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What the Internet is, was, and is supposed to be was laid out a long time ago and in a very non-ambiguous way and it's worked famously for a long, long, LONG time.

It's wonderfully working as it was supposed to do.

It's not the Internet that's the problem, but people who have no idea what it is and how it works.

TL;DR: Take a moment to understand what it is, and realise we already have what we want.

What the Internet is and how to stop mistaking it for something else: http://www.worldofends.com/

The Internet is insecure by design: http://www.worldofends.com/#BM...

All that symmetrical bandwidth + restrictions against running servers. Woot! http://worldofends.com/

worldofends.com

NAT provides only the illusion of privacy; the problem isn't the addressing, but rather the huge centralized systems that we have come to depend upon and which are controlled by only a handful of entities.

Meaningful privacy assurances require effort, and must be addressed at the application layer. This is best served by crypto and peer-to-peer communications, and keeping third parties out of the loop. IPv6 offers the possibility of restoring the most important and fundamental property of the Internet: the end-to-end principle. (If you haven't already, please read this.) IPv6 provides the basic foundation for applications of the future, allowing one to build in as much security, privacy, and anonymity as they may want. To communicate freely and on your own terms.

The only lemmings I am worried about are the ones who needlessly cling to NAT, and would willingly cripple their own IPv6 networks with similar restrictions. The primary value of the Internet, is that it allows everyone connected to be an equal participant. Once you hoist a NAT (or overly zealous firewall) in front of your connection, you are turning yourself into a mere client, subject to the whims and abuses of some service provider.

Basically, it's important for VOIP to have a certain quality of service for clear voice calls, but different QOS rules may make sense for other data types

Do you remember when the millimeter wave full-body scans weren't going to be recorded? But now they routinely are? Remember when seatbelt laws would only be enforced in conjunction with another type of violation, but now they are an arrestable violation all on its own? Maybe you don't remember these things, but I do, with countless other examples I could name, I see a trend....

If it's possible, they'll do it and they already have (Comcast vs Torrents, anyone?) and the only reason they don't do it more is because people got pissy about it. We need to get pissy about this, too. Somehow, despite lacking all these vital QoS rules, the Internet has grown to become the dominant global information network, winning out over many other networks having such things as QoS enforcement. (EG: Proprietary ATM networks, etc)

Sorry, but I like my Internet the way it is, spam and all. It really needs to be nothing more than a Network of Endpoints all sharing equivalent potential value. Let people decide what's valuable and what's not.

We need to be pissy about this issue.

I like net neutrality as a concept, e.g. i don't want Comcast blocking my port 25, but on the other hand there will eventually have to be some use-based pricing because transfer does cost money. So if networks don't impose some usage caps or use QoS to provide multiple tiers, then we're just going to end up with metered service (like water, power, gas, phones and cell phones)... and that's going to hurt enthusiasts just as much if not more.

I pay another $10/month to have my bandwidth upgraded from 1.5 Mb to 3.0 Mb. In neither case is network neutrality even on the RADAR. Connection speed and/or bandwidth is NOT a net neutrality issue, so please don't waste all our time and bring it up as if it were.

Network neutrality is the idea that all valid packets are equal. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you are a carrier, you don't discriminate against a data packet because it appears to contain VOIP. You don't discriminate against a data packet because it comes from a company that you compete with. You don't discriminate against a packet because it's originator didn't pay their "protection money" this month. You don't use "traffic shaping" to make end services you offer "behave better" than other services from other networks.

That's a no-no.

Keep the network stupid - it's a world of ends and that's what it needs to be. And please, for the love of god, if you haven't clicked on the link at the beginning of this paragraph, PLEASE DO SO so you have some idea what network neutrality actually is, mmmkay?

Every so often, a foundational concept comes along that could affect development for decades or centuries hence. The concept of "network neutrality" is one of these.

Just imagine the future possibilities:

On one hand, you have a future where you can never be sure what's really "out there", where there are huge swaths of information that you simply can't access, not because you or the information owner have any disagreement, but because some third party that you don't even know has determined that you shouldn't or couldn't see it. In this world, many sites are slowed to the point of unusability simply because your carrier doesn't want to have to compete with them when they offer a similar service. Quality suffers due to the lack of open competition.

On the other extreme, we have a future in which the Internet consists of the "world of ends" so charmingly envisioned by Doc Searls and David Weinberger. In this world, every information provider competes on fairly level turf with everybody else. Services that are genuinely better are allowed to win out solely on their merits, and not on their competitive associations. Quality of service continues to progress at a lightning pace, friction for improvements is low, so the best man truly does win.

Some people would say this is esoteric, that it's not about the "real world". But these people miss the fact that in the world of the future, the Internet will be the primary means of communication around the world. Already we see whole industries being consumed and integrated into the Internet. I no longer have cable, no television antenna sits on my roof, since Hulu + Netflix does everything I ever asked of my satellite dish and then some. I no longer have a phone line, since Vonage lets me do what I wish, anywhere I like for less. I basically don't send letters anymore, Email does the job faster, better, and cheaper. It's easier for me to do my banking electronically than it is to drive downtown to the nearest bank branch.

The world of the future is the Internet. And it's up to us, our generation, to see that this gorgeous technology is established with social norms and laws that allow us to use it to its maximum potential. This is our time. SAY YES TO NETWORK NEUTRALITY, AS LOUDLY AND OFTEN AS YOU CAN.

Any person or business can charge for access to their site if they want to. Others may choose to give information away free. Still others might give information away free, but include ads from sponsors on their sites. Some individuals might choose to directly exchange information, either for free or in exchange for value.

Regardless, no one is forced to use any particular website - if one chooses, and another provides the same information free, you can choose either one. If the one charging has unique information that no one else offers, you can decide whether to pay and get it, or not. If you have information you'd like to charge for, but there are a dozen other sites offering it free, you probably aren't going to do well. It would be wrong for you to try to get laws or regulations to block the ones giving it away for free.

This essay is a bit dated with some of its references, but the underlying concepts still apply:

http://www.worldofends.com/

http://www.worldofends.com/

HTML isn't some magical closed source EXE, as much as they would like it to be.

This is not about magic, function or utility. It's about ownership and making you do as they say.

They would love to make the internet into something like cable TV. The greedheads who run broadcast companies do so with government monopoly grants, secrets and expensive equipment which is all geared toward control of media and public opinion. You are not allowed to play there. Your choices are to consume or do without. The internet is fundamentally different by design. You are supposed to be able to contribute and create and no machine is better than any other. These lawyers know what they are saying and they mean it. They can and will take action if they see something that looks like their crappy publication. They are philosophically opposed to free networks and they want to take control. They don't care what their page does for you. All they really care about is keeping you from helping your neighbor, so that they can make whatever money there is to extract from whatever you would like to do. They don't care if you have unmet needs, so long as they are the sole provider. It is an outrageous and immoral stand that must be taken seriously and fought.

Think I'm silly? Look at what software patent and bad laws have done for entertainment. Look at all the blocked ports on your cable box. Look at the dominant home and business OS. Digital restrictions surround you. Their main purpose is to own your culture and use it to control you and separate you from your money.

When we look at utility poles, we see networks as wires. And we see those wires as parts of systems: The phone system, the electric power system, the cable TV system.

When we listen to radio or watch TV, we're told during every break that networks are sources of programming being beamed through the air or through cables.

But the Internet is different. It isn't wiring. It isn't a system. And it isn't a source of programming.

The Internet is a way for all the things that call themselves networks to coexist and work together. It's an inter-network. Literally.

What makes the Net inter is the fact that it's just a protocol -- the Internet Protocol, to be exact. A protocol is an agreement about how things work together.

This protocol doesn't specify what people can do with the network, what they can build on its edges, what they can say, who gets to talk. The protocol simply says: If you want to swap bits with others, here's how. If you want to put a computer -- or a cell phone or a refrigerator -- on the network, you have to agree to the agreement that is the Internet.

I'm not quite sure why you want to store at the TV but let me approach that issue with a counterargument from two directions... for purely academic reasons, and not out of a hope to convert you:

Most users in the target demographic for Apple's products, i.e. semi-affluent to affluent families, are likely to have more than one computer and consequently multiple playlists from multiple iterations of iTunes... also given the fact that it coincides with iTunes existing design platform: That is, one can license several machines to the same account. Licensing several machines to one account makes sense unless you're a bunch of college guys rooming together but generally, they're not Apple's bread and butter. I'm sure model this was chosen on the basis of feedback picked up by Apple's customer engineers who travel countrywide to gather data from various ad-hoc focus groups, analysts, vendors, retailers, etc. What the customer engineers do is they take some disembodied concepts/features and throw them out at their small audience, e.g. "What do you think of this? Is it useful? What do you like/dislike?" etc. and then they shape their products along these needs. The AppleTV is no exception. The MAJORITY of people in Apple's target market, and in the public at large, want to be able to coordinate many sources of media to one entertainment system.

From the other direction, you have users like myself who have a more elaborate home network and quite a bit of distributed computing firepower on the LAN but currently no way to really harness this firepower into a rather elaborate home entertainment system. I have about 500 gigabytes of combined storage on my existing machines. My response to your preferential setup is that I don't understand the benefit. Namely, I don't see the point in using one kind of appliance, a TV, as the central point for storage because most products designed to couple with a TV will be designed with output to the TV in mind. But what if I have different kinds of media that I want my home entertainment system to be able to access? I don't particularly like listening to music on a PC-mated sound system. I tend to do most of my casual listening in the living room which is uncluttered compared to my computer room. Not only that, but I have enough money for one kickass sound system, not five. Likewise, I fail to see the usefulness in watching SD or HD movies in my office. I bought a 34" HDTV for the living room because that's where I prefer to watch my movies. For me, the AppleTV is the kind of solution that bridges the firepower of the network, which is an ideal place to serve all kinds of content from, to the entertainment appliances (HDTV, surround sound receiver, etc.) which are best-suited devices from which to experience the playback.

Building flexibility into this kind of a system isn't complicated because it doesn't require upgrades to expensive home entertainment hardware, or replacement of the AppleTV (to a point), but can easily facilitate the merging of new media sources because the framework already exists for storing and accessing all kinds of media in all kinds of formats... it's your computer.

As Doc Searls and David Weinberger have pointed out on their website World of Ends, the more specific complexity you build into the internet, the less useful it becomes. Optimizing a network for one kind of media means deoptimizing it for other kinds of media. This is why AppleTV makes a hell of a lot more sense than a device like TiVo, whose sales have been doing rather poorly. Granted, I said something about "jack of all trades, master of none"... but the AppleTV isn't a jack of all trades, in a sense. What it is designed to do is one thing... but what that one thing IS just happens to facilitate many other kinds of things. This is exactly what Searls and Weinberger point out about the internet... it is a dumb network. It doesn't know or care about one type of media over the other, and consequently just about any type

Perhaps that's understandable since many of those countries have enough non-tech issues to deal with already. But I think that if that's the case, they just shouldn't be allowed on the internet yet. There really needs to be a bar for entry.

And, just how do propose to do that?

The Internet is an agreement to exchange digital information with previously agreed-upon protocols. Nothing more, nothing less. ANY node on the Internet is abstractly equal to any other. It's the World of Ends that gives the Internet its value! As with most things, it's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness.


I'm surprised we haven't started seeing vigilantes tracking down hackers and spammers. When governments can't handle things, the mob takes over.

I'm surprised that you haven't recognized that the Realtime Blacklists are nothing but vigilante actions - whole swaths of the Internet blocked from communicating due to misbehavior...

What else would you call that?

The internet, an agreement between parties to speak a common language when communicating, has immense value because it leaves the prioritization and customization of services to the retailers (i.e. enduser ISP's, content providers, distributors, etc.) which facilitates choice through diversity/competition and therefore quality and optimal pricing.

Trying to make the internet do some things better than others, as World of Ends so eloquently puts it, obviously comes at the cost of doing some things worse than others.

Sounds screwy, but it's true. If you optimize a network for one type of application, you de-optimize it for others. For example, if you let the network give priority to voice or video data on the grounds that they need to arrive faster, you are telling other applications that they will have to wait. And as soon as you do that, you have turned the Net from something simple for everybody into something complicated for just one purpose. It isn't the Internet anymore.

User-created content is at the center of YouTube's web-2.0 pedigree: the idea that the "new" fluid Internet model will be based on user interaction and contribution.

It seems that this is presicely what is meant by how the internet is a World of Ends. As upload capability becomes more and more prevalent, it will become more representative of the global population. The question then becomes- Is this a good thing?

Shallow content, rumormonging, and misinformation will lead to a populace that is more popular, but will it be more true?

I have nothing insightful to add to this discussion. Just wanted to post an image of this wicked shirt from the recent HOPE conference making fun of Ted Steven's dumbassery:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/07/23/best_series_o f_tubes.html If you really want to know what the internet is, read World of Ends.

I'm thrilled to see that the internet really is a World of Ends. As a blogger and a Slashdot whiner (er, commentor) I feel empowered when my fellow netizens reap the fruits of their labour on the world stage. I'm just concerned that if net neutrality isn't preserved these people will be muscled out of their needed accessibility by the Disneys and Microsofts of the world.

"The internet is a collection of networks. "It" doesn't exist, per se. We only see it as a system because it behaves as one - but it's not like it's some natural resource that copper providers are keeping us from."

You're right that it's not a naturally occuring resource, but I don't think you're right that it doesn't exist. It is, to borrow a phrase from the Searls/Weinberger piece World of Ends, "the Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement..." or, perhaps more precisely, a lot of agreements.

This isn't too different from a lot of other things that don't really exist except as shared agreements. Any state entity, or democracy, or rule-of-law in general fall in this category. Money falls in this category. The concept of property rides a thin line between roots in human psychology and this category.

And this leads to one other thing you said that's not correct. All the things I mentioned above can simply cease to exist if enough people -- or sometimes a few key people or organizations -- renege on the agreement. Most of them continue because it's of high value to everyone to do so, but periodically, you find people breaking the agreements. And in most cases, the rest of us respond vigorously by martialing the resources and forces of those who believe in these agreements and are willing to play by the rules, because the loss of those things would be a huge cost.

The telcos are key. They could in fact be key enough that their reneging on the agreement that's constituted the net for the last 5, 10, 20, and 30 years could possibly damage the agreement, for no clear benefit other than additional profit taking beyond what's already a profitable business.

And while their resources make up an essnetial portion of the net, it's not the only one, nor in some sense should anyone get the idea the internet belongs to them. Even "their" pipes aren't even strictly theirs -- they've received millions in tax breaks, special easements and rights to operate, and in some cases outright grants from the various levels of the government to build those pipes -- but beyond that there are thousands if not millions of other participants in the agreement that constitutes the net who've create the software, hardware, protocols, and other inventions that made it possible. There's really no question that they've no inherent right to make changes to the agreement on their own, and absolutely no right to make changes protected by law or other means of avoiding backlash or consequences. And there's little question that the benefits of the current agreement are proven, while the benefits of their proposal seem to have little forseeable consequence beyond further personal profit at the expense of other participants.

The only question is whether we should respond as vigorously as we would when other valuable agreements are threatened.

Hmm, maybe we need to send these telcos over to World of Ends and remind them that the end-to-end or "dumb" nature of the Internet (in the sense that all the logic is handled at each end, not in the middle) is a big part of what's made it successful.

Not that that's ever stopped anyone from killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, of course...

Its called fragmentation - ISP's and/or end-users would have to specifically reconfigure their DNS to look at the alternate root. Anyone using an ISP that simply ignored the 'pretend' root would not be able to find those domains.

Also, its been done before, by various organizations, and is largely a failure (alternic.net used to be one, now its got a domain-parking site on it).

All the various governments that want to fiddle with the net, or anyone that supports them, should have a good and careful reading of the information at:

http://www.worldofends.com/

Have you ever heard the saying, "The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it"? I'm not sure who said it, but he/she was right on. To expand on this, we need to look at governance in the same way we look at censorship.

If you have never read World of Ends, I recommend you do so now.

The solution to "governance" over the internet is to remain true to the foundations it was developed under. The internet as an agreement cannot be governed. It can only exist while there is compromise and consensus. So, here is what I believe is the best solution to this problem:

1. For the time being, maintain the status quo of having ICANN responsible for the assignment of IPv4 addresses.

2. Transition into IPv6 by assigning blocks of IP addresses to all countries. Perhaps leaving some addresses for space stations, the moon, mars, etc. Do this though multi-national treaties. This is where the United Nations can help out, but the UN should only be a facilitator. Remember, the Internet is an agreement among nations.

3. Have each country be responsible for assigning its block of IP addresses, and for the management of their TLDs.

4. Transfer .com, .org, and .edu management to some sort of NGO (ICANN for example), with the purpose being for multi-national corporations, organizations, and institutions of higher education who do not associate with any particular nation (for example would be icrc.org)

The important thing is that the internet remain decentralized. This seems to be the point that everybody is missing. It doesn't matter who governs the internet, because nobody should govern the entire internet. Its works best as an agreement, and that is how we should proceed.

It's important to use the email filter rules much in the same way you'd use a firewall rulebase... as a sequential set of rules that increase or decrease in specificity depending on how you want to prioritize mail.

Some addresses need to receive from everybody. i.e. If you have an info@blah.org, you are expecting mail from unexpected sources. Then some addresses are personal. But here's where it gets interesting.

Years ago in high school, I had a civics teacher who looked like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Every year he begins the first day of class with these words:

MAN IS GREGARIOUS BY NATURE.

Indeed... We are social creatures. We also like feeling important. That is part of the reason I'm wasting my time on message boards pontificating on subjects that the people who already understand don't need to know, and the people who don't probably won't care for my opinion! But it makes me feel important that I have something to say.

So too is the nature of this thing called e-mail. Most people do not want to implement the easiest form of security (implicit deny-all w/a whitelist) because, hey, who knows... you might receive an important message from someone you don't know.

For example:

YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS!

So there you are. The problem is, people aren't easily convinced that there are no truly important messages except those from people they alerady do know, who have business or personal interests with them that they already are aware of. Why? Well, probably because that would require admitting to ourselves that we're less famous or less important in the grander scheme of society than we fancy ourselves to be.

WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? OKAY!

Spammers and most mail servers are like audio equipment salesmen, they don't know when to shut up. That being said, I found that a challenge-response rule works well, but doesn't solve the bigger problem.

Sure, a challenge-response rule, if properly implemented, will drop inbound mail that doesn't pass the test... but there's just one problem.... two actually...

1. When a spammer gets an autoack challenge from a mail server they are attempting to send to (because C-R is not readily implemented at the application layer), now they know there's a box there. Their bulk mailer scripts don't care that there may not be a real person there... they'll waste your bandwidth all the same.

2. When an autoack challenge goes out to, say, a generic address that sends you maybe a confirmation of a credit card payment, that system sends an autoack back to you. Unless you are actively policing your rules every day, you're multiplying the amount of bandwidth being wasted by causing an autoack loop that doesn't stop until someone kills their autoacks or changes their ruleset. Waste of time, and resources.

So, until password authentication, or even DNS authentication (verifying that the rDNS for the sender's IP matches the senders e-mail address to confirm it wasn't spoofed) becomes an integral part of the application, challenge-response won't work very smoothly for most endusers who lack the scripting skills to build their own mail server running a C-R script far smarter than any deliberately vulnerable Microsoft application will ever be designed to offer--for obvious commercial reasons.

As this site can attest, making such specific functionalities part of the internet protocol itself is not a good idea. Challenge-response should exist at the application layer.

HEY, I THINK I GOT IT! A good security policy is to implement several layers of security. 1. The first layer of ru

Once again people are getting what the Internet really is confused. I will point to WorldofEnds.com for those that need a refresher. And those too lazy to RTFA here is my one sentence summery: The internet is an Inter-network which is comprised by a common protocal (The Internet Protocal [IP]), and all the internet does and cabable of doing is routining data packets from point A to point B through this inter-network. It has no value added components. All value is created at the ends: ie the website/server that host the site and your home/office computer.

To me, all the internet really has done is sped up communications and decreased its cost. You can reach 500 like minded people with a single click as opposed to phone tree or letters that would have to be organized and logistically setup days if not weeks in advance of a meeting. Now you can send an email out the day before of even the day of an event as a reminder for not a lot of money and spend more time and efforts on traditional technquies, like cavanassing.

Canidates can also use the internet to provide a real time press-release machine and issue statements, and whatever else they wish to communicate. But in the end, their website really is just an interactive campaign brochsure that instead of having a detachable "please send money" leaflet, they have a "Click here to Donate" button.

Another factor, especially with local elections, is people want to see and talk with their candidates in person. They want to gauge just what type of person he/she is for themselves. Really it is the elections at the local level, grassroots, that your vote really counts the most.

The problems related to charging for e-mail are enormous. Currently there is no infrastructure for these charges, and there is no way to force others to adhere to this. Sure, you can ignore e-mail from those who refuse to pay if you wish, but what if you can't afford to, ie: your business depends on sending e-mail to China, or Malaysia, or anywhere else...

This article goes a good way to explaining why the SPAM problem is so bad, and suggests that a pay-per-email solution is doomed to failure.

Pierre

1)Internet Hype
2)???
3)Profit!

Actually, World of End's What the Internet Isn't (previously featured on slashdot) has the ideas that can be applied to the "new economy."

the people who grasped these ideas are the long term winners.

Sure, spammers claim that they make money, but just like intrusive telemarketers their days are numbered!

Some domain name speculators made out. Some vapourware employees made out. But these are flash in the pan events.

Jeff Bezos and Co turned a profit! How? By aggregating their shipping (that free shipping option that allows them to pack more onto a truck) they are using tried and true business methods to stay profitable.

So what have we learned form the new economy? If you don't have a sustainable business model (i.e. 1)hype 2)??? 3) Profit!) then cash out quick! (however I think that business model is pretty old; Con-men have been around for years!)

Perhaps Verisign should sit down and read the "World of Ends". Especially the parts about The Internet is stupid, Adding value to the Internet lowers its value, and All the Internet's value grows on its edges.

The Internet is not a thing, it's an agreement.

See What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else.

One of the top countries pushing for gubmint control over the Internet is China. You know the country that has it's own firewall to help them government sniff out subversives.

Finally there are a few EU countries (France) that really like the idea as well. They want to protect their innocent youngsters from "American Culture which is so pervasive on the Internet".

I'd am VERY suspicious of such gubmints, the motives behind them dont seem very "egalitarian". They are self serving, and mostly trying to prevent the free exchange of ideas IMHO.

Wow. I *completely* disagree with what you've just stated here. Allow me to explain why.

First off, the internet was BUILT as an end-to-end network. You cannot just sweep this fact aside by saying it's "outdated". This principle is what MADE the internet successful. Without end-to-end, the internet would have gone nowhere. Really.

We want the application to run end-to-end, because that is what make the application useful -- but folks have confused this with requiring the mechanism to be identical from end to end

But now, in the new system, it requires that the network be AWARE of the application, and configured EXPLICITLY to allow this certain type of data to be transferred. Now you have to ask permission from the people who control the network to run your application. Now you have to make configuration changes in the network itself before you can run any new application. Gone is the open development environment of the internet. Gone are new applications that pop up that anyone can use immediately. (This is how the web started. Your NAT support would have made the web so difficult that it wouldn't have gone anywhere. Imagine the millions who would have had to configure their NAT to work with a new system of doubious worth.)

You say that the network should be SEPERATE from the application, and then go on to promote the application being DEPENDANT on the specific configuration of the network.

"like in the days of the telegraph, the mechanism and the application were synonymous. That is an obsolete model, though. Our needs and demands have gotten more varied and complex from the point of view of the applications -- the mechanism (IPv4) needs to be separated out from the applications."

AND IT IS! That's the POINT, Bookwyrm. Currently, in the 'obsolete' model, the network is TRANSPARENT to the application. No specific configuration of the network is requried. The network is seperate from the application. However, NAT makes the application depend on the network, and thus makes the network and the application once again joined, like the telegraph, phone and cable TV networks of the past. That's a step BACKWARDS.

Even now, because of NAT, we can observe the harmful effects of new development. VoIP doesn't work properly. File sharing applications are suffering massively because people can't share, even when they want to. Running a server of any kind, (a game server for you and your budies to play on) requires additional configuration, making it harder. People in certain situations, like in university, for example, have no ability to influence the functionality of the NAT, and are stuck being internet consumers. And don't forget that it's even MORE arduous to have multiple computers doing the same thing, like being a webserver, behind the NAT. Now you have to specify to the CLIENTS to use different ports for different servers behind the NAT. It begins to get so ugly that people give up.

Your goals are noble, Bookwyrm, but your thoughts on the matter are misguided. This site might help shed some additional light on the situtation.

And finally, the people who invented the internet for real though that end-to-end addressing was the best idea, and from their efforts, we have the most advanced communcation system humans have ever seen. To say that they are utterly wrong requires some guts, and also a LOT of backing up. In other words, the proof is in the pudding. Where is YOUR all NAT internet?

1. We need to keep The Ends - our computing devices - under OUR complete control, and not in THEIR control. i.e. "Trusted Computing"/Palladium/EFI/DRM/etc must fail.
2. We need to keep the communication medium free from government and/or corporate censorship. i.e. ISPs must remain common carriers, and major routers mustn't refuse to carry "untrusted" packets.

Beyond that, software will simply evolve to handle any problems such as SPAM; it's an emergent system.

--

It's an agreement, it's not a thing.

What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else. - Must read for any person that cares about technology.

If they don't like the DNS system, they don't have to use it. Same for HTTP. Same for TCP. Whatever.

ICANN can continue to define the standards and American companies will continue to implement them. Do you think people in France will be thrilled when France decides to do something different? That they can no longer access all the other sites.

Who needs global standards when you have defacto standards.

You've all read World of Ends. What's the deal with these boardband partners Infinium talk about on their web site? Are they only going to offer service through ISPs who join with them? Sounds like they are trying to build a business model from the middle of the network. So if their product comes to market it could possibly pervert the nature of the internet. ISPs will expect deals with content and service providers and will block those who don't pay.

The browser made the net a medium.

It's unfortunate that it's so unsecure, but that's just the way it is.

I think it's great that it's not secure. Just like every other classic protocol that truly supports the net (tcp, ip, ftp, etc), it's not about what you put over it - it's about moving data as it's told. This distinction is what makes it so difficult to control or "own" the net. I don't believe we could build a "secure" protocol that retains the inbuilt freedom that we have today.

Yes, people abuse that freedom just like they do any other, and yes, spam is so annoying that many who normally fight for freedom now beg to take it away in this instance, but there are solutions that don't involve removing freedom for everyone.

The idea of challenge response is good.. as is baysian filtering.. as is pgp key signing, etc...

And the solution to the abuse of bandwidth on the servers is not to recreate the protocol. it's to make sending spam pointless in the first place - and that happens at the ends. The middle needs to be stupid in order to be smart.

And now my shameless (and probably inaccurate) retelling of "the world of ends" will itself end.

Applications were built for the 'net, not the other way around.

That's like saying human beings developed speech for the telephone system, not the other way around. (Some applications were enabled by the existence of the net, but they weren't built *for* the net.)

Haven't you read "World of Ends"?

The point is that opensource systems/approaches/philosopies are the operating system of The Internet.

The Internet is the basis for exchanging items of value. Open Systems facilitate that.

The accusation of marxism is a no-brain reflex action.

Part of the problem is that a lot of people making websites are not programmers, or even really that informed about standards.

I always wondered what the dangers of the internet are. But yes now i can see, sending bits that make up dct blocks of jpeg picture data is as dangerous as abusing childeren. I didnt realise it before, but i understand now that anyone that sees one of these images - even for a second, will be drawn by their power and immeadiately feel compelled to go and find a child to take dodgy pictures of. I really think that all governments should be forced to read the World of Ends Public Draft. Unless of course they've already censored that site.

World of Ends, recently discussed on Slashdot, discusses why the simplicity (or stupidity) of the Internet is so useful. "The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement," they say.

That same argument applies to e-mail. Following their logic, it is best to leave SMTP alone. Simpler protocols are better. Leave the "value-added" pieces to the edge, and let the simple message transfer protocol alone.

For me, the site is good example of what else you can do with google if you go a bit under the plain interface it have, but, like in the World of Ends site say for internet, the main google interface and main use should be as "dumb" as it is now, and top of it anyone could do this kind of hacks (you can do even a directory of hacks, like Yahoo but pointing to google hacks for each category)

Because THEY will be the ones, the corporations, the government and the DOD, who control our indentities. Any digital identity should exist to empower the individual to become a better, more informed customer, not a manipulated consumer.

I highly recommend you read Doc Searles and David Wienbergers views on this to see why any implementation of DigID that is corporate centered rather than individual centered is PURE EVIL, and will be used for all sorts of nefarois things, from total erasure of shopping anonymonity, total profiling, and even BLACKLISTING. This is bad stuff, pure and simple.

Planet P Blog

Filtering contents adds value, right?

ISP level filtering is one of those things which some people think adds value to the internet, but really damages it. Host-level filtering, however, is a voluntary, application-level process which the host can disable at any time. This is why improvements to the internet should come at the application level (where they can be easily changed and removed if they turn out to have downsides), rather than deeper in the network (where it's harder to convince the sysadmins that you need changes made to do your work).

(Host-level filtering may still be damaging in some cases, such as in a library whose users are forbidden from modifing local software. But that is a separate issue)

Music downloads adds value, right?

From the Internet's point of view, music downloads are "just another file transfer application". They are beyond the scope of section 4. They "improve" the internet by providing another use at the ends. But, as you may have noticed, DRM-based music downloads aren't very popular yet. That's because, as the authors suggested, non-open protocols lack explosive popularity.

an even more fragile piece of DRM-crap

I think that the majority of music-downloaders still manage to find non-DRM files. Not as much as when Napster was running, but it still seems that most music downloads wind up as MP3 files on multiple, redundant CDRs.

Hypothetically, the RIAA might someday propose modifying the internet to make their music transfers more secure, and that would be bad.

(If they could push DRM onto 80% of newly manufactured PC hardware, that would be very bad for other reasons)

Filtering contents adds value, right?

ISP level filtering is one of those things which some people think adds value to the internet, but really damages it. Host-level filtering, however, is a voluntary, application-level process which the host can disable at any time. This is why improvements to the internet should come at the application level (where they can be easily changed and removed if they turn out to have downsides), rather than deeper in the network (where it's harder to convince the sysadmins that you need changes made to do your work).

(Host-level filtering may still be damaging in some cases, such as in a library whose users are forbidden from modifing local software. But that is a separate issue)

Music downloads adds value, right?

From the Internet's point of view, music downloads are "just another file transfer application". They are beyond the scope of section 4. They "improve" the internet by providing another use at the ends. But, as you may have noticed, DRM-based music downloads aren't very popular yet. That's because, as the authors suggested, non-open protocols lack explosive popularity.

an even more fragile piece of DRM-crap

I think that the majority of music-downloaders still manage to find non-DRM files. Not as much as when Napster was running, but it still seems that most music downloads wind up as MP3 files on multiple, redundant CDRs.

Hypothetically, the RIAA might someday propose modifying the internet to make their music transfers more secure, and that would be bad.

(If they could push DRM onto 80% of newly manufactured PC hardware, that would be very bad for other reasons)

• Today, internet access is filtered by bank account- if your wealth is too low, you can't use the internet at all. Allowing some packets to be more expensive to send allows the rich to subsidize the poor, who might be able to afford some access instead of none.
  
• Today, deploying applications like voice, moving video, and arcade games over the internet is difficult, because your packets have latency and jitter. That's because they are competing will all kinds of email, IM, HTTP, FTP, and NTTP protocols as they move accross the network. To make low-latency interaction work better, we can either invest a lot to make the entire internet super-fast, or invest a little to recognize which packets need high speed, and bump them ahead of the lines.
  
• Someday, your ISP will decide to charge you by the gigabyte. Won't you want to be able to request a reduced rate, by intstructing your software to request low-priority packets, instead of rapid-response ones? (This is analogous to last-minute airline tickets)