mgcarley
Founder, Hayai Broadband
Ah. I see you purposefully removed my UID from the quote so I wouldn't get the notification of this.
Please re-read what I had said. I said NOT in India. That means that the voice traffic gets on to the PSTN outside of India. This is 100% legal and there would be no reason for the government to block it, nor is any license required in India. The law had been saying that it's illegal to perform the traffic exchange within Indian borders only - if this were not the case, then ever single VOIP provider on earth would be illegal according to the Indian government. A Skype call from within India to India *is* legal because the traffic is exchanged outside of Indian jurisdiction.
No, it doesn't magically "become legal", it's just being done in a legal way, that is, by passing the traffic through a gateway outside of the country. I think if the Indian government tried to directly impose it's regulations on any service located outside of India, the government of that country would have a massive shit.
Exactly. I could not offer this service using equipment within India nor could I allocate Indian numbers, however I could, theoretically, set up a server in Singapore under the Indian company (or even a foreign company) and pass traffic through that. I could not allocate a number with the country code +91 (no license to do so) but I could allocate numbers from another country that allows such things. And to reach India with my VOIP traffic, I's still have to buy PSTN minutes from Singtel or someone like that in order to complete the call.
Yes. Actually it does.
If I make a super-easy example that isn't technology related: let's say I commit sodomy in the Netherlands (and just for the sake of the argument, let's assume that the other party is an Indian citizen). This act is not allowed in a lot of countries but AFAIK perfectly fine in NL. Can the Indian government arrest me? No. They cannot as they do not have jurisdiction. Can they potentially arrest me if I/we come back to India? No. Because I/we weren't in India.
Similarly, if I operate a VOIP gateway in my home country and Indian citizens in India use it to complete voice calls to countries including but not limited to India, can the Indian government arrest me? No, because the act [of converting a VOIP call to a PSTN call] was done in a jurisdiction where such activity is allowed. Simple.
While you're outside India, no, it doesn't. The local laws would apply. There are things people are allowed do in foreign countries which would scare the living daylights out of the Indian government - like openly criticize the government.
I hate to burst your bubble but they can't arrest you outside of India unless you committed a crime in India before leaving and then fled the country. Even then, for the Indian government to arrest you in a foreign country they would need the local forces to do the arrest AND an extradition treaty.
Take for example the Kim Dotcom raid in NZ. He was arrested by NZ police at the request of US authorities. The only difference is that he was running servers inside the US, and even then, while it was thought at the time that the actions of the US were legal, it turns out that they very much were not - and it's quite unlikely that the bloke will be extradited even though I believe we have a treaty with the US.
If the actions are legal in that country, then yes, it makes your actions legal. If I enter India while running a VOIP gateway in another country then I can only be arrested/prosecuted IF I commit a crime in India, which, accordingly would mean that if I had had a VOIP gateway setup inside the Indian borders, would leave me vulnerable to arrest because I would have violated an Indian law in India. However, leaving that gateway in, say, Singapore or NZ or Australia or the US where all this is perfectly legal then it would be one hell of an overstretch to even suggest that by operating such a server in any of those places leaves me susceptible to the laws of India. For that to be true, the laws of India would have to apply EVERYWHERE ON EARTH, and last I checked, that was not the case.
Exactly. WITHIN India. However if the VOIP call is transferred in Singapore or whereever to a PSTN line, this is perfectly legal. See [2.2 (ii) b] of the ISP license.
I think you need to re-read what I actually said. There is no VOIP-only [ITSP] license. It has to be signed separately as part of another license. So a company without one of the other licenses can not therefore apply for a standalone ITSP license.
Then again, if I were to offer a VOIP service outside of India, then I am only bound to get whatever licenses I am required to get (if any) in the country of my choice. As it happens, I could legally set up my own or even purchase a ready-made white-label service from a provider in my home country and supply services to anyone in the world - and there is nothing the Indian government could do about it. Hell, I could even sell it to Indians if I wanted to - you'd be free to use my softphone and make a call at whatever rates I prescribe and there is nothing the Indian government could do to stop me, because my company nor the company selling me the service would be in India, and therefore, not subject to it's laws. Completing the call to India is fine because between (for example) Singapore and India I would be on a traditional PSTN trunk (leased from AT&T or Verizon or Singtel or Tata or whoever) - which is perfectly legal.
Although the call quality would be rubbish because my home country is a semi-colon in the middle of the pacific.
In India there are no legal gateways. They would have to do it abroad, where no such license exists to begin with.
Depends on who receives the revenue. The receiving operator pays the DoT part of the revenue because it charges termination fees for the call, and the originating ISP (if it's in India) pays part of the revenue to the DoT because it charges the customer for his Internet account. But for any party outside India, no revenue is due to the DoT (again, if it were, then every ISP in the world would owe money to the DoT).
If I buy capacity from TO India from OUTSIDE of India and that provider just *happens* to be an ILD licensee, then yes. So long as I am legally allowed to own and operate a business in the originating country, there is nothing from my side due to the DoT. If the packets for the VOIP call happen to originate in India, then the concerned ISP will pay part of it's revenue to the DoT from the money it takes for the subscriber account.
If it were true that merely connecting to India required an ISP license, then almost every ISP/VOIP provider in the world would have to have an Indian ISP license (or not connect to India).
Yes, but I can speak for myself also. I am perfectly well entitled to start a company in another country and offer VOIP services if I feel so inclined.
I already have, but have you? Unless you've passed the bar, I'm not sure why your interpretation should be seen as any more or less correct than mine. You honestly think I would be so stupid as to be actively involved in exactly this sort of thing without first checking that I'm not going to have the cops pounding on my door and dragging me off to jail? What's wrong with you?
No, there isn't. But the legality of the gateway is determined by the country of it's presence, not India. If the gateway is legal in Singapore (for example) but not India, and the gateway itself is in Singapore, then there is NOTHING that the Indian government can do. If they could, then the DoT should be busy raiding every data centre in Europe, every data centre in the US, most data centres in the rest of Asia... and so on. Because the vast majority of them probably have some form of VOIP gateway running.
If regurgitating what he said means I wasn't listening, then... I hate to think of what your definition of listening is. For a lot of people in this country it seems to be "making shit up on the spot" (like that my laptop consumes 600W of power - not relevant to this discussion but something someone **actually said** to me recently, just to give you an example).
No, the KEYS are being generated by me to point out to you blatant facts.
If an operator outside of India (using the example of Singapore) provides a service which is legal in Singapore, then yes, it can be called legal. It has no reason to give even half a toss about what the Indian government thinks or wants because it's not operating *in India*. If that operator buys access to PSTN lines from Singapore to India, then that is also legal because the traffic entering India was PSTN traffic, NOT VOIP traffic (the VOIP changeover would have been done in Singapore, no matter the actual origin of the traffic).
Different countries have different laws. We aren't at a one-world-one-law situation just yet, and one of the only real universal crimes seems to be murder - but even that's not taken too seriously in some places. Countries still have borders, and the people on either side of those borders are only bound to the laws which apply on their side of the border.
Taking another Netherlands example: if I smoke weed in Amsterdam (where it's legal) and then go to London (where it's not), I can't be prosecuted in England for having smoked weed in Amsterdam, even though I may still be carrying with me remnants of THC in my system. Or if I have sex with a 16 year old in Toronto (where it's legal) and then we both go over the border to New York (where the age of consent is 17), I can't be prosecuted in New York unless I again do it there. (Yes, I'm sure there are other "offenses" I could use as examples but these seemed simplest).
In all cases, the acts were done in jurisdictions where these activities are legal and as such are not of any concern to authorities anywhere else UNLESS those acts are done in the jurisdictions where these activities are not legal.
I've been trying to explain to you that this isn't possible for the exact reason that handovers are not legal *in* India, nor are the delegation of e.164 compliant numbers. Please read the license (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:WOzbfEq7CBUJ:www.dot.gov.in/isp/internet-licence-dated%252016-10-2007.pdf+&hl=en&gl=in&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESik5Kr0FN2AkdTLcJP5rWF2GYecNSXCce1XS_WytrUjfHGCxu_vHTUUSsOWlcbijnWHu8MMWgMndVwf_A-3JYPQpNfC2Vdua-EwO69PBB-ue0dP7PZAvZVOvu8u807r0KlRtJ4m&sig=AHIEtbRWE_mkD4rzluLhSNj-KppNMifA_w pages 9 & 10).
I can not legally +91 because those are Indian numbers, presided over by Indian authorities, but I can legally offer telephone numbers with +1 +64 +65 etc etc because authorities in those countries allow it and they are not subject to intervention by or the authority of the government of India. Those country codes are presided over by the authorities in those respective countries. Period.
Use of MagicJack is covered by the ISP license under section 2.2 ii c.
cyberwiz said:
Please re-read what I had said. I said NOT in India. That means that the voice traffic gets on to the PSTN outside of India. This is 100% legal and there would be no reason for the government to block it, nor is any license required in India. The law had been saying that it's illegal to perform the traffic exchange within Indian borders only - if this were not the case, then ever single VOIP provider on earth would be illegal according to the Indian government. A Skype call from within India to India *is* legal because the traffic is exchanged outside of Indian jurisdiction.
cyberwiz said:
No, it doesn't magically "become legal", it's just being done in a legal way, that is, by passing the traffic through a gateway outside of the country. I think if the Indian government tried to directly impose it's regulations on any service located outside of India, the government of that country would have a massive shit.
cyberwiz said:
Exactly. I could not offer this service using equipment within India nor could I allocate Indian numbers, however I could, theoretically, set up a server in Singapore under the Indian company (or even a foreign company) and pass traffic through that. I could not allocate a number with the country code +91 (no license to do so) but I could allocate numbers from another country that allows such things. And to reach India with my VOIP traffic, I's still have to buy PSTN minutes from Singtel or someone like that in order to complete the call.
cyberwiz said:
Yes. Actually it does.
If I make a super-easy example that isn't technology related: let's say I commit sodomy in the Netherlands (and just for the sake of the argument, let's assume that the other party is an Indian citizen). This act is not allowed in a lot of countries but AFAIK perfectly fine in NL. Can the Indian government arrest me? No. They cannot as they do not have jurisdiction. Can they potentially arrest me if I/we come back to India? No. Because I/we weren't in India.
Similarly, if I operate a VOIP gateway in my home country and Indian citizens in India use it to complete voice calls to countries including but not limited to India, can the Indian government arrest me? No, because the act [of converting a VOIP call to a PSTN call] was done in a jurisdiction where such activity is allowed. Simple.
cyberwiz said:
While you're outside India, no, it doesn't. The local laws would apply. There are things people are allowed do in foreign countries which would scare the living daylights out of the Indian government - like openly criticize the government.
cyberwiz said:
I hate to burst your bubble but they can't arrest you outside of India unless you committed a crime in India before leaving and then fled the country. Even then, for the Indian government to arrest you in a foreign country they would need the local forces to do the arrest AND an extradition treaty.
Take for example the Kim Dotcom raid in NZ. He was arrested by NZ police at the request of US authorities. The only difference is that he was running servers inside the US, and even then, while it was thought at the time that the actions of the US were legal, it turns out that they very much were not - and it's quite unlikely that the bloke will be extradited even though I believe we have a treaty with the US.
cyberwiz said:
If the actions are legal in that country, then yes, it makes your actions legal. If I enter India while running a VOIP gateway in another country then I can only be arrested/prosecuted IF I commit a crime in India, which, accordingly would mean that if I had had a VOIP gateway setup inside the Indian borders, would leave me vulnerable to arrest because I would have violated an Indian law in India. However, leaving that gateway in, say, Singapore or NZ or Australia or the US where all this is perfectly legal then it would be one hell of an overstretch to even suggest that by operating such a server in any of those places leaves me susceptible to the laws of India. For that to be true, the laws of India would have to apply EVERYWHERE ON EARTH, and last I checked, that was not the case.
cyberwiz said:
Exactly. WITHIN India. However if the VOIP call is transferred in Singapore or whereever to a PSTN line, this is perfectly legal. See [2.2 (ii) b] of the ISP license.
cyberwiz said:
I think you need to re-read what I actually said. There is no VOIP-only [ITSP] license. It has to be signed separately as part of another license. So a company without one of the other licenses can not therefore apply for a standalone ITSP license.
Then again, if I were to offer a VOIP service outside of India, then I am only bound to get whatever licenses I am required to get (if any) in the country of my choice. As it happens, I could legally set up my own or even purchase a ready-made white-label service from a provider in my home country and supply services to anyone in the world - and there is nothing the Indian government could do about it. Hell, I could even sell it to Indians if I wanted to - you'd be free to use my softphone and make a call at whatever rates I prescribe and there is nothing the Indian government could do to stop me, because my company nor the company selling me the service would be in India, and therefore, not subject to it's laws. Completing the call to India is fine because between (for example) Singapore and India I would be on a traditional PSTN trunk (leased from AT&T or Verizon or Singtel or Tata or whoever) - which is perfectly legal.
Although the call quality would be rubbish because my home country is a semi-colon in the middle of the pacific.
cyberwiz said:
In India there are no legal gateways. They would have to do it abroad, where no such license exists to begin with.
cyberwiz said:
Depends on who receives the revenue. The receiving operator pays the DoT part of the revenue because it charges termination fees for the call, and the originating ISP (if it's in India) pays part of the revenue to the DoT because it charges the customer for his Internet account. But for any party outside India, no revenue is due to the DoT (again, if it were, then every ISP in the world would owe money to the DoT).
cyberwiz said:
If I buy capacity from TO India from OUTSIDE of India and that provider just *happens* to be an ILD licensee, then yes. So long as I am legally allowed to own and operate a business in the originating country, there is nothing from my side due to the DoT. If the packets for the VOIP call happen to originate in India, then the concerned ISP will pay part of it's revenue to the DoT from the money it takes for the subscriber account.
If it were true that merely connecting to India required an ISP license, then almost every ISP/VOIP provider in the world would have to have an Indian ISP license (or not connect to India).
cyberwiz said:
Yes, but I can speak for myself also. I am perfectly well entitled to start a company in another country and offer VOIP services if I feel so inclined.
cyberwiz said:
I already have, but have you? Unless you've passed the bar, I'm not sure why your interpretation should be seen as any more or less correct than mine. You honestly think I would be so stupid as to be actively involved in exactly this sort of thing without first checking that I'm not going to have the cops pounding on my door and dragging me off to jail? What's wrong with you?
cyberwiz said:
No, there isn't. But the legality of the gateway is determined by the country of it's presence, not India. If the gateway is legal in Singapore (for example) but not India, and the gateway itself is in Singapore, then there is NOTHING that the Indian government can do. If they could, then the DoT should be busy raiding every data centre in Europe, every data centre in the US, most data centres in the rest of Asia... and so on. Because the vast majority of them probably have some form of VOIP gateway running.
cyberwiz said:
If regurgitating what he said means I wasn't listening, then... I hate to think of what your definition of listening is. For a lot of people in this country it seems to be "making shit up on the spot" (like that my laptop consumes 600W of power - not relevant to this discussion but something someone **actually said** to me recently, just to give you an example).
cyberwiz said:
No, the KEYS are being generated by me to point out to you blatant facts.
If an operator outside of India (using the example of Singapore) provides a service which is legal in Singapore, then yes, it can be called legal. It has no reason to give even half a toss about what the Indian government thinks or wants because it's not operating *in India*. If that operator buys access to PSTN lines from Singapore to India, then that is also legal because the traffic entering India was PSTN traffic, NOT VOIP traffic (the VOIP changeover would have been done in Singapore, no matter the actual origin of the traffic).
Different countries have different laws. We aren't at a one-world-one-law situation just yet, and one of the only real universal crimes seems to be murder - but even that's not taken too seriously in some places. Countries still have borders, and the people on either side of those borders are only bound to the laws which apply on their side of the border.
Taking another Netherlands example: if I smoke weed in Amsterdam (where it's legal) and then go to London (where it's not), I can't be prosecuted in England for having smoked weed in Amsterdam, even though I may still be carrying with me remnants of THC in my system. Or if I have sex with a 16 year old in Toronto (where it's legal) and then we both go over the border to New York (where the age of consent is 17), I can't be prosecuted in New York unless I again do it there. (Yes, I'm sure there are other "offenses" I could use as examples but these seemed simplest).
In all cases, the acts were done in jurisdictions where these activities are legal and as such are not of any concern to authorities anywhere else UNLESS those acts are done in the jurisdictions where these activities are not legal.
cyberwiz said:
I've been trying to explain to you that this isn't possible for the exact reason that handovers are not legal *in* India, nor are the delegation of e.164 compliant numbers. Please read the license (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:WOzbfEq7CBUJ:www.dot.gov.in/isp/internet-licence-dated%252016-10-2007.pdf+&hl=en&gl=in&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESik5Kr0FN2AkdTLcJP5rWF2GYecNSXCce1XS_WytrUjfHGCxu_vHTUUSsOWlcbijnWHu8MMWgMndVwf_A-3JYPQpNfC2Vdua-EwO69PBB-ue0dP7PZAvZVOvu8u807r0KlRtJ4m&sig=AHIEtbRWE_mkD4rzluLhSNj-KppNMifA_w pages 9 & 10).
I can not legally +91 because those are Indian numbers, presided over by Indian authorities, but I can legally offer telephone numbers with +1 +64 +65 etc etc because authorities in those countries allow it and they are not subject to intervention by or the authority of the government of India. Those country codes are presided over by the authorities in those respective countries. Period.
JainIndia said:
Use of MagicJack is covered by the ISP license under section 2.2 ii c.
