On Wed, 27 Jan 2016 7:45 am Anivar Aravind <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 10:34 PM, Pirate Praveen <[email protected]
> > wrote:
>
>> And clearly the question that linked Facebook’s lobbying efforts in India
>> to “dangerous ramifications for policy-making in India” was this: should a
>> large, powerful private corporation be allowed to use its customer base to
>> overwhelm regulators and hijack due process for its own strategic goals?
>>
>> https://medium.com/@r0h1n/dangerous-ramifications-3bf9490d56a0#.u8g07v6jw
>> --
>>
>
> There is a real example from past .
> M$ approached Indian NGOS (many funded by Melinda and Bill Gates
> foundation ) to spam Indian Govt , in support of OOXML in 2008 .
>

It raises an interesting question. In dealings with friends and business,
it is commonplace to seek emotional bonds that might influence the decision
at hand. Now, when that emotion is substituted by a commercial arrangement
(the parallel arrangement, not a dependency, I am not alleging any spelled
out contract: the outcome was very visible in any case), is there a problem?

To me, it seems clear that in fact there is a problem. I don't see any
fundamental difference between the balances to be maintained between, say,
the fellow feeling for a 'countryman', the common management of a board,
the unwritten common purpose served through investments, and other such
seemingly diverse elements of social interaction. Yet, for some of them, we
demand high standards and desire complex regulation. For others, the rules
are unwritten, and this is a problem in a rule driven world.

Since my remark about the warm fuzzy feelings of bicycles raised some
doubts, let me clarify and reiterate: both bicycles and organisations are
artefacts of human intelligence. They have no existence outside of us. If
we seek to anthropomorphise them, we come to grief. Governments and States
are no different. Yet we often see, especially on occasions like yesterday,
efforts to personalise our countries, like it makes a cosmic difference.

And of course it makes a difference: it helps to sustain the effort of
creating nation-states. Parminder may like to comment on whether this looks
like a circular argument.

I appreciate this may seem a digression from the matter at hand, namely,
the naked (and some, not so naked) efforts being made by Facebook to create
an uneven playing field. But the boundaries of the field are of our own
making. It is always good to keep that in mind.



While reading i reminded wonderful effort by our friend Raj Mathur  in
documenting these

>
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20130602154328/http://wiki.linux-delhi.org/cgi-bin/twiki/view/OpenStandards/MsNgoLobby
>
> Off: Ilug-delhi wiki seems to be down . does anyone have access to those
> servers now ?
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