this is a case they can analyse at there school?
- theanalyst 14y ago
  Very much so! normally no one would have stumbled across many of those links, now all news articles publish all the urls at one place, and of course everyone is curious what they say
alan_cx 14y ago
Fascinating. Currently our (UK) Prime Minister is in India trying to sell our universities (amongst a lot of other things) to Indian students. Lovely bit of inter-cultural exchange right? Generally speaking, yes, absolutely. The more the merrier as far as I am concerned. However... Back here in the UK, the very same PM has trebled the costs of going to university for English and Welsh students, pricing many out, raised the education thresholds meaning less students can qualify, while he is supported by racist right wing tabloid Murdoch press who hate immigration, foreigners and most of all dark skins who threaten middle class house prices. Oh yeah, our right wing is that racist. Yet there he is offering unlimited places for rich Indians who can afford UK universities, while clearly snubbing Indian education. If proof of a substandard Indian education system were needed, the rich flocking to the UK for it will do the mass Indian population nicely. So, here we have our PM pricing out his own country's students, claiming immigration is out of control and evil, while offering to open the flood gates to Indian rich kids who can afford UK education, while snubbing their own, which clearly has its problems as shown by this article. While I personally am all for immigration, (and believe me Indians in particular have done the UK proud, and me personally, so much so I argue they are more British than us fairly useless white lot) I cant quite work out how this all plays out for both the Brits and Indians. Seems like a perfect slap in the face to both of us. This whole thing is a bizarre contradiction to me. If we in the UK really wanted to help India out, perhaps we could have out flag ship universities help the Indian education department (whatever) improve its own situation. Er, freely share our education knowledge. Oh.... Freedom of information. Can't have that, can we? Anyway, I'm a bit confused by the whole thing. And I can't help thinking our PM is making it worse, mostly for the Indians. If the cream of their crop flock here, then where does that leave their education system? If Indians fill out the university places left by Brits who can no longer afford it, where does that potentially leave race relations in the UK? Oh, last thought. What if these students stay on afterwards? Brilliant for us, but aren't we then brain draining India? Again, at a detriment to them? Yup, confused. (For Brits reading... yes I know Scotland's education is separate.)
- shared4you 14y ago
  It's like this: * Indian PoV: I get to study abroad, make more money and increase my social prestige. * UK PoV: Indians bring in a lot of money, making our country even richer. Let's have more of them. In short, it's all about money, not about education or freedom of information.
rikacomet 14y ago
The reality is that the policy in India, has not been formally formed about copyright. Whoever takes this battleground, will have a significant advantage on his side. IIPM, is actually a viral sort of university, with an aggressive strategy of hard marketing, slight overstatements, and over time, they are indeed becoming better and better. But at the cost of many lambs. as someone said here, its a degree mill for now.
ishansharma 14y ago
I am an Indian and this is worrying situation. The university in which I study has censored a lot of things(game websites are blocked among many other) and many others are doing same. The thing is that people are making it a habit to block Internet. And shady institutes like this are just going out and asking far away courts for blocks which they can easily get.
- thewisedude 14y ago
  Just to be clear- The university that you study has the right to censor certain websites because they are providing you internet and hence they can stipulate the rules(for the service they are providing). However, the argument here is that the government should not block URLs because they are not providing the service and they are just regulators of this service. The argument here is that as regulators, they are going out of their purview by curbing on freedom of expression (guaranteed by the constitution).
  - canttestthis 14y ago
    By your argument, censorship by ISPs is justified.
    - thewisedude 14y ago
      Yes. If they do, what might happen is you might choose a different ISP. Its simply not in their business interest to censor content, hence they dont! Typically, if they have to censor, it would have to be based on an agreement with the customer before hand, else it would be a violation of consumer rights!
    - ankitml 14y ago
      When you join the unviersity you must have signed any terms of service. That usually includes statements like, internet from univ will be used only for academic purposes. This is why they block the websites
teeboy 14y ago
I think a lot of people are confused with the hawkish name of this institution. It represents the very worst of Indian education system, not the best or anywhere near it. Infact, it's a diploma mill which is not even in the Top 100 management institutes of India. Arindam, the director, himself comes from a family of illustrious cheats with a larger than life image. Easiest way is skim through this site: http://www.iipm-fraud.com/ http://www.iipm-fraud.com/ The govt has little clue of what it is doing. Hopefully 1 more year, and we can get rid of this regime for good.
arjn 14y ago
This isn't the first time I've heard or read negative news about IIPM. The background story behind this institution is a gigantic red flag.
xmen 14y ago
To know more about Arindam - https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-X/Who-is-Arindam-Chaudhuri https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-X/Who-is-Arindam-Chaudhuri
suprgeek 14y ago
This is about more than censorship. As has been repeated by many others IIPM is a Degree Mill at best and an active in-progress scam with many victims at the other end of the awfulness spectrum. The "Dean" of IIPM - an extremely charismatic fellow by the name of Arindam Chaudary - likes to use every weapon at his disposal to silence those that want to expose his shenanigans. Think about how Scientology goes after its critics - this person is in the same boat. He has managed to sue/pressurize and bully anyone that wants to stand-up to him. The media have been just as guilty - they get many full page adverts and TV spots so they have no issues hyping this "institute". This is a tragedy for pretty much every student of that institute.
bruceb 14y ago
They always advertise in the Times of India which is the largest English language daily in the world (more than NYT, WSJ, and USAT combined). What was funny was that they said hurry the deadline for the next batch/semester is a certain date. APPLY NOW! ...of course what would happen after that date? Oh wait now its some new date to apply for the same batch/semester. All you had to do was look at the site to know it was a highly questionable place to get an education.
bhashkarsharma 14y ago
Thanks for removing 'educational institution' from the description. IIPM is probably an educational institution as much as a circus is a wildlife reserve.
shrikant 14y ago
They've done this before against an excellent piece of investigative journalism done by an Indian magazine called The Caravan, called "The Sweet Smell of Success: How Arindam Chaudhuri made a fortune off the aspirations -- and insecurities -- of India's middle classes." That article was taken down, but I'd pulled a PDF of it then, so here it is for anyone that wants to know more about the shadiness that is IIPM. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15497688/Sweet%20Smell%20of%20Success.pdf https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15497688/Sweet%20Smell%20of%20Succe...
- cynwoody 14y ago
  Would anyone buy a used car from this man? http://goo.gl/mmEuI http://goo.gl/mmEuI
ankitml 14y ago
How come most comments are about UK? The link is about how freedom of speech has been strangulated in India by a university which is not recognized by law.

138 points by dotmanish 14y ago

mtgx 14y ago

It's been proven time and time again that whenever any censorship blacklist is created, for whatever "good reason", it will end up being abused for purposes that have nothing to do with the original purpose of the list. Although, in this case India actually telegraphed from the beginning that it will be used like this, when they said it will be used against "negative" comments or something like that.

shared4you 14y ago

For those of us living outside India, FakingNews and such other sites are still accessible. "The Hindu" newspaper [1] asked the right question: why weren't the defendants given a chance to explain their "defamatory" opinions? It's like, "Oh, I don't agree with you. You must be censored and punished!". Wonder how is Internet surviving in India at all. [1]: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/this-gag-order-is-no-faking-news/article4425390.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/this-gag-order-is-no-f...

lake99 14y ago

It does not look quite so bad to me. There is a big difference between saying "the food was so bad that I puked" and saying "the cook tried to poison me". The issue is being debated, both, in public and, via the court.

nithinr6 14y ago
What if there's actual evidence of 'the cook trying to poison'? http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims (If you are from India, you may need to use a VPN to access this.
- vignesh_vs_in 14y ago
  you can always use google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
  - Alterlife 14y ago
    Airtel (Indian ISP) has gone ahead and blocked google cache of the page as well.
    - shared4you 14y ago
      Here you go: (PDF) https://anonfiles.com/file/ccf0d66fbf4ec550c57e7f0776e8479d https://anonfiles.com/file/ccf0d66fbf4ec550c57e7f0776e8479d Let us see how many websites can they block :)
- balakk 14y ago
  They only do DNS-level blocking.
- shadab_ 14y ago
  Fortunately their website doesn't redirect you to the canonical URL of the article, so you can change the URL and still access it. Like, http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-screw-censorship http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-screw-censorship
shared4you 14y ago
IIPM says it offers "graduate degree in management" [1] in cooperation with IMI, Belgium. But IMI and IIPM have both been de-recognized in Europe, and it happens that IMI itself is not recognized in Belgium [2]. Yet their homepage [3] claims, even today, that it is recognized by CEEMAN. [1]: http://www.iipm-india.net/iipm-joint-degree-programs.html http://www.iipm-india.net/iipm-joint-degree-programs.html [2]: (pdf): http://www.english.schwertfeger-mba-channel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/IIPM_ENG.pdf http://www.english.schwertfeger-mba-channel.com/wp-content/u... [3]: (CTRL+F CEEMAN) http://www.iipm.in/ http://www.iipm.in/ [4]: Letter from Netherland's Accreditaion Organization (pdf): http://www.mediafire.com/view/?w97el537gj7rxp7 http://www.mediafire.com/view/?w97el537gj7rxp7

anirugu 14y ago

I can still access FakingNews. I use openDNS. @share4you I thing you should try with change DNS to openDNS. They just blocked it in DNS.

piyush_ranjan 14y ago

courts are completely illiterate when it comes to internet

illuminate 14y ago

"an educational institution" Aka "diploma mill", most likely.

meaty 14y ago
This times a million. We've had a LOT of suspicious unverifiable qualifications presented to us from that part of the world.
aviraldg 14y ago
Indian here. It is.
easternmonk 14y ago
It is not even a diploma mill. It has absolutely no recognition from any government body for anything related to education.

runarb 14y ago

IIPM, welcome to the Streisand effect :) Never heard about them before, but guess that this case will get so widespread now that it will be impossible to sue and block all the critics. Maybe this is a case they can analyse at there school?

theanalyst 14y ago
Very much so! normally no one would have stumbled across many of those links, now all news articles publish all the urls at one place, and of course everyone is curious what they say

alan_cx 14y ago

Fascinating. Currently our (UK) Prime Minister is in India trying to sell our universities (amongst a lot of other things) to Indian students. Lovely bit of inter-cultural exchange right? Generally speaking, yes, absolutely. The more the merrier as far as I am concerned. However... Back here in the UK, the very same PM has trebled the costs of going to university for English and Welsh students, pricing many out, raised the education thresholds meaning less students can qualify, while he is supported by racist right wing tabloid Murdoch press who hate immigration, foreigners and most of all dark skins who threaten middle class house prices. Oh yeah, our right wing is that racist. Yet there he is offering unlimited places for rich Indians who can afford UK universities, while clearly snubbing Indian education. If proof of a substandard Indian education system were needed, the rich flocking to the UK for it will do the mass Indian population nicely. So, here we have our PM pricing out his own country's students, claiming immigration is out of control and evil, while offering to open the flood gates to Indian rich kids who can afford UK education, while snubbing their own, which clearly has its problems as shown by this article. While I personally am all for immigration, (and believe me Indians in particular have done the UK proud, and me personally, so much so I argue they are more British than us fairly useless white lot) I cant quite work out how this all plays out for both the Brits and Indians. Seems like a perfect slap in the face to both of us. This whole thing is a bizarre contradiction to me. If we in the UK really wanted to help India out, perhaps we could have out flag ship universities help the Indian education department (whatever) improve its own situation. Er, freely share our education knowledge. Oh.... Freedom of information. Can't have that, can we? Anyway, I'm a bit confused by the whole thing. And I can't help thinking our PM is making it worse, mostly for the Indians. If the cream of their crop flock here, then where does that leave their education system? If Indians fill out the university places left by Brits who can no longer afford it, where does that potentially leave race relations in the UK? Oh, last thought. What if these students stay on afterwards? Brilliant for us, but aren't we then brain draining India? Again, at a detriment to them? Yup, confused. (For Brits reading... yes I know Scotland's education is separate.)

shared4you 14y ago
It's like this: * Indian PoV: I get to study abroad, make more money and increase my social prestige. * UK PoV: Indians bring in a lot of money, making our country even richer. Let's have more of them. In short, it's all about money, not about education or freedom of information.

rikacomet 14y ago

The reality is that the policy in India, has not been formally formed about copyright. Whoever takes this battleground, will have a significant advantage on his side. IIPM, is actually a viral sort of university, with an aggressive strategy of hard marketing, slight overstatements, and over time, they are indeed becoming better and better. But at the cost of many lambs. as someone said here, its a degree mill for now.

ishansharma 14y ago

I am an Indian and this is worrying situation. The university in which I study has censored a lot of things(game websites are blocked among many other) and many others are doing same. The thing is that people are making it a habit to block Internet. And shady institutes like this are just going out and asking far away courts for blocks which they can easily get.

thewisedude 14y ago
Just to be clear- The university that you study has the right to censor certain websites because they are providing you internet and hence they can stipulate the rules(for the service they are providing). However, the argument here is that the government should not block URLs because they are not providing the service and they are just regulators of this service. The argument here is that as regulators, they are going out of their purview by curbing on freedom of expression (guaranteed by the constitution).
- canttestthis 14y ago
  By your argument, censorship by ISPs is justified.
  - thewisedude 14y ago
    Yes. If they do, what might happen is you might choose a different ISP. Its simply not in their business interest to censor content, hence they dont! Typically, if they have to censor, it would have to be based on an agreement with the customer before hand, else it would be a violation of consumer rights!
  - ankitml 14y ago
    When you join the unviersity you must have signed any terms of service. That usually includes statements like, internet from univ will be used only for academic purposes. This is why they block the websites

teeboy 14y ago

I think a lot of people are confused with the hawkish name of this institution. It represents the very worst of Indian education system, not the best or anywhere near it. Infact, it's a diploma mill which is not even in the Top 100 management institutes of India. Arindam, the director, himself comes from a family of illustrious cheats with a larger than life image. Easiest way is skim through this site: http://www.iipm-fraud.com/ http://www.iipm-fraud.com/ The govt has little clue of what it is doing. Hopefully 1 more year, and we can get rid of this regime for good.

arjn 14y ago

This isn't the first time I've heard or read negative news about IIPM. The background story behind this institution is a gigantic red flag.

xmen 14y ago

To know more about Arindam - https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-X/Who-is-Arindam-Chaudhuri https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-X/Who-is-Arindam-Chaudhuri

suprgeek 14y ago

This is about more than censorship. As has been repeated by many others IIPM is a Degree Mill at best and an active in-progress scam with many victims at the other end of the awfulness spectrum. The "Dean" of IIPM - an extremely charismatic fellow by the name of Arindam Chaudary - likes to use every weapon at his disposal to silence those that want to expose his shenanigans. Think about how Scientology goes after its critics - this person is in the same boat. He has managed to sue/pressurize and bully anyone that wants to stand-up to him. The media have been just as guilty - they get many full page adverts and TV spots so they have no issues hyping this "institute". This is a tragedy for pretty much every student of that institute.

bruceb 14y ago

They always advertise in the Times of India which is the largest English language daily in the world (more than NYT, WSJ, and USAT combined). What was funny was that they said hurry the deadline for the next batch/semester is a certain date. APPLY NOW! ...of course what would happen after that date? Oh wait now its some new date to apply for the same batch/semester. All you had to do was look at the site to know it was a highly questionable place to get an education.

bhashkarsharma 14y ago

Thanks for removing 'educational institution' from the description. IIPM is probably an educational institution as much as a circus is a wildlife reserve.

shrikant 14y ago

They've done this before against an excellent piece of investigative journalism done by an Indian magazine called The Caravan, called "The Sweet Smell of Success: How Arindam Chaudhuri made a fortune off the aspirations -- and insecurities -- of India's middle classes." That article was taken down, but I'd pulled a PDF of it then, so here it is for anyone that wants to know more about the shadiness that is IIPM. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15497688/Sweet%20Smell%20of%20Success.pdf https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15497688/Sweet%20Smell%20of%20Succe...

cynwoody 14y ago
Would anyone buy a used car from this man? http://goo.gl/mmEuI http://goo.gl/mmEuI

ankitml 14y ago

How come most comments are about UK? The link is about how freedom of speech has been strangulated in India by a university which is not recognized by law.