The Internet-Have We Reached A Turning Point?

Pyromage asks: "Given all the lawsuits (DeCSS, the censorware ones, etc.) and all the laws (UCITA, DMCA) that are essentially impacting the net right now, do you see it being the end of the net as we know it? As cheesy as it sounds, depending on how these events turn out, I can see it as the beginning of regulation and the end of privacy & freedom online, or as a solid precedent guarding the rights of people on the net. Thoughts?" Interesting question. Have any of you actually thought about how these events, which are developing as we speak, will affect the network that we all know and love?

Comments

End? No.

[belgin]

This is not the end of privacy and freedom on the net. Such a thing has not occurred and will not occur within the forseeable future. Admittedly, the forseeable future is limited to months or years right now.

What we are seeing is restriction of absolute freedom in certain areas in exchange for higher profitability for certain entities. These businesses, governments, and special interest groups have their own requirements for their ideal web. Needless to say different peoples' ideals are quite different. As different groups attempt to determine what strength they have in this medium and new area of both our cultures and our laws, they will push the boundaries. The same behaviors have occurred every time a new frontier crops up.

Is the time of the Mecca of absulute privacy and freedom over? It never really existed, honestly. We have always used real information about people on the net. If you want to be listened to seriously, you often have to let people know who you really are. You can lie convincingly, and that was just as good. The same principle applies now. Certain information is required and certain freedoms are limited to use many new aspects of the internet. This has been happening from Day One, but now corporations are doing it through lawsuits instead of individuals killfiling you on usenet. All we are seeing is the reactions changing according to the perceived severity of the situation from the "aggrieved" party's side. If you can lie convincingly in the new ways, it is still just as good as real information and privacy.

Like all frontiers, the web will continue to "civilize" as more people seek to get rich, put in the hard work, make it their home, and proceed from the founder generation to the ones that take this frontier for granted. Things will change, but barring an international action of draconian nature, freedom and privacy will remain. Our perceptions of them are what will change.

B. Elgin

New Protocol

[Rei]

Actually, my main project that I am currently involved in is just like that. I, and another student, have gotten approval to make an anonymous, decentralized content distribution system for near our entire grade this quarter at Rose in one of our classes. Its tentatively named 'Antioch' - "the ANonymous Transfer Interface Of antioCH". Currently, the protocol is only mostly defined, and the code is still skeletal, the initialization functions currently being debugged (the quarter did just start after all).

Basic protocol design:
Client sends out a broadcast regexp request to match. Servers respond (within reason) with all matching requests. Certain file extensions (implemented as loadable extension modules) can load up part of the file into memory for regexp matching as well (such as an id3 tag for mp3).

Client queries the servers which contain what it wants, for configuration compatability (in case a server has such strict security opts turned on that it won't allow you to connect, etc) and free bandwidth. The most efficient path is chosen.

A person who has a client has a server running at the same time. In their default configuration, they are encouraged to link to their friends that are outside the current network - preferably, way far away. When a client doesn't find what it wants, it will start following links on other people's systems - within reason. It won't trace very far in, and only will follow links on very idle systems. This is due to the nature of obscuring the destination. Each client on a net, when accessing a link on another computer, gets not an IP and port, but a number to refer to the link - they can't see where they're going. The relevant information gets sent to the computer with the link, which correspondingly forwards it (redoing encryption if mandated by either side of the connection). Links an be nested within each other - for example, a packet could go to XXX.XXX.XXX.21, link 3, XXX.XXX.131.42, link 1, XXX.XXX.XXX.101, and then stop there and download.

The user doesn't tell it where to search; the client keeps bookmarks of where the user has been finding things and prefers to use those links, subject to bandwidth and cpu constraints of the servers along the way. However, in 3, university-scale hops, you could get nearly anywhere in the nation, in theory. And have no clue where you're going to. (and, the only way to figure out where you're going to is confiscation of every hard drive along the way, I.e. completely infeasable for a recording industry/motion picture industry/other large corporate entity crackdown)

Additionally, I've worked out how to a) make the packets appear to be from the wrong computer, b) have the destination address be to the wrong computer, c) have both computers randomly rearrange ports at regular intervals, and d) have no recognisable contents in the packet that would give it away as being from an antioch system, and all the while having it function normally.

Note, that a) and b) require the program be run as root, b) and d) require extra cpu, and c) either require a supplied service info daemon on both ends, or on the end(s) which doesn't have one, more cpu and have to be run as root. Again, that will be configuration dependant; most people will probably choose to stick to the default configuration.

Planned encryption is GPG, or a rouch variant of it, but its support has not been implemented in our currently skeletal code.

All in all, it should be virtually impossible to firewall or track down. In fact, it should be possible, running as root, to even ensure anonymity over the local subnet, but that part of the protocol is still tentative and probably won't be implemented till after our first beta release.

Anyways, I just thought I'd share :)

- Rei

Yes, and things are good.

[Randy Rathbun]

Okay, so we are looking at ourselves and it looks like all we can do any more is get in trouble. Face it, DeCSS got yanked, Mattel is being stupid, Amazon has some butt-head patent, and eToys showed the world what it thought about art. Things just don't look nice at all.

But, take a step back and look really hard. Know what I see? I see a bunch of corporate types who are doing nothing but making total asses out of themselves. In all of the above cases, only one did the internet come out on top. Why? Because we raised such a stink that there was nothing else that the money grubbers could do but to give in.

Things still are not over on the DeCSS front, nor the MP3 front, nor the Mattel front. We are being monkey wrenches in their corporate culture - a culture that says "money is all that counts!" and "you have no rights if it costs me a buck!" We are being attacked and we are fighting back. And ya know what? They are paying attention.

We are being told that we can't do stuff that has been done for years (reverse engineering). How are they going to stop us from doing that? They are going to have about as much success in keeping your typical hacker from doing any sort of RE as President Regan had with the moral majority type Meese Police laws back in the 80s.

I don't know about anyone else, but I personally have so much time on my hands to further monkey wrench corporate america that it is not even funny - and what is great is I never have to leave my house to do it. And neither does anyone else. Simply keep doing what you are doing. Keep coming up with great software like we are. Let them spend all their money and effort playing their little SLAP games.

This reminds me of an episode of Andy Griffith that I saw the other day. Barney Fife went to tell some road side vendors they were going to have to move. They were both bigger than he was and were very intimidating. He said something that we should all keep in mind: "You two may be bigger than I am, but just remember something - this badge represents a lot of people who are are bigger than the both of you."

And we are. You and I outnumber Mattel like crazy.
We outnumber Amazon, eToys, and the RIAA. It is time for every one of us to either put up or shut up. It is simple as that.

Regulation and Taxes will happen

[WillAffleck]

OK, I'm sure I'll get flamed by all the Libertarians, but I'm going to tell you the truth.

First of all, grok this: there is too much money invested in the Net by big players and too many newbies who think they actually have privacy on the Net. I own shares in a number of corporations which are investing heavily in the Net, and they will zealously defend their interests, through the creation of regulations and laws. This is a done deal. One can complain about it, but it will happen.

Secondly, the growth of the Net implies the existence of many more clueless newbies. They will demand the regulation of the Net, they will insist on laws, and it will happen. We can shape this debate or we can fight the valiant fight against it and lose. And we will lose if we choose to fight instead of mold it in a better form.

Taxes are also inevitable. They should be lower than for bricks and mortar, but they are necessary for cities, counties, and states to pay for basic services such as roads (used by UPS to deliver your goods), rail (ditto), airports (ditto), police (to arrest the fraud mongsters), jails (to lock up the Free Net activists in), and courts (to find them guilty and protect the monied interests from having their credit cards stolen). They should be really low for small business and startups, to encourage creation of new things, but not for big companies.

This is the reality. If you want, I'll bet anyone $10 that there will be Net taxes (not on ISPs, but on sales and e-commerce) for municipal, county, and states, in existence by 2010. And there will be regulations.

We can help ensure that only the good regulations survive - such as requiring open access to broadband pipes. Or we can rail against the wind and lose.

Re:You're forgetting...

[Saige]

the US is still the most free country around.

Bzzt. Wrong answer.

I recently saw the results of a study the UN did to determine which countries have the most freedom. They covered many different areas, from speech and religion, to the economy and the way minorities are treated.

Guess where the US placed? Not even in the top ten. Sweden was number one.
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