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The Second Generation Internet
Yo: This is the first of a series which will alternate between my columns and your responses. The talk will also go on in Threads. The duration of this topic can be as long - or as brief - as you want, entirely up to you. I'll post a column of representative e-mail responses. If you don't want to be quoted or ID'd, please say so in your messages.
For a generation of believers -- hackers, open-source programmers, MP3 and DVD adherents -- the Internet's most central ideology has been promoting a certain kind of freedom.
The Net has never been quite as accessible as many of its most passionate residents would like to believe. Many people can't afford it, others don't have the technological skills to use it well. Still, it is unquestionably freer than any other element of American culture.
In fact, the Net is so free it threatens, even traumatizes, institutions that have long clung to their prerogatives and to political and cultural power - journalism, industry, education, politics, the law, medicine.
This freedom is, to an enormous degree, a matter of accident and architecture rather than politics or ideology. The founders of the Net-a coalition of academics, engineers, early hackers and researchers - designed the Net and its protocols to be equally open to anyone with the right technology.
No medium had ever been designed so generously, casually or freely. In fact, the Net's architecture and protocols, as currently constructed and used, may be the most important model of free speech and equal access to information in history, certainly since the U.S. Constitution was adopted. (As a point of comparison, consider television, a medium intended to be open but quickly commercialized, and almost completely co-opted, by a handful of greedy media moguls, working the full co-operation of federal legislators and regulators.)
There is no Constitution for the Net, no bylaws or widely agreed-upon system or Constitution to protect widely agreed upon system to protect such rights as privacy, openness, and property.
Programmers are no longer technicians working at the margins of society. Like engineers before them, they are now, like it or not, among the principal architects of the world's most ascendant subculture. Issues like the Net's freedom, intellectual property and the flow of information and ideas rest in their hands, rather than in politicians or pundits.? The Net is well into its second generation, and it's changing.
Computing analysts and legal scholars increasingly believe that despite revolutionary advances like OS, the Net is moving away from its founders' vision. Although there's no single unifying architecture for cyberspace, the first-generation Internet more than fulfilled the early hackers insistence that information wants to be free. More information wants to be freer than anybody imagined.
But this has triggered growing political, cultural and economic conflicts, all likely to worsen in the coming years. Government is moving to establish Internet law, as in the Microsoft trial -- something it never bothered to do before. Companies battle to establish digital footholds. Media and cultural institutions - the media, Hollywood, Wall Street, the recording industry - demand legal measures to curb the Net's freedoms, fearing they undermine intellectual property, private content, and the marketing of products, information and culture, and the nature of capitalism itself.
Of course, almost almost everything about the Net, including the recent ascension of open source into a significant economic and cultural phenomenon, challenges the way hierarchical institutions have always operated. It has from the first. In the past few years, though, an entirely new kind of corporatist culture - shaped by behemoths like Microsoft and now AOL/Time-Warner - has come into being with resources, reach and power beyond any corporation before them.
These companies are all targeting the Internet as a primary source of profitability and growth. Not one of them - with the possible partial exception of IBM - has embraced or even flirted seriously with an open source model for doing business.
Microsoft, the inspiration and nearly-universal bete noir of the hacker/open source movement, is a stumbling giant now. But its legacy, Microsoftism, is thriving. It includes proprietary ideas about technology, a desire to dominate markets, a passion for mediocrity, an impulse to stifle individuality and competitive creativity. Call this new space The Corporate Internet, as an e-mailer named Gaeltact suggested.
Many of the architects of this evolving, second generation Internet come not from academe or engineering but from companies. They're beginning to build a different brand of architecture, focused on encryption, tracking software, closed spaces, patents and copyrights, and boundaries around intellectual property. The arrest of a Norwegian teenager for allegedly violating DVD software copyrights two weeks ago was a deliberately much-publicized warning, a symptom of these growing tensions. So are the recording industry's massively-funded efforts to develop powerful encryption technologies to thwart MP3 users and its growing legal confrontations with college and other music-dispensing Web sites. This is just a preview of many more conflicts to come.
Net and legal scholars like Harvard Law's Lawrence Lessig argue that the new architects will build in much greater levels of control. That is, in many cases, their mission. Traditional practices of capitalism and corporations depend on maintaining walls, on clearly-defined notions of content and property. The news on Slashdot, C-Net, Wired News and other techno-media, therefore, is increasingly about lawsuits, about efforts to stop the distribution of so-called intellectual property and block the spread of innovative software, about defining turf and collecting money.
Because so few non-geeks grasped the significance of the Internet early on, government officials, regulators, corporate executives and educators ignored it, allowing its architects and users to experiment and innovate. Now that everyone wants a piece of the action, the portents are troubling.
Education, journalism, business and politics are all highly constricted, not only by legal and economic concerns but by increasingly complex and volatile social pressures: the rise of a politically-correct ethos in public communications, encroachments on depictions of sex and violence. No newspaper will ever challenge the notion of God or challenge the fundamental structure of government and commerce.
In a sense, the architects of the Internet built a structure and space that enjoys a far stronger First Amendment that the framers of the Constitution provided (or that exists in most other countries, since the Net transcends the United States). As Lessig wrote, "Nations wake up to find that their telephone lines are tools of free expression, that e-mail carries news of their repression far beyond their borders, that images are no longer the monopoly of state-run television stations but can be transmitted from a simple modem."
Theoretical anonymity, de-centralized distribution, countless points of access, the sudden irrelevance of geography, sophisticated tools of encryption - these and other features of the Internet protocols made it virtually impossible to control speech on the Internet.
But Lessig adds, "there is no reason to believe that this initial flash of freedom will not be short-lived."
Lessig, along with high-tech journalists like Simson Garfinkel ("Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century," from O'Reilly), argues that new advances in technology, especially software, threaten both free speech and privacy. Marketers, medical institutions and insurers, and individual companies are gathering staggering amounts of data about individuals, students and employees.
This may shape up as one of the bitterest political struggles of the next generation, as an empowered army of technologically - advanced Netizens, programmers, geeks and nerds struggles to preserve privacy and the free nature of the Net, using tools most of us haven't begun to imagine. Some accessible examples of this experimental new architecture are weblogs (www.camworld.com); Slashdot's moderating sytem and Everything, a system (www.everything2.com) in which users can create nodes of information that link to one another -- almost like a neural communications system.
The issue really lies in the hands of the people who frequent sites like this one. Technology is volatile, fluid and inherently unpredictable. It often moves beyond technics and has broader social implications - Linux for example.
So this is an effort to talk about the second generation Internet. The idea, for anyone who wants to participate, is to begin to explore the kinds of ideas, software and hardware - the next generation of Internet architecture - that might preserve the original ideals and free nature of the Net and establish some broadly held rights and values.
This is virgin turf. As Lessig points out, the Net has taken conventional ideas about individual liberty and taken them farther than they've gone before. Some of the best guidelines might come from the recent and not so recent past. The GPL (General Public License: www.GNU.org), the open source programming license, has become a significant public document. This idea could be taken farther, and broadened. We could choose to do business only with sites and companies that subscribed to new understandings about freedom, openness and privacy.
Consider the ideas that predate primitive workstations with early computers. Or go back to the European cities of the eighteenth century. The philosophers of the Enlightenment undertook - without the means to communicate quickly with one another, let alone the rest of the world - a strangely relevant, eerily familiar program of secularism, humanity, and freedom. Their idea of freedom, as outlined by the historian Peter Gay, took a number of different forms: "freedom from arbitary power, freedom of speech, freedom of trade, freedom to realize one's talents, freedom of aesthetic response, freedom, in a word, of moral man to make his own way in the world." The Enlightenment took as its motto Emmanuel Kant's at-the-time radical "Sapere Aude" - Dare to Know. It's a shame none of them got to see the Net. Thomas Jefferson wrote passionately about a new kind of democratic culture in which ideas moved freely all over the globe. Ironically, many of these visions have come to life on the Net more powerfully than anywhere else.
This kind of discussion has at least two dimensions: First, what rights and freedoms to people want to preserve? And second, what kind of architecture - software and hardware -can do for this Internet generation what the Net protocols did for the last one?
The boundaries, length and nature of this discussion are up to you. You can take these starting points or reject them, add your own, change course, flame away, or ignore the conversation completely, in which case it will automatically vanish. Part two will be a representative sampling of e-mail, and of course, the conversation continues below on Threads.
I must say though, you did do some good research into the great thinkers of America, but you lack a bit in the Internet history.
----Charlie Benante
If the concept of information freedom had not already existed, it would never have occured to anyone that the Internet provided a medium by which it could be firmly established.
Second, I disagree that the Internet has revolutionised anything. The revolution had already happened. The Internet simply provided a means to deliver. That's all.
Third, I disagree that this is about the cost of connection. There are plenty of public terminals. (Or do Libertarians ignore those, the same way they denigrate and smear other public concepts, such as public transport, public footpaths, etc.) Yes, it's true that having a computer in your own home, with an Internet connection, isn't cheap. But, it's the computer that's the primary cost, not the connection. More people can afford to shell out $8 a month than can afford $1,000 in a single day.
However, publicly-available terminals mean that you don't NEED to have your own computer. You don't NEED to pay the frankly absurd prices in Internet Cafe's. You just go down to your local public computer lab, and connect. NO COST, BESIDES TIME.
Fourth, I agree that broadband access NEEDS to be realised. However, that alone is not enough. The method by which information is conveyed is very inefficient. There NEEDS to be multicasting, IPv6, Quality of Service protocols such as CBQ, RED, ECN and RSVP, automatic babdwidth throttling to prevent processes getting out of control, etc.
Fifth, the Internet does not have a Constitution, that is correct. That is because (much to the disgust of many Americans, who want to invade it), the Internet IS NOT AMERICAN!!! It is multi-national, and owes no allegiance to any flag or government. Until America wakes up to the fact that it is NOT at the centre of the Universe (the MPAA just proves it's industries even believe this patheticly egotistical self-deceit), it will never mature. It may be at the heart of technology, but socially it's never grown up. It's still an infant, wailing whenever anyone takes away it's toys.
Last, but maybe most importantly of all, I believe that the Internet can be a force of good, a constructive environment, and a healthy environment. I believe that this can only happen if the corporate sector is taken totally out of the loop. The Internet must not be run as a business. That's why ICANN can't. It's only when there are no vested interests, that genuine interest is possible.
It is only when the Internet becomes a network of national networks, each of which is a network of regional networks, each of which is a network of local networks, =ALL= of which are run by technically-oriented volunteers who's one objective is to provide a service, can the Internet blossom.
With such a network, geographically aligned but not geographically confined, you don't tie up bandwidth over in Paris or Sydney, when transmitting high-bandwidth streams across the street. At present, badly-wired networks, static or poorly-selected routes, and incompetent admins are all you need to get exactly that kind of nightmare scenario.
How is it a nightmare? Beyond packet loss and lag (which are extreme over those kinds of distances), you also need to consider the taxes many nations are considering on Internet traffic, especially international traffic. As you can't specify a route, at source, (or at least, you shouldn't be able to, for security reasons), you can't decide by what path your data will travel. So, you might end up paying international levies to send the guy next door an e-mail.
Sorry, but that's NOT ok. But it's exactly what a libertarian, free-market version of the Internet has become. It's cheaper to mis-manage, and charge, than to do the job properly in the first place.
In the situation I'm envisaging, such abuses would be impossible. A connection would ALWAYS follow the shortest possible path available to it, which would ALWAYS be a sensible path.
Also, as things stand, the Internet is fault-intolerent. If a router goes down, or a cable is severed, that entire segment of the Internet is kaput.
The Internet was designed with the idea of surviving a full-scale nuclear attack, but it can't even cope with a single workman's shovel?? Something is wrong with this picture. Seriously wrong.
Again, the idea of a multi-tier system of the kind I've proposed above, would involve multiple paths within a node, between any two points, and multiple paths between any two nodes. THIS is where the Internet =SHOULD= be and was =DESIGNED TO BE=. The searching for profit over quality ended that, but if there is to be a future for the Internet, beyond being merely a spam & shopping mall, that ideal has to be restored and the corporate sector ousted. Forever.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
Now that the Internet (and in the future, the Internet II) are no longer playthings of academics and researchers but are seen as central to a developing dot.com economy, what will be interesting to see is how the Internet develops.
Personally I'm not very concerned with the privacy issues raised by Katz.
Why?
Because by the death of DIVX and by the current popular attitudes towards the DVD lawsuits and the rejection by the general public of technologies which are not "easy to use" (translation: which technologically blocks fair use), I suspect the technology controls that corporations are trying to put in place to block the general public from using intellectual properties they paid for will wither and die on the vine.
Personally if given the choice of buying copy-protected music on the net which (a) only can be played on my computer and not in my car, and (b) could be lost if my hard disk crashes, or buying a CD, I'll buy a CD. That's because a CD is more convenient. MP3s are only taking off in the way they are because they are more convenient than a CD--in particular you can burn a CD-ROM with your music and protect them in case of a hard disk crash, and you can copy them into a portable player or archive them in one location.
But this only outlines a larger battle: the battle between security and ease-of-use. Already you can read newspaper articles about various CIA employees who circumvent their secure home workstations in order to copy highly secret data to insecure home PCs because they want to get their work done. Popular are technologies which circumvent security precautions, such as cookies in lew of password-protected security on shopping sites, and the Macintosh's Key Chain and similar Windows technologies which remember passwords for you.
People want ease of use as much as they want security. And when the security is not in their own personal best interest (such as protecting the intellectual property of the music conglomerates), they tend to say "screw security, I want to play my Madonna music files in my car."
I think the corporations have an uphill battle on their hands. And I think eventually they'll lose--unless they can come up with a technology that is easy to use as a CD and doesn't invade their lives, people will simply resort to older technologies.
For most, freedom is the freedom to be left alone. Forcing people to remember arcane passwords, techniques and telling them "you can't play your music in the car unless you pay me twice" isn't leaving them alone: it's invading their lives in ways that most folks could do without.
I beleive the hardware which will encourage freedom in the "second Internet generation" has to be by far free or very low cost PCs. At the present, there are many people with PCs and Internet access, but still the majority does not
have a PC or Internet access (barring public terminals, libraries, etc). I beleive once more people start to get a PC and get onto the Internet, they will begin to realize what is out there for them (on the Internet) and how they will be
able to find almost anything they could ever dream of. There are some folks (governments in particular) which wish to limit the free flow of ideas and information on the Internet, and the more people who get on the Internet and find
out the limitless amount of ideas, information and content available to them, the more new Internet users (hopefuly) will pay attention to what they have to lose when laws and "innovations" (such as SDMI or UCITA) are introduced.
Well maybe you caught me in a philosophical mood today but I think that the data on the internet is absolutely not limiteless. You have lots of data in categories that is sensationally popular however those obscure things are usually not to be found anywhere. Some of my greatest discoveries were almost made by chance and not something that I could have easily searched for. What we really have to do is to allow for more dedicated bandwidth for each household in America.
Now why would I say this? Simple. Check out all of the stuff at freshmeat.net. A disturbing fact you will quickly find out is that a great deal of the "interesting" tasks have been for network access and the control of a machine that can deliver content of one sort or another. Now I know all you sysadmins out there have all the access you want but quite frankly I don't give a rat's ass about any of you. I actually care about the average person who dosn't have that little ol' OC-48 line into his/her house and the ability to do whatever you want.
Think of all the possibilities if the net were truely something you could really access and publish content on? As it stands now all the telephone gives me now is just bad news or telemarketers in general. If I could scrap my telephone line and as standard could just have a dedicated line like a T-1 then I would be happy. I could run anything that I wanted and publish information and content that I truely think that the world would benefit from. Having to constantly need to pay for anything and everything to get my message out with all the fancy tools is not something that I can do. Microsoft hasn't done this no matter how much that they claim to the contrary wise.
Really just being able to passively look at the internet and all those big shiny windows with all their fascinating stuff isn't something that I like to do. I want to truely create. I want to run an IRC server a MUD server an http server and several others. I want to run the slash code. I want to have a web site that is something that I can truely be proud of and to make sure I feel a sence of accomplishment out of. I can't do that now. I can't actually get much out of any "free" access to such resources (most of them are just jokes).
The net may be "free" but the printing presses are all under control of insidious minions of orthodoxy.
The software which will help ensure freedom in the "second Internet generation" would be, of course, OSS solutions. Along with my theme of low cost PCs, free, readily available and reliable operating systems (Linux, *BSD, etc) are
available at the present. Combine Linux with a low cost PC and Internet access, and consumers could be on the Internet with a $300 PC and $10/month Internet access (or $400 for 3 years of Internet access and a PC from some offers
I've seen). $400 is a price I realistically feel many consumers can afford, as opposed to 2 or 3 years ago when consumers would have to spend at least $1500 for a PC with a modem and $25/month for Internet access.
Big deal. I have said before does it really help me? I have a 2400bps modem and I don't have any way to get my home machine connected. From a technological standpoint I can't really see what is so hard in just saying to the modem:
Ok look I don't want 56k of bandwidth I just want 2400bps. Yes I know you are capable of that but I just want to use this much.
That really isn't so hard. Yes I am cheap and until I actually want to shell out cash for a better one I would sure be appreciative of actually seeing some miraculous technology fixing the problem that I may have. What is rapidly happening is that linux and it's apps are getting resource heavy. I am constantly being bombarded with reasons that people upgrade PCs.
It seems that what happens is that you are slowly driven mad with crappy things. Lousy programs freezing the X server, hogging disk space, RAM. Have you ever seen any of those themes for various WMs out there? Well I have at least 256 colors and do you know what I see? Well all the niftly little effects such as transparency and something that dosn't look grainy can't happen. I am betrayed by the technology that is to set me free. What will only happen is that the people who write the code run monster machines. They buy more monster machines and then develop to fit this profile. Result? Machines that don't have all the bells and whistles don't get supported or are just broken or just ruined. Until software is streamlined again we cannot expect to be anything but slaves.
Damn it seems like $2,000 is't worth your sanity.
Another thing apps are still in the phase that makes them not totally acurate in the features that they have. Things like GNOME will probably be useful maybe in 2 years. Others in more time than that. Combined with betrayal of app makers this makes for a dismal affair.
My second answer to the "software" question would be free Intenet access. At the present, most free acess providers are limited in the OSes they support (Windows NT or 9x). However, if free service providers supply Linux clients,
not only do they increase their customer base, but help more people discover what this whole "Intenet" thing they've been missing is. If you have a Windows PC and and no Internet access (how are you reading this?!), there are
plenty of free access providers available (a good list can be seen here on Yahoo!). Personally, I would rather pay for Inernet access since I can't stand advertising, but if you live with some banners on your screen, it's a splendid deal.
They don't care about linux users anyway. What they care about are people who are idiots. They care about windows people. They don't have to target linux users because linux users are by and far loaded with cash because of their ritzy little programming jobs (which I am sure even though I am a CS major I will be cheated out of) can buy their own satellite relay system.
The protocols which will help the second generation Internet thrive will be IP v6. Not only is it an open protocol available for all OSes, vendors and individuals to use, but it also comes with other features such as built in encryption
which helps to keep what someone wants to be private, well, private.
Ohhh wow encryption! Well that makes a world of difference to me *sticks finger in mouth and makes gagging sounds*. And IPv4 isn't a protocol that can use encryption and isn't open? Last I checked you can use encryption programs for all those people who have all their buddies who use encryption or who are scared out of their whitts by government officials trying to determine their location of their militia group's tent in Montana. Dosn't mean that I really care. I can't use encryption for anything for two major factors:
1. Never have any real communication with known individuals who actually support it.
2. No access to an IP address from home machine making the use of things like pgp almost a waste of time. (Well yeah I could just encrypt the thing ahead of time and then go a distance and include in in the text and do the reverse to decrypt however I can't say that such an idea appeals to me).
One problem with my ideas is that history has shown that the majority of people don't keep up on proposed and new laws, nor do they research what they buy before it's too late. I quick and easy example of this would be the low
voter turnout each year.
Well maybe for the lack of ability to actually do all the fancy content and have true editorial control of said content they don't feel that they actually care. I for one can't say that I almost care any more. All the rich son't and daughters of lawyers/doctors/sowftware tycoons have all their life problems worked out but some do not.
Using these factors and the fact that a lot of the content that is out there is changing and becomming cheasy and network dependent (meaning that the data must be kept on the network medium that once held it or it becomes useless or not a useful; This would be like a database or a listing of information that constantly changes or perhaps something that is HTML formatted or that works well with only some things like javascript or shockwave)
The other issue is that, as much as we hate to admit it, Linux has a ways to go for usability. I've seen the "My grandma can use Linux!" discussion many times before here on Slashdot, but I feel installation, configuration, GUIs and
easy ways to update the OS (to add new features and patch bugs) need to be improved before Linux will be the OS of choice for first time PC users.
I see a different problem with usability. I see a problem with actually getting the damn thing not to waste my resources like a drunken band of pirates on some tropical island. I can't believe that people can't make something work better. Hell these people are supposedly extremely bright and have so much knowledge and yet they almost force people to upgrade unless you want to turn you machine into a new jukebox for the sound of an hd grinding away (sure is cool however after several minutes of this happening it gets a little irritating).
So, in summary, PCs, OSes and Internet access which are at low or no cost will help more people to get onto the Internet, see all of the wonders it has to offer, and hopefuly realize what we all have to lose in the future if we do not
protect the freedoms we have now.
Ohh boo hoo hoo I will grieve for a total of about 10 seconds for all those little rich people who are cheated from having all their fun. I see no reason to actually care about their plight or the fact that the multi-million dollar website at http://www.mycheasysitethatcostalotof$$$.com or something (creaps have the audacity to charge for something that is supposed to be an open protocol). I have seen decreasing utility of what is out there and a general lousy attempt to make thousands of $$ off of it. Could someone really tell me why in my present state of technology (or more precisely lack thereof I should actually care about all those people getting their toys taken away?). In the grand scheme of things I haven't actually written anything more complicated that some program that did a calculation about some simple physics problem with a single for loop. If I have to upgrade my PC anyway what would be the harm of using windows if linux is just going to just start taking more and more resources like that aforementioned band of rum drunken pirates. I can't say I like Billg however linux is betraying me royally. If you wish please take my message and de-moderate it for your vicarious feeling of triumph of squashing me with your fist I just wanted someone to see it (you have to look at it to moderate it).
In conclusion I say that in fact the internet is a medium that was designed with the sole purpose of allowing elites to communicate (military, DoD, Echelon, university departments and such), connects computers via extremely expensive bandwidth (ever try to actually afford one of those nifty dedicated connections which actually allow you to have a life with linux and friends), host expensive web sites (hell I can't think of anyone who would be impressed with even the best geoshitties pages no matter who you are) since they require the big $$$, or connecting computers which could dub as the next replacement for the NSA (something that the wonderful new world of consumerism has created) it is something that the average person who has average to ambitious goals cannot hope to attain because of laziness, sloth, and the general lack of touch with what I term the forgotten man of the world. To quote Roland in Steven King's "Gunslinger" series "The world has moved on"; and in this case it has moved on to be more repressive and unequal in nature than at any other time. Please if you want to drive you catellacs please don't drive them near me ok?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
We don't need complex 'rules' built into the architecture and infrastructure of the Internet to insure freedom. All we need is the same kinds of simple protocols we already use. Given those protocols, programmers like myself can always create something that rides on top to do whatever is needed. (Can anyone say 'Napster'?)
No, what we need has nothing to do with technical matters. The greatest danger to free speech and freedom of usage on the Internet is an external one: Laws and Lawsuits. For example; suppose I create a program that allows anyone to communicate any information anonymously, with strong encryption so no-one else can tell what is being communicated. What happens next? The answer is easy -- I get sued by every organization charged with protecting Intellectual Property Rights and investigated by the government for exporting munitions!
This is a very real scenario. In fact variations of it are happening all the time. (Lets all say 'Napster' again.) It doesn't matter if the software is Open Source or closed. It doesn't even matter if it is very good, so long as it works.
The thing is, I know how to write software. I don't know how to manipulate the masses into calling for guarentees of freedom from their governments. I don't know how to make judges understand the issues the way I do. I don't know how to get the governments of the world to agree to keep their hands off what is easly the most transforming piece of technology on the planet. I just know that the more oppressive a government is, the more the Internet should scare them!
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
True. And there will always be exceptions. But so long as there are onerous legal consequences most of us will not be willing to suffer them.
That isn't entirely true. Try going to China and handing out disks with PGP software for example. Besides, as I have already pointed out -- most of us are too chicken. The chilling effect of negative consequences is too great to overcome without some hope that our efforts will actually amount to something.
As a citizen of the United States of America, I am the heir of a great tradition of Freedom. One fought for by some very great men over two hundred years ago. The quote "The tree of freedom must be fed from time to time with the blood of patriots." is as appropo today as it was then.
But, sadly, this great tradition is paleing into insigificance even here. We Americans have traded our freedom for safety many times already, and are prepared to trade more in the future:
Why should programmers be different than anyone else? The problem isn't one of individual action. It is societal. If I act in some significant way on my own, at best I will be considered a nut and at worst a terrorist. Our biggest problem isn't a lack of will, but rather an inability to educate the masses, to reach out beyond /. and the other geek enclaves. Until Joe Sixpack agrees with us, no amount of revolutionary rhetoric will tilt the scales in favor of Freedom.
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Theoretical anonymity, de-centralized distribution, countless points of access, the sudden irrelevance of geography, sophisticated tools of encryption - these and other features of the Internet protocols made it virtually impossible to control speech on the Internet.
Ha ha, that's funny. These things all make it inconvenient to control speech, which is a far different thing from impossible. Given the will to impose ridiculous, draconian laws then the Net can be as controlled as you wish - look at the current situation in China as a shining example of the way foward (note the sarcasm there). Yes, countries in the west are unlikely ever to go quite that far but you'd be suprised at what can be done given the right spin by the government. Go and look at the Prevention of Terrorism Act that was passed over here in the UK some years back for an example of a law which was passed based on the public fear of terrorists. The same thing happened in America back in the halycon days of the Cold War. Never underestimate the ability of the government and the media to whip people up into a frenzy against 'evil group X'.
Sorry to repeat an old cliche, but information is power, and this will again become increasingly apparant in the future. If you don't want any of your information to exist outside of your home then live like a hermit, because unfortunately it's getting to the point where anything you do that can be attributed to you is being monitored and logged in the name of 'targetted advertising' or whatever. Anonymity is probably easier on the Net than off of it - at least at the moment - but there are still times when your actions are being logged - the time I spend here on /. is logged somewhere and I'm sure they could build up a profile of my interests from what stories I read here. You just have to accept that it's going to happen sometimes and try and avoid it the rest of the time.
The issue really lies in the hands of the people who frequent sites like this one. Technology is volatile, fluid and inherently unpredictable. It often moves beyond technics and has broader social implications - Linux for example.
Ah yes. The obligatory Jon Katz pat on the back for the /. and Linux community. What does this paragraph mean? What implications does it raise? It's just filler.
Once we get over the first speech/beer issue there still is one unique definition of freedom for each and every one of us.
- Someone wants a ad-free web
- Someone else wants to be free to put their banners on their pages.
- Somebody wants to free the computer world from a monopoly.
- Microsoft wants to be free from government regulation.
- Let us be free from porn and spam
- Don't regulate the net, save our freedom
- Somebody wants to be free to view a DVD in any manner they like
- Somebody wants to be free to use a closed format business model
- Free the prisoners
- Free the streets from criminals
I could go on and on.Point being: Everybody wants freedom. Everybody uses the word "freedom" to describe their vision.
Enormous amounts of bandwidth has been wasted, preaching that "freedom is good".
Is it not time to be precize?
Is it not time to realize that your freedom might be someone elses encumberance?
Nobody wants to give up his own freedom for security. However reducing other peoples freedom for the same goal is suddenly OK.
Most peope on /. claim their freedom to influence politicians and courts in order to get the laws they like. Can you complain when the megacorps do the same?
If so, when do you lose your right to do politics?
May Redhat lobby? May I lobby if I happen to have a small garage business?
You give some, you take some. It is called society. Global scale does not make a difference.
Oh, and feel free to criticize...
All opinions are my own - until criticized
That's the question that has always mattered: who gets to decide what is seen and not seen, and, perhaps more importantly, who leads the unknowing through the maze to particular sources of information?
If governments are the librarians, they will stock and lead us to propaganda.
If corporations are the librarians, they will stock and lead us to advertisements and products.
If individuals are their own librarians, however, they will stock and lead themselves to what they need to know.
Whatever else happens in boardrooms and courtrooms, the most essential capabilities of a free internet are those that allow us to be our own librarians, and to make unfettered use of the library:
the ability of anyone to publish (this requires global reach, uncontrolled hosting tools, and anonymity);
the ability of anyone to read (requiring global access, uncontrolled viewing tools, and anonymity);
the ability of anyone to guide others to the information you wish them to see (requiring global reach of indexes, uncontrolled indexing tools, and anonymity); and
the ability of anyone to be guided to information without bias (requiring access to global indexes, uncontrolled browsing and searching tools, and anonymity).
Governments and corporations can pass laws and make pitches about the internet, but whether the laws are obeyed and the sales are made depends on whether or not the abilities described above are maintained and improved.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
Sorry Jon, I don't know specific numbers, but like myself; most people here on /. are not subject to the limitations and flaws of the U.S. Constitution.
The Constitution of my country provides for many more and broad freedoms than that of the U.S. , and as such it is nearly impossible to get a wire tap for a private citizen. An Internet tap is equally as difficult.
I'm not naive in assuming it doesn't happen, however (especially when I'm connected to a U.S. based server :-O ). The answer is vigilance. If the Internet 2.0 will not allow for freedom, boycott it faster than cookies from doubleclick.com! If no one uses it, they'll soon get the picture.
Hollywood/Wall Street/Big Business go where the money is. The money is where the people are. They'll realize that and change their ways.
Gopher is dead. Usenet is dying. Perhaps the Web will return to what it once was, a place to exchange ideas freely, without the commercial content.
Of course, my anti-U.S. Constitution comments will get me moderated down and ignored, but I expect that in a place where free expression is subject to the opinions of others.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain