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back to article Burma hits satellite TV where it hurts

The fun-loving Burmese regime has apparently found a non-violent method to restrict satellite TV access to foreign news services - hiking the cost of a licence by 16,700 per cent from 6000 kyat (£2.50) to 1m kyatt (£400, or "three times the average annual salary", as the BBC explains). The move was unnanounced, and viewers …

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  1. Tim Spence
    Joke

    Obviously...

    ...Murdoch has been training the Burmese government on economics.

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  2. Sam

    silly buggers

    How are they going to block the BBC World service? Confiscate all the radios?

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  3. Tom

    But....

    they will now miss Monk.

    Coat > Door > Gone

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  4. Daniel B.
    Black Helicopters

    Yeeeowch!

    That price looks disturbingly close to half my months salary, after tax. I think I could get an E1 link for that price, monthly.

    Definitely a push to kill outside information leakage into the country. IIRC, most of the freelance info that got out last year was because of unblocked satlinks to the internet. So of course they'd block it.

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  5. leslie
    Flame

    @silly buggers

    no, just make you need a licence (but only 1.5*annual salary) for the radio, and if you have no licence, 10 years in the hole...............

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  6. Nicholas Wright

    Block BBC World Service?

    ... the BBC World Service is being shut down all over the world due to cuts here at home. They've already shut down the service for Russia.

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  7. David Cornes
    Flame

    World Service shut down?

    Well why should WE the poor bloody British taxpayers be paying to give decent news to those stupid foreigners too bone idle to get proper info back in their own countries anyway??? I mean, they all come over here, claiming asylum, taking our jobs, and getting given free radios on benefits, innit!!!

    ;-)

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  8. Anton Ivanov
    Paris Hilton

    Out of the CIS book

    Bulgaria and a few of the other "more liberal" Eastern European states had similar regs. You were not prohibited from owning a SAT dish. You simply could not afford the license for it.

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  9. Sam

    @David Cornes

    Good point, fuck 'em. ;-)

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  10. Pete

    @sam

    Its trivially easy to block other radio stations by jamming the frequency with your own broadcast. You don't have to take their radios, just broadcast what you want over the top. To be honest it wouldnt surprise me if theyre already doing just that.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Re: Out of the CIS book

    > Bulgaria and a few of the other "more liberal" Eastern European states had similar regs.

    Hey, credit where it's due; this trick was invented by the "great western liberal democracies" many years earlier.

    For example, when the oil industry wanted to suppress their largest competitor (the at-that-time-legitimate hemp/cannabis-for-rope-oil-cloth-and-paper industry), they first drove everyone out of the business by using their tame congressmen to pass a prohibitive tax on the production and sale of the plant; it wasn't until much later - when the legitimate industry had been bankrupted and so the only remaining uses were recreational - that the whole anti-drugs hysteria was invented.

    If you want to go back further in history, from the late 1700s up until 1855, the UK government imposed swingeing taxation on newspapers in order to suppress their publication and prevent the free circulation of information among the populace.

    The use of taxation for purposes of illegitimate social control over what are entirely legal activities is really all our own idea. :-(

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  12. Roger Varley

    Old Hat

    >Its trivially easy to block other radio stations by jamming the frequency with your >own broadcast. You don't have to take their radios, just broadcast what you want >over the top. To be honest it wouldnt surprise me if theyre already doing just that.

    Already been done. Anyone remember Radio Aspidistra?

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  13. adnim

    Block the truth

    or just lie and obfuscate like the UK government does.

    At least the Burmese people know they are oppressed. Whilst here in the UK the sheeple really do think the government is acting in their best interest.

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  14. Finn
    Joke

    Smart Dictatorship?

    That was clever...

    Someone watches SatTV without a licence? Jail him and issue huge fines. You get the money and the potential rebel is in jail.

    Someone watches SatTV with a license? First get the fee from the licence, then send secret police after him and drag him to court (after all, if he has licence, you know his name and address) for trying to overthrow the government and then fine him some more (this guy has money) for anti-governmental activities.

    All that money could be used for cheap radios from North Korea: They are factory-built with only one frequency and that is the end of BBC.

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