Slashdot Mirror
Government Takes Control Of The Net; 2000 In Review
An Anonymous Coward (what, nobody reads The Economist?) sends us this excellent piece: "This is a review of several developments in internet regulation, pointing out several ironies and possibilities, quite lucid and clear. Stop Signs on the Web." There are a lot of thoughtful points in this article - it bears a thorough reading. It is my belief that the end of online "freedom" is just around the corner, and I think this article lays out a number of the forces that are going to cause that to happen.
Realism? Whenever I hear that word, it invariably turns out to be a code word for self-delusion borne of ignorance and fear, a rationalization to comfort prospective victims, who are asked to spread the disease.
I submit to you that the forces carving up the Net and installing toll booths, ticket boxes, meters, tracking databases everywhere, turning it into basically interactive TV, but all under their control, for the purpose of milking mindless consumers, are the ones you should be concerned, not the collectively anarchistic activities of users who actually go out and create stuff.
I had no particular qualm with their activities as long as they abided by the same rules as the rest of us. But they didn't. They are the ones who won't play by the rules. Not us. They are the ones who brought in the lawyers, the polictians, the goons. The ones who use coercion and fear.
So excuse me, Mr. Dana Andrews, sir, but with all due respect, fuck that noise.
Rogue Bolo
I really hate to say it, but it might be time to completely break away from the internet.
1. Free, High Quality networking software is completely available now. No software company(s) can prevent us from using good software.
2. Hardware companies are actually quite unrestrictive of the use of their products. With the exception of this ATA copy protection scheme, no one gives a flying f**k what you do with servers, routers, etc, provided you paid for, and own them.
3. We can organise the hiarchy any way we want. Want different TLD's? IPV6? Totally different protocol? A democratic organization that makes changes, not a conglomerate of clueless people? With exception of copyright law and other issues that also exist in meatspace, the rules for this new internet could be set by nerds for nerds, DEMOCRATICALLY. I for one would like to have a basic competency exam to be included in this "exclusive" internet club. Topics on the exam could include networking and OS fundamentals and programming. Respect could be fostered through mutual expertise and fraternity.
4. Our only problem would be aquiring large quantities of bandwidth. This is quite expensive of course. Basically, everyone involved would have to share the cost of this - perhaps higher fees to be a part of this organization, or a resurgence of dial up. Perhaps we could implement a system that people pay for bandwidth they use. Email is almost free, but if you are running video you pay more.
I'm just ranting now I think, but I really miss the days where the internet was full of good research information, quality discussion forums, and not tons of glitzy corporate flash pages.
Old internet hippie...
~~~
~~~
The law of economics:
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The law of internet:
There is no such thing as free information.
True for both meanings of "free", 'cos money equals access.
But don't get really upset about it, it just means that the world hasn't changed. And that's not very surprising.
If this is true, your home may no longer be your castle unless you put a moat around it, and be awfully careful who you lower the drawbridge to.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Their page says they are blocking due to requests from subscribers. However made up that might be, I'm sure they realize that not _everyone_ wants to be blocked. If they filter your connection by default, but let you ask for an unfiterred connection, then they won't get any more complaints than they would by always blocking everybody's connection, but people with the intellectual capacity to read the sites they block without being morally destroyed will also be happy :)
:)
Does anybody do this? Has this ever been suggested as a way to satisfy the raving lunatics who go nuts when they hear there is a non-zero chance (no matter how small) of someone _else_ seeing something they _themselves_ wouldn't like to see. (or maybe they would like to see pr0n, but don't want to talk about it...
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
URL rewriting is a technique that is used when not everyone who uses the web site has cookies enabled in their browser, yet the web site wants to keep session info. Non-techies (99.999% of the World) are none the wiser.
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
I guess net access is not on the top of the peoples list of priorities somehow ;)
Of course, the Internet is banned because in such a society it can help the people achieve freedom by acting as a relatively safe channel for the voice of dissent and counter-propoganda.
In a liberated society, the Internet becomes means to different ends. Like pr0n, mp3s and general timewasting on a scale never before dreamed of by our forefathers. How can we stand idly by while people across the world are deprived of such things?
Mind you, we should also consider the other countries where people may be prosecuted for Internet activities such as posting details of politicians' business interests. Such as most of Europe - at least according to the C4 Mark Thomas Product programme here in .uk, who's latest site http://www.mepsinterests.com looks like it's been nobbled. Technical difficulties my arse.
Perhaps we should ask India to invade us too?
Dave
Actually, in the US at least, the government has the right to do anything that the voting citizens permit AND that is ALSO allowed by the Constitution allows(and yes I do know that it does not always work out that way.)
James Ray Kenney mailto:jrkenney@swbell.net
But the first thing they printed was the bible!
Exactly. The Bible. In German instead of Latin. Which meant that a lot more people could read it for themselves instead of having to accept what the priest said was in it. Now untrained laymen could actually argue with the Church over the meanings of passages, and make up their own minds! Horrors!
It's not entirely coincidental that the Protestant Reformation kicked off not long after the deployment of the printing press. (Admittedly, more directly due to the fact that Luther's points got spread a lot more widely than he originally expected due to some helpful reprinting...)
-- Bryan Feir
Bzzzzt. Who the hell said anything about filtering? Something as simple as "Sir, if you're not using the computer for research, we'd appreciate it if you would free it up for other patrons" would work. Besides, what about open source? How about one library system implements a decent set of filtering software, and just gives it away?
Are you aware of some legal ruling about libraries in general that backs this up, or a you just stating something you think makes sense? The computers and computing resources belong to the library; they are entirely within their rights to set rules for their use. Libraries do this all the time. You can only check out books for a certain period of time (shorter times for the more popular books). You can't check out magazines or newspapers at all. Books in certain collections cannot leave the library, period. Some books just aren't available, period. None of these are censorship, just a library trying to make sure that the majority of it's patrons benefit from it's services.
Yah, I know. Computers aren't like books, yadda yadda yadda. You're absolutely right. They're not. The fundamentals of the situation remain the same: the library owns the resources, and set the rules regarding their uses. If monitoring usage, or filtering web access, or the like helps make computers more useful to the majority of their patrons, they'll do it.
IMHO, most libraires and librarians don't want to have to get to the point where they need to put the computers out in the open, with filtering software installed and someone constantly monitoring them. They want to let reasonable people behave reasonably. If you're familiar with the tragedy of the commons, though, then you know that even resonable people can be unreasonable when it comes to managing a shared resource like a public library or public computers.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I've worked in a library - every librarian, like it or not, is a censor. They don't mean to be... but there is no library in existance that has the unlimited funding it would take to carry all available materials.
So the librarians have to decide what new books they will purchase; what old, damaged books will be replaced; what old, damaged books can be repaired; and then do the same thing for video tapes... audio books... software... magazine subscriptions... newspaper subscriptions... and now, their computing resources.
If your local librarian doesn't think it's worth spending his/her limited budget on, then it won't be available in your local library. It's a kind of censorship - someone else telling you what you will or won't have access to They're generally unwilling to carry subscriptions to Playboy (or Hustler or whatever your favorite skin mag is), and the vast majority of the public views this type of "censorship" as a good and right way for them to make use of a limited funds in order to do their job.
So... tell me why a library's effort to make the same kind of decision about how to make use of limited computing resources in the same situation is viewed as unacceptable?
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Actual real physical harm. If someone makes me cry or offends my moral code, I have no right to call upon my government to protect me, because I have not been physically harmed and neither has my property.
Verbal assault, libel, slander, lewd/indecent behavior, stalking, usery for starters, are "crimes", which in and of themselves cause no physical consequence. Yes, some of them are associated with other crimes as well. Protections given by law are not, and i don't think they ever were, meant to be solely of a physical nature. They're their to promote and in effect attempt to enforce responsible actions. In a world of 6 billion people, or a country of 260 million, or a city of 5 million, or even a town of 250, there need to be rules in effect to make sure people are safe in not only a physical nature, but in a mental state as well... And as a species, we're just not responsible enough to live without rules and standards for decency. Yes, they vary from locale to locale, but we all have certain codes of conduct that are generally abided by in each given community.
Regardless of standards and what not, i for one am quite pleased that that as it stands, it's considered to be indecent exposure for a grown man to expose himself to a child. Are you implying that that behavior should be okay, so long as no physical harm occurs? I'm glad that news reporters can indeed get in trouble if they fabricate a story about someone and try to pass it to the public as being truth. Again, no one was physically hurt, so should that be okay? And, say you were a woman, would you really be better off if you had no recourse against the man that may be following you everywhere you go, sending you letters, and calling you in the middle of the night?
I was just at the Liberterian Party's website earlier on today for a completely unrelated purpose, but i'm of the belief that either your misinterpretting their message if you believe the above behaviors should be condoned and accepted, or else the party itself is rather baseless... I'm not believing the latter, so please review your stances...
And the only way to do the latter is to cause them financial harm. Corporations must ultimately be responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders demand profits.
So you need to get serious about boycotting, serious about spreading the boycott, and serious about letting the Corporations know that you're boycotting them, and what they need to do differently to win back your financial support.
If you don't like the restrictions placed on you by the content creators then DON'T UTILIZE THEIR SERVICES! Don't listen to the music, don't watch the movies, don't use the software. That is the only lawful, moral and ethical way to cause them financial harm.
Umm, what do you think a boycott is? He/she is advocating exactly what you told him/her to do. Sometimes I think a mandatory reading comprehension test should be required to post on /..
You are a parasite. We don't need parasites in our society, as they provide no value.
And you are an obediant little slave of the corporations and what they say is right. Refusing to question, or to even concider the idea that there might be a better way. We don't need people like you in our society, as they actually provide *negative* value.
-WintermuteAfter going to your web page, and looking at the content you spend time on I felt better about not spending time arguing with you.
Im an idiot. I will walk away quietly now.
Your "peceful civilization" is a pile of,self centered, greedy, money hungry, sheep. The problem with your "regulations" is that they are corrupt and flawed just like your "economic system". But you will not try to understand what "corrupt" or "flawed" in my terms is because you are happy in your little self indulgent world of medicrity and ignorance.
Not directly, but the thing that has changed is the raw number of potential international transactions, when any individual can do business with any other individual around the world. If ten years ago there were say 50,000 international copyright violation lawsuits worldwide, there could potentially be as many as 5 million brought this year. Just the change in scale of the cross-boundary traffic requires a new, more efficient protocol. Not that I have any idea what it should be.
--
--
This is why I don't post much.
Hi, /. community to know who he is, but gives his (real?) name to theeconomist.
its seems that Philip Gross doensnt want the
I think theeconomist will get a lot of hist from him today. "Logged in as Philip Gross "
This raises another point: Why isnt theeconomist using cookies and puts the userid in the URI?
-- for undocumented cisco commands, take a peek @ dotu
Sounds like an opportunty for some entrepreneurs to resell HavenCo's services in smaller bites, just as other ISP's do.
So you'd outlaw private security firms then? And guns?
I don't think so. You libertarians are all stupidly inconsistent.
Female Prison Rape in NY
and you cant recognise sarcasm when you read it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I suggest you read anything about political philosophy before you start bagging politics.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Gold is rare, pot is infinite.
How we know is more important than what we know.
hey, if a totalatarian government dressed like nazi's was good enough for Starship Troopers then it oughta be good enough for us! :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
Even if dubya decided that the Internet was corrupting young american minds and banned it completely from your country, after a brief hiccup, the rest of the world would still have it - albeit a bit slower as most of the fast links connect to the US.
Then don't post about US law next time when you don't fully know what's going on.
Uh excuse me, but did you know that the Act did not pass Congress? Therefore it is not in effect.
...and unless you are using Windows you can simply fake your MAC address. :)
yeah
depending on your NIC you can change your MAC "permanently" (hardware side) as well
I agree, it seems as though the buearocrats believe that they can do anything they want, however, it is inconceivable for them to think that one nation can control, basically, the entire world...
And if you're inclined to do a little soldering and microcontroller programming, you can randomize your MAC for every packet, or on demand.
To call gore or Bush a nazi is to cheapen the people lives who suffered under the REAL German National Socialist Party.
--
--
Nothing to see here. Mooooove along...
Liberty and Freedom doesn't mean that you have the right to force the rest of us to pay for your habits.
So what consitutes this? Where do you draw the line? The problem is that when you start blocking sites, where do you stop? Back in high school (early days of filtering) I had to do a report on Free Speech. I hopped on the net and found a site that looked promising, only to find it had been blocked. It wasn't about porn (it had a link to porn or something) but about the first amendment!
Once you start filtering stuff, how can you really tell what it is that needs filtering? While some kid may be "drooling over the latest Porn Pics", another may be looking up neo-nazi pages for a report on racism. Are you going to tell him he can't look at these sites because they're offensive? Once you start labeling things like this, you get in to a very grey area that really does infringe, not only on free speech, but on the ability of a school or library to do its job effectively.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Maybe instead of posting out-of-date articles from financial rags, you all could actually start posting articles that link to people who are actively working to stop this erosion of information freedom.
Bzzzzzt! Wrong, but thank you for playing.
That loon burned down his house and everyone inside it. While I'm glad he's gone, its regretful he had to take a lot of other people with him. I guess thats the true price of meglomania.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Except that just isn't true. The New York Times is in no danger of going out of business, even though many people now know that they lied about a certain scientist of Chinese descent. It's nice to claim that such market forces actually work, but the -reality- of it looks a little different.
As for someone following you around, sending you letters and calling you in the middle of the night, up to a few years ago there was nothing you could do about this and people survived. Deal with it.
You're not a Libertarian, so please don't call yourself one. You're much closer to being an anarchist. I'm not saying that's really bad, but you should get the terms right.
All of this is easily thwarted. If you refuse to give up your encryption keys, then you go to jail. Doesn't the UK do this already?
So... tell me why a library's effort to make the same kind of decision about how to make use of limited computing resources in the same situation is viewed as unacceptable?"
Because functionally the computing resources are not limited.
The library has a limited amount of space available into which it can squeeze the books. Even with a great budget, this is an insurmountable cap. While the library will have only a few computers, with an internet connection the information contained in/through each computer is functionally unlimited.
Restrictions to the use of the internet in the computer should therefore be more appropriately compared to the maximum capacity of the library itself - if only 20 people can get in (small library) then sooner or later you need to get people out so others can get in.
I have formed "Computer Control, Inc." for the purpose of disseminating agitprop^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hinformation about the need to control computers.
To protect our society and our children, we must immediately enact strict controls on:
These common-sense safety measures are, of course, bitterly opposed by the extremist baby-killing monsters at the National Computer Association (NCA) who want to see everyone writing and spreading virii, kiddie pr0n, and that weird Linux thingy.
Gordon.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
The article has it wrong. Freedom on the net is in danger, but it isn't a matter of whether or not governments will let freedoms remain in place. The real issue is whether or not users are willing to fight to keep it free. If we want freedom, we can have it, but it will require a great deal of work, both online and offline. In the offline world, we must do a better job of keeping bad legislation from being passed and keeping organizations like the EFF funded. Online, people need to support projects and standards that will preserve freedoms and create alternatives to technologies that have fallen to censorship. It won't be easy, but it isn't impossible and it isn't something governments can stop if we don't give up.
Encryption is a good example of a successful struggle against government control of technology. The situation is still not perfect, but most governments have given up on controlling it. Anyone who wants to use encryption and/or steganography can use it now (and could before, even though the US gov. wouldn't admit to that). Governments can pass laws, but that doesn't mean they can enforce them if we don't allow them to be enforced.
As in the meat world, the price of freedom online is still eternal vigillance.
Dude, have you ever heard of McCarthyism? Methinks you took your grandparent's "Why back in my day" stories a little too literally. Hey, if I wanted to I could go look at autopsy photos and pictures of lesbian action in an instant. Why if that ain't freedom I don't know what is!
We've had dozens of chances to fight. All the majority of us have done is post to slashdot and use that stupid house.gov/writerep form to email our representatives (which we all know does jack compared to writing a handwritten letter, but one time Menendez sent me a form letter...).
What makes you think the next ten years will be any different? People don't care about what you and I care about! What will happen in the next ten years that will make them care enough to want to fight?
"We will not allow you access to this site because only drug abusers would want to look at this site. Are you a drug abuser? Do you symphatize with people who abuse drugs?" That's really all it would take, right? Tell me what's going to change in the next ten years that will make us fight.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Is your broad-band access now going to subject to an AOL user agreement? I am much more afraid of corporate America instituting restrictive rules for connecting to the net through them than the government (at the moment anyway). Corporate lawyers don't necessarily target *real* problems when they write user agreements (or software licenses) - they will happily add language to guard against purely theoretical threats. It's all done in the name of protecting their companies and the interests of their share holders, but the net result is that you will be allowed to use your account where, when, how, and with whom they see fit. If you don't like it, you can get another ISP.
It is only a matter of time before all of the ISP user agreements read virtually the same. There will be a few hold-outs promising an "unfiltered" connection. That's when the government will step in and squash the few "freedom-fighting" ISPs. No reason for the government to act hastily. It's too much work to clamp down on everybody right now. All big G has to do is wait for market forces to standardize web access in to the pre-digested pabulum which is AOL, then pass regulations which make it all but impossible to be an ISP if you aren't a mega corp.
Have you ever actually read your ISP user agreement? It's way more scary than this article.
"Reality is independent from perception." - RDH
The barbarians forgot the first rule of barabrians and did not attack.
That was their first mistake, for which we have paid a higher and higher price every year since.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
False. A sizeable chunk of the voters (37%) put his party in powerful position in the Reichstag, though not in anything approaching absolute power. It would not reach that level of support again in any subsequent free elections. The next free election the Nazis lost over 30 seats. A cabal of bankers and industrialists (led by Schact and Thyssen) hereditary land magnates (Von Papen) and old-skool generals ( Von Ludendorff) prevailed upon the old but legitimately elected President P. Von Hindenburg, who disliked and feared Hitler, to make Hitler Chancellor of the Reich. After becoming Chancellor Hitler used the massive intimidating street presence of the SA and SS (Nazi paramilitary groups) to rig the next election. Remind you of recent scenes in the County Courthouses down in Florida ? Well, the resemblance is there if slight; you have to remember that the Nazis paramilitaries were already rioting against Jews, COmmunists, Socialists, Union officials, unfriendly journalists in the street, sometimes even beating them to death in broad daylight, sometimes if they felt the need for stealth they killed them at night in their homes. There was no election after Hitler's grab for the Chancellorship that could be called legitimate. The Chancellorship had attached to it, through the constitution, the power to declare a state of national emergency. Hitler had his unfairly elected goons (STILL not an outright majority) in the Reichstag pass the Enabling Act, expanding that power to essentially mean anything at all at his discretion and therefore his Party's institutions such as the Brown Shirted SA and the SS became organs of Law enforcement. Hindenburg died and Hitler used the unbounded powers given to him by his jackboot parliament to abolish the office of President (which precisely because it required a MAJORITY of the popular vote, was a position Hitler could never win - sound familiar?) The powers of the presidency which derived directly from the people in plenary Hitler simply absorbed by fiat.
Then they burned the Reichstag building down to make sure noone dared to attempt a reversal of the new "arrangements" through democratic parliamentary manoeuvre. Parties which could never be amenable to Nazi rule - the Socialists, The KPD were outlawed (sound familiar?). Jews were officially expelled from public life. Trade Unions were abolished. It was morning, again, in the Reich. BTW: No one was more contemptuous of majority rule than Mr. Schicklegruber. Libertarians --5th grade level civics, but PhDs in Revisionist History.
Johnny Quest has two Daddies.
You won't think it's so funny if it happens.
___________________________
Fish are always the last to discover that they are in the ocean.
The internet hardware and software was invented by geeks. At first, they owned the net too. It was a small network (compared to its current size), consisting of those who had sufficient computer skills to hook up, university academics, and the likes. Due to the level of computer literacy required to get online in those early days (early 1990s), it was a fad, a geeks toy, so the majority of the population hadn't even heard of it, let alone wanted to be part of it. It was so small it was hardly a blip on the corporate and government radars. No point advertising on the net, not enough viewers; no damn banner ads. No point restricing free speech, not enough people doing 'bad things' with it.
Then came ISPs such as AOL which make getting online so easy that a trained monkey could do it. The masses started getting online. Corporations started to care about their online image, filling the net with advertisments, and suing anyone who tried to use the right of free speech to criticise them.
Paedophiles, terrorists, etc saw the net's anonimity as an opportuniuty to avoid getting caught by the law. They perverted the net's main attractions to their unpleasant ends. As expected, the general populous started getting upset.
The powerful people in government who have a habit of wanting to control everyone and everything decided that cyberspace, no longer a fad, but something much bigger and more important, was worth spending time and money controlling.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Well, I guess thats where we (as geeks) went wrong. We lowered the standard of entry onto the internet by making getting online too easy, to such an extent that the masses came, drawing the interest of Big Brother.
Some may regard my views as snobbery; preferring the net to be a somewhat exclusive society; keeping the average person out of the loop and preventing them from reaping the reward of online freedom, but in doing this, we have ensured that online freedom is doomed; the people wishing to restrict and monitor us have so much power that fighting them may be nearly impossible. If only the internet had remained a geeks toy, the big boys would have never taken interest. The net would be as cool as it was in 1995.
Many may not like the idea of an 'exclusive society', but by making the internet a small user-unfriendly geek toy, most people would not even be interested in becoming a part of it, you wouldn't have to turn people away.
I have often asked myself, would it be possible to set up an alternative to the net? A place which is just for computer geeks, scientists, and academics, somewhere where freedom of speech rules. Something that is too small to attract the interests of corporations and governments.
Many of you may not agree with this, but it kinda makes me wish that MP3, DivX, DeCSS, etc had never been invented/written...... I know most people like their MP3 collections, but if we had never done anything to piss the corporations off, they wouldn't be trying to screw us.
I think that there may be times when we have to accept that we are like ants to the corporate giants, and if we avoid pissing them off (ie think about our actions carefully first; you reading this Napster?) they wont try to step on us.
Accepting that the corporations have the upper hand is not fair, but life is unfair by nature.
So, next time some computer geek 'genius' invents some new technology, lets be intelligent about it like we are supposed to be, and plan things out better next time. Next time round, the actions brought against us are likely to make hard drive copy protection look like a fart in a whirlwind.
Exactly -- route around.
In the literal sense 'route around' is talking about packets, but the same concept can be applied at layer 4 and 5.
...and unless you are using Windows you can simply fake your MAC address.
Intellectual property, in the form of copyright, is protected for a mere 18 years under the constitution. So under the principles theis nation was founded under, I should be able to download all of the Simon and Garfunkel I listen to from Napster, quite legally. Instead, corporate interests have greatly increased the length of time a copyright lasts
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
You are a parasite. We don't need parasites in our society, as they provide no value.
btw. A very typical soviet time slogan...
__
L.
Wow. That's all I have to say.
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
Your understanding is flawed. Laws serve purposes other than preventing actual physical harm.
Libel laws are an example of this. Basically these make it illegal (sometimes) to injure someone's reputation. My reputation is not a physical entity, yet it is protected by law.
Furthermore, there are copyright laws that prevent the potential loss of revenue for the copyright holder, not actual physical harm.
You're describing how you think laws SHOULD be. Do not confuse this with how they really are.
To say that governments have no right to do this is absurd. In nations like Canada, the US and France, governments have the legal right to do anything that the VOTING citizens of that country permit them to do.
. --- If you're looking for free e-mail you won't find it here! http://www.noemailhere.com
That's the optimistic scenario. The pessimistic prediction is that the "updates" will arrive in the form of midnight visits from the secret police. You know you've broken the law when they drag you off to the Ministry of Love.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Insightful? duh! Who would believe that fans of Ayn Rand and Jo Stalin share the same core values!
-- look, cheese ahoy!
Film at eleven.
pants
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
http://www.blitzbasic.com/
Graphics3D 640, 480
computers don't kill people, people kill people!!!
join the NCA (National Computer Association) today!!!
the time to fight back is now! start with filtering software. every site that is blocked (illeagally by the way)by filtering software, should sue the companies that create and maintain said software. just as the RIAA feels that every mp3 transfer is lost revenue, every blocked web surfer is lost revenue for the site that is blocked.
boycott Yahoo Auctions, and other web companies that give in too easily to governmental pressure to self censor.
if we don't act today, the internet will cease to be a forum for exchange of ideas and information, and become just another tool for the mega corps to invade your life and make a buck.
The Economist did not say "The Internet was originally supposed to be all about freedom." Well, it is very much that now, and many other things as well. Is the desire not to be beholden to short-sighted laws like those in the U.S., China and Islamic countries "Leftist mind-rot?" Few have stated or assumed that the Internet is "being some kind of utopian Libertarian commune," but am I amiss in saying people want their privacy and to be treated like adults, not money holes or little children? Or is this nonsense in your view?
Cheers, Chuck
Many of those charges do not exist in other countries, as do many other laws and regulations that are in the US designed to pretect the stupid from themselves.
And the 'rules of conduct' of any community should not affect anyone outside of it, even if members of the comunity might view a webside which seems offensive to it.
The moral values, decency, whatever, varies heavily between different communities. And why should any one community be able to deny others their views?
And, there is a difference between rules designed to protect people IRL and on the 'net.
In life, someone has to come to you to verbally assault you. In the 'net, you have to go to them to be insulted. And then you deserve no protection, you get what you ask for. If you do not like $FOO, then do not view sites discussing it, and live happily behind a wall of illusion.
I may disagree with your opinion, but I will defend to death your right to speak it.
So the Internet is regulated. Why should it not be? Why should cyberspace be a lawless zone where anything and everything is ok?
And most importantly, do we need it to be totally unregulated to have the Internet fulfill our purposes?
Realistically, there have to be some rules governing cyberspace. I don't know what they are, and it is evident that the world's governments don't know either. Given this, the current state of affairs seems reasonable; everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie by enforcing restrictions advantageous to him, her, or it. I don't see France fighting with Yahoo! and extrapolate to the idea that I'll be carrying my "papers" around in a decade, I see a tough argument in which I understand both sides.
Freedom cannot be absolute, and this country was certainly not founded on absolute freedom. Instead, it was founded on absolute freedom until your freedom impinges on that of another. We've struggled with that for hundreds of years, and we still haven't figured out exactly how to do it. Although we have free speech, you cannot yell "Fire" in a theater, and this seems reasonable to me. It seems reasonable that we should not be able to yell "Fire" on the Internet either. The tough part is determining the digital equivalent of that alarmist call.
Ultimately, the historical significance of the Internet may rival that of the Industrial Revolution. Pick up a history book, and you'll note that the transition to a new age wasn't so easy back then. Why do we expect to get it right on our first try now?
I hate the fact that corporations and governments have the upper hand right now, and don't know how to use it. But I am confident that the pendulum will swing. Too much of the skill, knowledge and innovation behind the digital revolution is in favor of absolute freedoms in cyberspace for us not to find a happy medium.
Of course we have less freedom now. Try telling someone 100 years ago that in the future there will be movies on DVD. When you buy them you don't actually own them, if you attempt to look at it and figure out how it works you are breaking the law. The government makes far too many stupid laws that do nothing but restrict our rights.
But with the net we can do something about it. Geeks have always been 1 step ahead in circumventing restrictions and I see no evidence that will change. At least for the foreseeable future, they will keep throwing roadblocks at us and will will keep jumping them. That is until all US ISPs are bought up by some "US Department of Internet" or something dumb like that. Which is they day we all switch to guerillanet.
...will overcome any censorship that any government imposes on us. I don't foresee any method of stoping information in the near future. Like the article said, there will always be services such as anonymizer and freedom (great program, the linux version rules) that will circumvent restrictions on our freedom online. With freedom 2.0 I can appear to come from almost any country I choose and the server I'm reaching has no clue of my true identity. Services such as Freenet are near impossible to stop. As soon as a country filters out such traffic someone will create a proxy to get around it.
Right on! And maybe Pakistan and India should lob a few nukes at each other for your entertainment! Maybe they should bring China into the fray!
Problems are always so easily solved when you're watching them on CNN, arn't they?
end communication
That CIA site is one of the more informative things I've come across in a while. Thanks. I don't think we need India invading anyone though. Let's give them time to learn about nuclear weapons before they enter into nuclear war eh?
No Stephen King in your library, god, some people just dont have any culture :)
Jon
I think it was vigilance, rather than diligence. As a vigilant but not particularly diligent guy, at least I hope so...
/.-ers of how powerfully the current flows the other way (flock intertia can be a powerful force too), and was questioning your assertion of what laws are for. But I'll be damned if I'm going to wear a tracking collar for the benefit of Frito-Lay, or Sony, even if it's a virtual one using IPv6 optional features... In that, I think we are in total concurrence.
Either way, I fully agree with your sentiment. I was just reminding other
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
With all due respect, I cannot agree with this highly principled view.
Your description of the origins and purpose of government is a recent, rationalist justification. It explains nicely the way that a small number of somewhat democratic governments have evolved in rich countries. At least, that's how they're now supposed to work in principle.
But, in the more general case, the behavior of governments is better explained by a model combining features of macroparasitism and protection rackets. They bleed you, but it's not in their economic interest to take every drop of blood. Think of ranching or fisheries management for other examples. And they claim that the alternative protection rackets are even worse in order to maintain their position with minimum resistance.
I'm not an anarchist. But let's not kid ourselves about the fact that government, through most of history, has been of absolutely no benefit to the governed. On the contrary, they have been massively destructive.
Consider the oft-cited example of the early Middle Eastern societies, and the "wonderful" benefits of irrigation. Results: thousands of years of slavery, genocide, war, human sacrifice (those charming temples!), malnutrition, ecological destruction through soil salinity, famine and malnutrition due to monoculture, schistosomiasis and malaria from the irrigation systems.
So there is little precedent for government operating in the interest of the people. It is not the default state (pardon the pun). The best we've seen are periods of less effective oppression. Therefore, every opportunity to discard existing precedents, if carried out properly, is an opportunity to prolong and possibly expand freedom. But, without continued resistance, the system will revert to despotism. This is what is now happening on the Web. Commercial interests are aligning with government to find better ways of counting the flock. The better to fleece them...
It's not the maturity of the Net that we're seeing: it's the persistence of destructive and repressive behavior by the powerful. The idea that this is just a choice that people make goes against historical evidence, and implies that the prospects of resisting counter-productive regulation are far simpler than they will be.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Since it was from a "2000 in Review" article, it's unsurprising that some of it was old news. Still, it's a nice summary.
I concur with your view that corporations often impose more intrusive, repressive regimes on their employees than even some totalitarian governments have managed to force onto their subjects. So this is why the US opposed Communism?
Incidentally, companies started snooping on their employees long ago. It has just gotten worse lately because it's cheaper to do so, so it's more widely practiced.
Let's hope the mice really do get smarter, and don't just breed faster to compensate for the attrition caused by the traps...
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
W's backers are already pledging controls in the name of our children,aan unchallengable venue.Hide behind the kids to fight Porn,gambling,any thinking they don't like,any causes left open.
Kids are so protected now,the Library in some areas censors out anything with chat rooms!Protect them so they are Adults with 3rd grade minds that have 6 kids,no jobs,fall prey to Pushers and couldn't afford the Net or free thought as it is poison.4 years hurry by,so minimal damage can be done by idiots who inherit the power and reek of knowing what is good for us.
When private ISPs first connected to it, of course. When it was run purely by government agencies for government purposes, those agencies had the right to control it for the same reason I have the right to control the use of the computer sitting in front of me. Once that situation changed, the government lost this property-based right, and has no such right on any other basis.
That is an interesting theory, but it sounds to me like a "pop-law" version of the way US laws were meant to work. I think you should look up some articles on FindLaw, to see how the US government really is supposed to work, instead of relying on the armchair philosophies of your peers.
the idea that the purpose of the Internet was such an anarchy was a self-appointed decision by anti-establishment people who imposed their own social agenda on a communication medium
Insofar as I can parse this statement, it seems to be asserting that some anacho-fascist cabal forcibly imposed the agenda of rejecting all forcibly imposed agendas.
The words, "anacho-fascist cabal" are your own, of course. I simply find it amazing that after a group of Net users announces that the Internet is a regulation-free zone that those people would act surprised a few years later to find out that they were ignored by their governments. Of course they were wrong! What right did they have to declare what the regulation of the Internet would be? Government simply ignored them as the bunch of armchair philosophers they were.
They acted without authority
They acted without authority to impose an absence of authority?
My brain hurts.
That's because you don't know the difference between an empty declaration of rights and a legally-meaningful declaration of rights.
and today scream with indignation when governments exercise their due powers
Er, the claim that censorship is part of any government's "due powers" is what you're required to prove before your argument can be taken seriously.
As I said, if you were to spend time actually reading legal cases, instead of putting so much weight on discussions with your buddies, you would have seen, for example, that the (local) government regulates the ad content on the side of buses, that the (federal) government regulates the content of some broadcasts, that no government and no sensible public group permits unauthorized trespassing into private computer systems. It is because the Net culture is based on so much personal philosophy, rather than on established law, that the indignation of netizens is largely irrelevant to the course of Internet regulation.
anarchic rules
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
Anarchy is a a social structure in which there is no governmental leader or civil force to compel compliance. The only "laws" or rules that are recognized in such a structure are those that are agreed upon between the parties involved, and that recognition ends once any members cease agreement with the laws or rules. There are various conceptions as to how this would be implemented in practice. Relevant to this discussion, there are those people who imagined that the Internet would be a world community, one in which the laws of any nation would be unenforcible. Supposedly, the completely unrestricted, unregulated nature of the Internet would liberate the latent intellectual powers of the world, enobling and empowering everyone. For example, the ability for anyone to publish a Web page was supposed to (in this anarchic view) result in the liberation of the great masses around the world who (supposedly) suffered without a voice. Disappointingly, the most profound thing that most people could put on their Web site were pictures of their pets.
I should not have to tell you that a great many things done on the Internet are irresponsible, reprehensible and damaging to the interests of others
You have misframed the argument in a manner which avoids the issue. If I say that you seem profoundly clueless, that may be irresponsible and reprehensible, and insofar as anybody believes me it is certainly damaging to your interests, but you really have no recourse except to offer a rebuttal. If, on the other hand, I say something actionable, you do have recourse, because I would then be violating your rights, not your far more expansive "interests".
Whatever legal tools might or might not be available to counter the destruction of an innocent person, the point remains that either people are held accountable for their actions, or society will retrograde. However, even you appear to recognize that when someone does something "actionable" on the Internet, such as, perhaps, entering into a private computer system--say, Egghead's credit card database, that the government is in its right to take legal countermeasures.
They ignore the fact that when any tool or system becomes destructive of our society, we have the right to disband or destroy that tool or system.
No, you don't.
For examples, the Industrial Revolution was destructive of the existing pre-industrial society, and yet Luddite mobs had no right to "disband or destroy" the private property of the industrialists.
You have misapplied the principle of which I spoke, in several ways. I spoke of tools or systems destructive to society; you countered by changing the focus from society to a special interest of society. I spoke of lawful means in which established rights were guarded by a court system and laws; you spoke of a mob riot.
I won't feel sorrow if the government regulates Internet content, provided that it is in keeping with the laws of our nation.
Er, "Congress shall make no law...." IS the law of our nation.
Don't confuse yourself by restricting this discussion only to speech; the Internet is capable of far more than just posting one's personal opinion, which is a critical point in a discussion about Internet regulation. So, on a number of levels, government regulation would be a valid option: on speech, the government has never provided an absolute, unlimited freedom to say anything that anyone might chose to say; on actions, even you must acknowledge that the government holds the authority and responsibility (as her people expect her to hold) to restrict property abuses.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Libertarianism is only fiscally conservative; it is socially liberal. The Libertarian ideal approaching anarchy is the same as Communism (you did know that the supposed goal of Communism under Marxist theory is anarchy, right?).
I wouldn't get too uptight about the labels, though; it is sometimes difficult to derive much meaning purely from political labels. It is more useful to see how the labels are being used, or even the specific issues that are being discussed.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
As it happens, I've been to Europe. I spent over 3 months just in Italy, besides France and Spain. It is fine to travel, but Europe? Pooey! Europe has nothing that's better than the US, and a lot that is much worse... and their morals stink!
Contrary to what the pablum-puking Commie recruits would have us believe, the US has not reached the depraved depths of China. We do not outlaw peaceful protests (though we do keep some 100 yards from the clinic doors). We do not regularly arrest and destroy great numbers of religious leaders. Despite Clinton's White House term, we do not yet have a real Communist government. The question isn't whether US laws are restrictive; the question is, are they just, and do they permit moral human freedoms?
Europe ... Pooey!
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
It is true that "The Economist" did not say, "the original purpose," but this brings up the question of what purpose they had in mind. At what point did the Internet change from being a government-sponsored communications entity to being the great bastion of unregulated free-speech and anonymity? The answer is never; the idea that the purpose of the Internet was such an anarchy was a self-appointed decision by anti-establishment people who imposed their own social agenda on a communication medium. They acted without authority, and today scream with indignation when governments exercise their due powers. They didn't own, fund or establish the Internet; they saw themselves as liberal visionaries, and so felt they had the right to proclaim a new, virtual world with new, anarchic rules.
Is the desire not to be beholden to short-sighted laws like those in the U.S., China and Islamic countries "Leftist mind-rot?"
Usually it is. I would have to question the judgement of someone who lumps US laws in the same group as China and Islamic countries.
am I amiss in saying people want their privacy and to be treated like adults, not money holes or little children? Or is this nonsense in your view?
What is nonsense in my view is the idea that we are faced with either an unregulated Internet, or the universal decay of freedom of speech. It is nonsense in my view that a person should be given the protection to say anything he wishes to whomever he wishes as often as he wishes.
Because you indicate that you don't like being treated like a child, I should not have to tell you that a great many things done on the Internet are irresponsible, reprehensible and damaging to the interests of others; for example, pirating software, stealing and distributing data beyond the limits of the law and distributing pornographic materials to people without regard for the desires or eligibility of those receiving the materials, besides entering private networks and viewing or destroying private files. Certainly, there is a sizeable group of Internet users who do not behave themselves responsibly, and in the process violate the historical rights of others.
Can you tell me any reason that a government is under any obligation to allow anyone to use the Internet in any way? This is one of the most amazing aspects of this issue to me. The United States existed for almost 200 years without the Internet, and has expanded the forums in which the publication of ideas is possible (from standing on street corners on a soap box and printing in newspapers, books and magazines to radio and television). The government formed the Internet so that DoD computers could share resources. After 3 decades of strong government regulation, the government opened up the Internet to commercial development. All of the sudden, people act as if the Constitution based the 1st Ammendment directly on Internet access. They ignore the fact that when any tool or system becomes destructive of our society, we have the right to disband or destroy that tool or system. Now, I don't believe the Internet is going to be disbanded or destroyed, but I won't feel sorrow if the government regulates Internet content, provided that it is in keeping with the laws of our nation. The counter-argument I usually get is that the Internet makes the laws of our nation obsolete; hence, the comments I made in my initial post.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
If ten years ago there were say 50,000 international copyright violation lawsuits worldwide, there could potentially be as many as 5 million brought this year.
You know, I hadn't even considered that. What an excellent point, IMO. How very telling, then, that we [Americans] have politicians pushing for ever-increasing legislation, and an already-glutted court system as it is. Sensibly, in a not-for-profit legal system, they should be pushing to simplify laws down to the bare-bones of what's required, and establishing as much self-regulation as is feasible. I think you may have found proof for an argument I've been making for quite some time. Thank you. =)
I see this sort of [I feel] misperception a lot. So many people seem to assume that regulation only happens when it's against the interests of a large (or very vocal) group of people. That if nobody complains, things will just generally stay the way they are, and the rights and freedoms we accept as standard will continue to be there.
Am I the only one to whom this doesn't make sense? Large multinational corporations have financial interests, as do very rich bankers, governments seem quite evidently to want to sink their meathooks into their people (not all, neccessarily, but the United States is quite definately one)... there are many agencies with both the machinations and the means to do this sort of thing purely as a bottom-line, what-do-I-get-out-of-it decision.
It's nice and comfortable to convince ourselves that the problem is in the majority of people buying into the need for regulation (and a number of them do), but working from that premise has, I feel, pretty much doomed the rest of that line of thought from the start.
I think it's safe to describe as self-evident that large organizations generally got where they are today, and hold their ground, by looking out for themselves at the expense of others. Governments will be directly and indirectly responsible for this sort of behavior for as long as it behooves them to do so; that is to say, as long as their people lay still for it. It's up to the common person to keep tabs on their government, and take action when it exceeds its bounds. While it's easy to say that this or that law was the fault of Politician X or Corporation Y, the original fault heaps back squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry. Uncomfortable as that is to face, we can either take time away from the latest commercial games to to prevent this sort of attrocity, or sit back, let it happen, and piss and moan about it afterwards.
Most people seem to prefer the latter approach.
One word: Bottleneck.
You seem to forget, this is government we're talking about. They don't need a "viable" solution. When in doubt, squelch it all.
Your protest of private corporations owning the majority of the Internet convinced me at first glance, but then I remembered the approach government takes when it wants corporations to do something; it instates a fine, just as in the case of Yahoo. Whoops.
There must be some kind of democratically legitimate constructuion of relief for consumers under a global system. If not the laws in the state where the consumer has citizenship, then perhaps some other global body such as the United Nations should step in the fray. If it can start an international criminal court to seek genocidal leaders and try them, it can try consumer fraud.
Perhaps my take on this comes off as a little to paranoic for most of the Slashdot community, but aren't the United Nations part of the very same fray?
Let me understand this. You're voluntarily for a global government? Because this is where it starts. If these were corporations we were talking about, the idea would be shouted down as monopolistic by nearly everyone... and I'm not entirely sure that the parallel doesn't apply here. Have we learned nothing from the unfair business practices of Microsoft? From the monopolistic example of Ma Bell back in the eighties?
As far as I'm concerned, international trade, obscenity laws and international copyright regulations haven't changed simply because the content is now distributed nearly instantaneously via an electronic medium. The addition of the Internet changes none of these issues. Sure, there are agencies at work who would insist that the new Internet demands new legislation and regulations to suit this modern, wholly-unforseen development, but I think you will find it is these same agencies who are insisting that real-world commerce practices, contractual obligation, and copyright law should ("of course") be carried over onto the Internet jsut as they have been used for years in the physical world.
To them I say, "Pick a fragging lane already. You can't have it both ways."
What is happening to the net now is similar to what happened in the fertile crescent of the Near East some 7000 years ago, and will have similar beneficial repercusions for us all. The net needs to be civilised, and this is something that should be welcomed by us all.
We should not react as the barbarians did in 5000 BC, or we shall become as redundant and outmoded as they did. We should accept the benefits, and move on.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
And because I know it's coming, I voted Liberal (which is roughly equivilent to Democrat).
Cue The Sun...
Of all that is good and holy please mod this one up. Even here it seems that there is the assumption that web='net. Silly youngsters.
Besides, no matter how freaky it gets, there will be ways around it (unless we end up in some kinda military state- gotta love the 2nd Amendment in that case!)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Believe me, I'd love to move. I finally made it to the last year of school and, if all goes well, I'll be heading out to do a first degree in the U.S. (ahhh...fat connection...drool).
Obviously, you have never looked into the history of the FBI. I recommend that you pay particular attention to the tactics of J. Edgar Hoover, his "G-Men", and Hoover's rise to prominence, fighting -or assassinating as some might say- gangs of bank robbers and assorted hoodlums in the 20s and 30s.
While I am in complete agreement that our sphere of civil liberty is being eroded through bad laws (the drug war) and the development of ever more sophisticated ever more pervasive surveillance and data archiving, tracking and interpretation, the Golden-Age of American law enforcement you want us to believe in simply did not exist.
Look into the actions of local/state/federal police in breaking up unions, leftwing political groups, civil rights and or black community organizations. Law enforcement today is more accountable than at many periods in the past. Not saying it's perfect or that systemic abuses of civil liberities aren't common - they are. There is also massive injustice not just in the enforcement of laws but in the nature of many laws themselves (drug laws, mandatory minimum sentencing and other nightmares promulgated by social conservatives) But that's nothing new either. The idea that the past was some uncorrupted age of American Enlightenment is just laughable. Some people are probably just noticing police "over-zealousness" now because there are some prominent cases where the feds tried to take away somebody's precious unlicensed illegal weapons/explosives (somebody white and right like themselves) and ended up shooting it out with the as-yet unarrested suspects (who generally let it be known that they would not be taken alive). Same shit different decade.
In the days-gone-by of our grandparents the Law men would not wear hoods or masks (unless they were in the KKK) but instead they would pose for photographs next to the bullet ridden carcasses of the outlaws and point to their handiwork. What they didn't have to fear then was criminals targetting them for murder in cold blood. That's no joke as you would know if you've read reports of criminal activities in Italy, Latin America, Asia and Russia.
(btw: those cases of BATF / FBI agents killing innocent people at Waco and Ruby RIdge? When the law comes to your house, YOU OPEN THE MOTHERFUCKING DOOR, whatever you may think about the law you may or may not have been breaking, or the people enforcing it. When you know as Randy Weaver did, that you were caught redhanded making illegal firearms, and you refuse to cooperate with the feds and entrap your Neo-Nazi gun customers, you DON'T refuse to surrender to the authorities and set about arming your children and posting them as sentries outside your house. Not unless you want them dead. When you know, as D. Koresh absolutely did, that the BATF is coming, has in fact been surveilling your premises at close range for weeks and is sweating all your firearm sales contacts, you OPEN the door when they come, and record on video/audio tape all that transpires. Everybody lives and you get your day in court. (Everything people criticize the BATF for concerning that raid is valid, but none of it exonerates Koresh one fucking bit).
If you OPEN FIRE INSTEAD as all those guys did either directly or through subordinates, you ARE going to get shot, dummy ! OK, no big loss to society or injustice if you choose to shoot it out with the Marshall and die, but the innocent people in your company are in danger of being killed or wounded, too.)
--
Maybe you read a different post than you replied to, FFFish didn't argue for legitimized theft. He argued for boycotting industries whose behavoir he didn't agree with. Just like you asked. Perhaps you're replying to "The government never gave two shakes about whether you and I swapped software, music or video." Actually, swapping music and video is still (basically) legal. Copyright was never intended to restrict sale, trade, or gifting of materials, but to restrict copying (thus the copy in copyright). Swapping copies is restricted, but he never said he was doing so.
He's not whining that the RIAA, MPAA, and SIIA are "protecting their constitutionally guaranteed right." He's complaining that those organization are trying to pervert the constitution. Copyright was supposed to be granted for a limited time. Thanks to the recent extensions on the terms, I don't anticipate ever seeing the copyright expire on anything created during my lifetime. Or my parents lifetime. I'm pretty sure that's not what our forefathers meant by limited. Thanks to the DMCA, anything on a medium with access controls is effectively protected forever. Maybe I can legally copy it after copyright expires, but I can't legally create or purchase tools to do the copying.
These organizations are attempting to steal our right to resell our copies of music, movies, or software. Our rights to timeshift media, to translate a media's format, to watch media on whatever technology we like.
These organizations aren't protecting their constitutionally guaranteed right. Please, take a look at the constitution. There isn't much in there about rights granted to people or corporations. It's mostly about the rights that the government has. The single, lonely sentence in question simply says "The Congress shall have Power..." "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". Yippee. Congress can choose to create copyright. They did choose to do so. They can just as easily choose to undo it. This isn't a protected right. It's right up there with Congress's power to create a post office system. If you're going to claim that the US was founded on intellectual property, you're also going to have to claim that the US was founded on establishing the USMail.
If you're looking for guaranteed rights for the people, you'll need to take a peek at the amendments. The concept of intellectual property didn't seem to make the list.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I am *NOT* arguing for legitimized theft. I said absolutely *nothing* to indicate that the Internet should be a free-for-all of piracy.
What I clearly stated is that getting upset with the government is wrong-headed, because it's owned by the Corporations. Not having the ability to influence our own government, we must instead influence the Corporations.
It's only by entering a dialog with the Corporations that we will achieve a mutually-beneficial compromise. And the only way to get the Corporations to enter a dialog (instead of bumfucking us by purchasing our government from us) is to boycott them and write a letter telling them why you're boycotting them and what they can do differently to win your support back.
This is *not* saying that the Corporations must support rampant piracy.
Now, if you're perfectly happy to allow Corporations to buy your government from you, and perfectly happy to have those Corporations purchase draconian laws that may or may not harm your ability to use the products you purchase, then you are perfectly free to not boycott those Corporations. In fact, it is your duty to send them an extra twenty bucks, to help them achieve your goals.
For the rest of us, it is imperative that we (a) educate ourselves regarding the political and social actions taken by Corporations; (b) consciously decide to support or not support them, by purchasing or steadfastedly not purchasing their products; and (c) spreading the word.
If we do not become active consumers, we will become passive slaves to Corporate desires.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
> (Unless you are like me and has done a chmod 400 on your cookies file)
How is it you are managing to post to slashdot with a user account then? Junkbuster (for unix) and Proximitron (for windows) offer a slightly more configurable solution than this shotgun approach.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I have used proximotron for windows and yes it can filter out more data, but some websites don't work if you do that. This way you loose nothing in the viewing and when you revist a site after restarting the browser they have to reset all the cookies all over again. This is good inviting sites like doubleclick.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
What the article leaves out is what is already being done on the web. Doublecklick has already mapped out many ip addresses on the web. What does this mean and why? When they get some one to advertise with them the advertiser can get where you came from on the planet from your IP address. While this is not fool proof, it is a start. (See the articles mention of the ip 'spoofing' i.e. surfing anonymously). They also don't mention how many sites are using cookies to track people. Again I can mention doubleclick, who puts a cookie on your system and then tracks it ALL over the web. (Unless you are like me and has done a chmod 400 on your cookies file .. see linux.com for more info on that).
Furthermore they don't mention how US companies are watching their employees, by monitoring the traffic going in and out of the corporate firewall. And yes I have known people who have gotton in trouble cause they did't know they were 'being watched'. This is really not 'new' it was happening back in 1997, at many companies when intranets took of and LANS became the 'standard' way of a company operating.
While this article is definately worth a read, I think that many regular /. readers already know most of this stuf anyway. This is actually the kind of article that needs to be put in newspapers like the NY Times as well as the Wall Street Journal and soe other papers, so that not just techies know about this.
Personally I think that it is just going to get worse too. People are going to demand more and better filtering software. Maybe a good business to get into too. 'Content Filtering'. Only problem is that once you learn how to filter you learn that their are ways around the filters as well.
It is like building a mouse trap. The minute you think you have a perfect trap, you end up with smarter mice.
Hopefully I will still be around when the human race evolves and realizes that it is just content and that it means nothing, but then again I live in a world that believes that 'God' is a being and not a concept. Some people will never get it.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Absoulutely! Also, computers must not be allowed within 1000 feet of a school, must not be allowed in government buildings or shopping centers unless carried by law enforcement officers. Computers cannot be permitted on airplanes. Purchase of more than one computer by a single person in a month needs to be illegal. High-capcity hard drives are an incentive to commit crimes. Hard drives greater than ten gigabytes in capacity may only be purchased or owned by government agencies, and may not be bought or sold by/to private citizens unless they are older than an abritrary date to be selected later. A purchase of a computer must incur a ten working day waiting period, as most people who buy a computer want to commit a crime now, and are not willing to wait ten working days.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
The United States was founded on a principle of intellectual property
In all the times I've read The Federalist Papers, I have yet to find a single passage that suggests intellectual property is one of the cornerstones of the Constitution. Would you please be so kind as to point out which essay it is that I've been missing?
It is a protected right by grant of the US Constitution
Laughably false. The intellectual-property provisions of the Constitution say that Congress may grant legal protections to IP. Contrast this to the Bill of Rights, which are phrased as absolute contructs--Congress shall not, will not, must not, cannot, etc.
That single word, may, says that IP is not a right. Period.
That is the only lawful, moral and ethical way to cause them financial harm
According to your morality, perhaps. But as Trent Castanaveras explained in The Long Run, there are really only a few ways to make someone change their behavior. You can persuade them; you can bribe them; you can threaten them; or you can steal from them.
Some people can't be persuaded; they're too blinded by their passions, their ideology, whatever, to listen to the sweet voice of Reason. Some people can't be bribed; they just don't put much emphasis on money, or they're already so wealthy that whatever you can offer them is insignificant. Some people can't be threatened; either they don't care about the pain, or they're so much stronger than you that you can't threaten them. But theft... theft is something which people must respond to. It's a Darwinian thing, hard-coded into our genes. The more resources we lose, the less fit we are to continue existence, thus, every creature seeks to minimize its loss of resources.
So when you're faced with an adversary who is doing something wrong, something which is affecting your own interests adversely, and you feel that things need to, must, change... well. Considering that the MPAA/RIAA doesn't listen to reason (look at the 2600 suit), we can't bribe them (they're already rich), we can't threaten them with legal action (they can afford lawyers, we can't), what other form of persuasion is left to us besides theft?
Not reckless theft. Not blind theft. Theft of the right things, in the right ways, at the right time. If the MPAA wants to enforce CSS, great; we circulate DeCSS and encourage people to rip copies of their CSS-scrambled movies. But if we were also to encourage people to rip copies of movies which are not CSS-scrambled (for instance, American Pie), then we would be sending the wrong message. If we respect the idea of IP ownership for technologies which respect us, and we openly subvert technologies which do not respect us, that sends a strong and clear message--if you respect us, this all will stop.
Illegal copying of CSS-scrambled and non-CSS scrambled movies would be punishment, nothing more. People don't respond well to punishment. Illegal copying of CSS-scrambled movies is negative reinforcement--"don't do this, do the other thing instead". Negative reinforcement works a lot better than punishment.
You are a parasite
And you're a blithering idiot for believing that IP is a Constitutionally-protected right.
Seriously, the military and intelligence gathering services have been listening in on conversations, emails, and other means of transport for a long time. Technically, this is usually for reasons of counter-terrorism, anti-revolutionary, and economic reasons, but it depends on the country involved.
What has changed is that we now have the tools and the know-how in the civilian world to become aware of many of these methods.
I'm not suggesting one become paranoid, I'm just saying that privacy and even secure communications are not truly used or available for most people. If one were to use a secure transmission from a secure terminal to another secure terminal where no cache writes occurred and where the private and public keys were exchanged in a secure manner, one might attain such a level of security.
That said, 90 percent of the secret and higher message traffic is totally boring and frequently wrong, so for the average person, I really wouldn't worry about it.
Your best method of attack is to keep pushing on legislation guaranteeing our rights to privacy and the ability to request information kept about yourself, for networks, for providers, for companies (who are the worst offenders in privacy), and for government agencies.
Will in Seattle
I wonder if anyone's considered the possibility of this creating what I hereby dub the "Napster Effect," in which "contraband" material is available and a few people are happily dealing with it below the establishment's radar. The, someone sues, or some other enforcement action is taken against this "contraband," causing it to become sought after and wildly popular. I'd sure love to see Yahoo! Auction's search statistics on the words "nazi," "hitler," "iron cross," et. al. before and after the French action and Yahoo!'s self-censorship policy!
This is preposterous -- deny corporations the ability to weild the government as a weapon, and all they can do to anybody who isn't an employee is make bad faces at them.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
When private ISPs first connected to it, of course. When it was run purely by government agencies for government purposes, those agencies had the right to control it for the same reason I have the right to control the use of the computer sitting in front of me. Once that situation changed, the government lost this property-based right, and has no such right on any other basis.
the idea that the purpose of the Internet was such an anarchy was a self-appointed decision by anti-establishment people who imposed their own social agenda on a communication medium
Insofar as I can parse this statement, it seems to be asserting that some anacho-fascist cabal forcibly imposed the agenda of rejecting all forcibly imposed agendas.
They acted without authority
They acted without authority to impose an absence of authority?
My brain hurts.
and today scream with indignation when governments exercise their due powers
Er, the claim that censorship is part of any government's "due powers" is what you're required to prove before your argument can be taken seriously.
anarchic rules
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
I should not have to tell you that a great many things done on the Internet are irresponsible, reprehensible and damaging to the interests of others
You have misframed the argument in a manner which avoids the issue. If I say that you seem profoundly clueless, that may be irresponsible and reprehensible, and insofar as anybody believes me it is certainly damaging to your interests, but you really have no recourse except to offer a rebuttal. If, on the other hand, I say something actionable, you do have recourse, because I would then be violating your rights, not your far more expansive "interests".
They ignore the fact that when any tool or system becomes destructive of our society, we have the right to disband or destroy that tool or system.
No, you don't.
For examples, the Industrial Revolution was destructive of the existing pre-industrial society, and yet Luddite mobs had no right to "disband or destroy" the private property of the industrialists.
I won't feel sorrow if the government regulates Internet content, provided that it is in keeping with the laws of our nation.
Er, "Congress shall make no law...." IS the law of our nation.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
not to mention that you must run a government approved operating system and all software on your computer must be registered with the federal government.
How we know is more important than what we know.
what exactly is wrong with import/export laws?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm reminded of some friends of mine who were handing around a petition to send UN troops into Afganistan to stop the mistreatment of women. I refused to sign and they were very upset. Thinking I was a woman hater, they demanded that I explain why I wouldn't sign. I quietly informed them that a country bordered by Iran and Pakistan and responsible for a majority of the poppy supply of europe is not exactly a good place to start flexing military muscle. That said, I hardly think anything I say on Slashdot will have anything to do with national powers invading other countries.
How we know is more important than what we know.
heh. I'm not a US citizen :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sounds like a plan, but can we find someone a little more likeable to invade? Maybe what we should do is pass the hat around and put together some money to buy these rebels a few guns, but then again, I'm sure the CIA is doing that :) Hmm, timewasting.. I'm thinking that there was just as much timewasting before as there is now. We just did things like outfish lakes.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In Myanmar, formerly Burma, access to the web is banned. To enforce this, the country's military regime imposes jail terms of up to 15 years for unauthorised use of a modem.
Anyone in Myanmar care to comment on this? But seriously, I can't believe this. 41 million people are living in this country under a military regime. 30% of the population is under 15 years of age. They have adequate and wide spread communications including long distance communications. Neighbouring India, do these folks a favour, invade and give em some net access!
How we know is more important than what we know.
The statement was, "none of our current laws deal with people buying stuff from overseas, let's make more laws!" and my response was, "I think the current laws already cover this, we don't need more laws". See, whilst you're reading what I type, people who have half a clue are reading between the lines. Now if you put your name on your post people would be able to add up all your little comments and determine whether you have anything to say. But frankly I think you're just someone who cant argue and has to resort to name calling. I got over that when I was ten, try thinking instead of abusing.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It took a hundred years from the invention of the printing press to the first book being banned. It took additional centuries for literacy to become widespread, and for widespread literacy to lead to the creation of new forms of thought and essay. -- [[Paraphrased from a talk given at CMU a few years ago. Wish I knew who it was.]]
On this timeline, I'd say that we're probably about year 80.. We're nearing the time when entrenched interests, like the crown, are threatened and trying to repel the danger through banning the 'misuses' of the new technology. [DMCA, UCITA, CSS on DVD's, and all the rest.]
And Ben Franklin was right up there too...
.sig:
See the
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Online companies will certainly also make use in future of a controversial feature called IPv6, designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF ). At present, the anonymity of most Internet users is more or less protected because service providers generally assign a different IP address each time someone logs on. But IPv6 includes a new, expanded IP address, part of which is the unique serial number of each computer?s network-connection hardware. Every data packet sent will carry a user?s electronic fingerprints.
... Anyways ...
:*)
So IPv6 is a feature? I always thought it's a protocol
There are no more privacy issues with IPv6 (read: no more than there are with IPv4 *g*).
Read the comments to this AskSlashdot to gain enlightenment
The IP doesn't NEED to contain the MAC; THAT's just an optional feature
Intellectual property is NOT a right granted by the US Constitution. The constitution grants Congress the power to grant limited monopolies on works, such as copyrights, patents, and trademarks. The issue of owning these things outright never came up, and in fact was one of the things the founders of the USA wanted to avoid.
IP is a fiction, and a really nasty one. Copyright is a limited monopoly, trademarks are nothing of the sort, and patents are even more of a monopoly than copyright is.
-RickHunter
Unfortunately, if we go back to the world of the BBS, we'll end up having the same number of people as we did then.
People are too damned lazy and short of attention span to fight for freedom or for that matter, privacy. Make no mistake--about 85% of the population in the western world WILL quietly accept graver and graver restrictions on their internet access until they view exactly what the government and corporations tell them to.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I thought long and hard about this question mr. AC. If you don't have a login on /., you should get one--we need more discussion like this poses.
I've been proclaiming for years how much better the internet was when we had usenet, archie, etc.; and before the commercial WWW became synonymous with 'the net.'
But at the same time, we have to ask ourselves: Do we want the internet (in whatever form, be it the web or IP-enabled BBSes) to be a perfect medium loaded with smart (although somewhat diverse) people, or do we want to effect wholescale social change? If the latter, then we HAVE to get it to the masses. If the former, then it's just a toy.
Tough call, either way.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
that's what I thought, too. I don't think the government is the real danger.
look at the way yahoo! auctions caved. why didn't they put nazi auctions in a private area where you have to agree to some kind of EULA to get in?
the government does not work in a vacuum. no one in the government just got up one day and said "hey, i know, let's make all the schools and libraries put filtering s/w on their machines"
instead, it was a mob of parents and special interests who decided to lobby the government to create these laws.
unless people use education, and unless the web puts content behind EULAs, the blunt instrument of government regulation will fall.
let's face it -- a fifteen year old is seconds away from porn when they sit at the net right now. That's what's killing the net -- providers failing to adequately filter their content.
i was at office depot the other day, and they had a display of filtering software surrounded by fat, angry looking women. that pretty much says it all.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
It's badly off topic, and clearly trolling (which may be why it was posted anonymously), but would someone mod the above up anyhow? It's worth reading.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Jamie Love and the U.S. Consumer Project on Technology have done an outstanding job at http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/hague.html in keeping us informed about the Hague Conference on Private International Law. This page includes a reference to one mailing list on the subject, but you can also follow the news on another more general mailing list at http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/upd-di scuss .
Although it is true that /. readers are unusually well-informed on related issues, this Economist leader does make the important point that the U.S. government has deliberately sought to keep this accord secret from public discussion. Its quiet adoption might well mean an end-run around some freedoms on the Internet that many of us, including libertarians as well as liberals, technology experts as well as common consumers, ought to treasure and debate more openly.
I like the bit about: "...it will use software to filter out objectionable material and human reviewers to decide borderline cases." Whats a borderline case.. A Prussian Helmet?, A Confederate Flag? A picture of the Hindenberg? American War propaganda depicting Nazi's? It's refreshing to know that the future of the internet lets the church-lady decide what's good for you.
So, what some lawmaker would propose to make sure that we don't pirate anything is to implant a chip in everyone's brain that will block off all of our senses unless we register them with the RIAA for hearing, so babies can listen to Britney Spears' " Oh Mommy, Mommy"(TM), the MPAA so the baby will have rights to "The Rattle"(TM) starring Dennis Leary and Mickey Mouse. Then, they will have to register their interactive non-artificial artificial intelligence OS called "Windows Me (literally)"as Microsoft will own the human genome by then.
By this time, the aliens will stop abducting people in the night, as the plan to steal all of our brains via anal probes will have been completed successfully.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Doing somthing is better than doing nothing at all
end communication
Considering also the incredibly vast variety of resources and information available on the Net, how could it ever be possible for the government to achieve any sort of wide-scale regulation? Intelligent software controlling the Net doesn't seem like a viable solution - it couldn't possibly cover all cases. You'd need trained humans at the helm. I don't imagine the government will sit agents on every router, watching the transactions. *chuckle*
Let's look at other forms of Internet regulation that have been enactled. No agency has yet to successfully stop the trade of pirated software, movies, and MP3's. The MPAA is no where NEAR stopping the proliferation of DeCSS. Just about all web blocking software can still be circumvented by merely typing in the decimal value of IP address octets. They keep failing.
It may be very imprudent of me to brush this off, but Internet regulation *still* seems pretty far-fetched.
If anyone disagrees let me know, because my impression of the article is that is falsely represents the real crisis of Internet freedom as a matter of government regulation, rather than a more complex picture of combined gov't regulation, multinational corporate concentration of access and copyrighted content, and the no small matter than a majority of the world population has no access to this "Internet freedom".
For example, two of the biggest stories of information regulation and control were the Napster and DeCSS lawsuits, filed by some of the same huge media corporations. Many felt that those were the most important challenges to the free transferrance of information.
As to my other point, one should measure freedom ultimately by the proportion of people who have it. Right now, the proportion of those with access to the Internet, not to mention the capital to own or rent server space, to pay for the production of web content, blah blah, is very low. In my estimate, then, a large amount of freedom for a small part of the population is not much freedom at all.
"The Internet was supposed to be all about freedom."
NO! The Internet was all about connecting different Department of Defense computers together so that resources could be shared! That's it! End of story! All of this nonsense about the Internet being some kind of utopian Libertarian commune is Leftist mind-rot! "The Economist" tends to lean that way. Slashdot should have linked to an article more like http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~newman/chap2.html
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
The idea of a UN (or anyone) backed "Global Internet Court" will never work. For one, it's total Imperialism. A nation would be giving up its right to control the judicial system that deals with Commerce in its country. And some other issues arise. How do you enforce things? The Yahoo! case does perfectly; they could say that the French have no juristiction to touch them, and who's gonna stop them? ICANN? The WIPO, who are entertaining the Nissan domain-squatting case (possibly the most ridiculous Internet case yet)?
Granted, local juristiction would not be the be-all-end-all solution, as many US courts are prone to favor business over people, but this solution would provide the best hope for equality.
Cue The Sun...
While regulation per se is not a bad thing, we should closely watch the details of any new internet regulation. Those who cry "censorship" at the first sight of a law with the word "internet" in its title cause the whole net community to be taken less than serious. Sadly, almost every Slashdot discussion (at least in the YRO section) contains this sort of outcry.
Don't get me wrong here: There are threatening laws out there that need to be critized, but in an intelligent manner. The Economist article is quite detailed and well worth the read although I don't share the pessimism.
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
But what do we have to complain about in the US? A cybercrime treaty that the outgoing President signed. Well everyone ought to know that the treaty has to be ratified by congress before it is binding in the US. Odds of that happening are low, and if you call or email your congresscritters and let them know what you think it will be even lower.
Complaints about eBay. Well, they've been censoring things for a long time now. Try selling a gun on eBay (which you could do when they first opened). Not any longer. As a matter of fact, you cannot even sell a legal high capacity magazine on eBay these days! What's the answer? Other auction sites! Places like gunbroker.com have moved in to take over the segment of the market that eBay refuses to satisfy. That's freedom at work.
And the other thing that really frosts me is this insistence that requiring filtering on school and library computers (owned and paid for by all of us tax payers) is some kind of evil censorship. It isn't. If you want to browse your porn sites then get your own damn internet connection, don't do it on my dime. But they censor more than just port sites, you say. Well the answer to that is to lobby to get them to change (and reveal) the lists of the sites they block, not to remove the blocking completely.
And what reasonable parent would want to send their kid to the library to check out the latest Harry Potter book, only to have to walk by some pervert drooling over the latest Porn Pics.
Liberty and Freedom doesn't mean that you have the right to force the rest of us to pay for your habits. Keep it in your home, where it belongs. And don't forget -- when you accept Taxpayer Funds you have to also accept the strings that are attached.
For more of my rants and views drop on over to www.libertynews.org
Remember Lexington Green!
Of course 50-100 years ago they would have been shocked at police wearing masks.
"Why would they have to wear masks?", they would say. It was perfectly acceptable just to shoot people in cold blood in the name of law and order.
I suggest you go back and read your history books. Pay particularly attention to the labor battles such as with Carnegie steel, the docks in San Francisco and New York, etc.
Check out Joseph McCarthy. Check out Wallace on the steps in Alabama, or the assassination of two Kennedy's and King.
Then come back and claim we are worse off today.
One thing I really hate are people who never learned history and are doomed to repeat it.
We must be ever vigilante in the defense of our freedoms, but we also must be rational and intelligent in the discussion of same.
I definitely agree freedom is disappearing on the net -- the same thing has happened with other new technologies, such as radio (which got licensed), the aircraft industry, etc. I'm unclear if this happens due to demand from industry to protect their revenues from innovation and competition on the grounds of 'interference' (which is what liberal conspiracy theorists would propose), or due to inherent "nanny-state" government regulators who either feel a moral compulsion to regulate (the right-wing argument) or are simply political opportunists.
Groups like the cypherpunks have forseen this on the net for a long time, and I'm sure the general fear of authoritarianism is sufficient, and far older. Many people believe the current middle-ground level of regulation is not a stable position; we will either have full regulation or no regulation. Since I believe global revolution to protect Internet freedom is highly unlikely in a world which has allowed every other technology to become fully regulated, the only thing that can possibly make the Internet free again is the technology itself.
No other technology lends itself so easily to encryption, steganography, and traffic analysis protection. Thanks to the widespread deployment of "politically acceptable" applications like ecommerce, chat systems, etc. on the Internet, there is a huge amount of cover traffic available.
The ultimate goal is a network resistant to arbitrary degrees against traffic analysis, malicious attacks, denial of service, and physical compromise. Of course, to have this in practice, a lot of separate technologies must be integrated, and one thing learned from ssl vs. pgp, it must be presented in a relatively seamless and simple way to the user. There have been some good beginnings made toward this goal, including ZKS, Mojonation, and e-gold, but nothing has yet become so seamless and easy to use, as well as "full-service", that it is the final solution.
I think the value of such technology is non-linear; being able to know that it isn't *possible* for your communications to be tracked by your adversaries is worth more than 10x as much as a system 1/10th the strength, and something which is as easy to use (or easier to use) than insecure tools is worth far more than something which requires even the minor level of additional work required by the user to browse SSL websites securely.
I'm happy to be involved with HavenCo, as one of the essential parts to this is having a physically and legally secure environment in which to host your servers. After all, it doesn't do a lot of good to use SSL or a new anonymous anti-traffic analysis successor if you're putting personal information on a server which anyone can subpoena or black-bag. At HavenCo, we're focusing on secure managed colo of business servers (USD 1500/month including bandwidth, which is fine for business and other serious users but is more than most individuals can afford, unless they share), and that's going quite well. We are also looking at ways to support consumer/end-user privacy, both on the web/email hosting front, and core technologies like traffic analysis protection, cryptographic tools, and a solution to the pervasive payment problem. We've been a bit quiet on the marketing and PR front as we expand, but that will change soon.
Even though it means more financial success for me if the US/UK/etc. tighten regulations more and more, driving businesses to places like Sealand, I would definitely prefer the outcome where individual freedoms are respected worldwide. After all, Sealand isn't exactly the best vacation spot in the world, especially in the current winter 30kt winds and 7' waves.
have you read the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999?
Funny how you can be breaking the law without even knowing it. Maybe in 5 years time we will all receive daily email updates from the government on what is and is not illegal now.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just because the bill was turned down once doesn't mean a similar bill wont be brought before congress again. Besides that, his post "Knowing how to make illegal substances is not illegal" would not be illegal if this bill had past either. The point is, with bills like this passing through congress it may very well be illegal to even think about illegal substances in the near future.
How we know is more important than what we know.
it's not absurd at all. It's a violation of my god given rights that I have to grin and bear on a daily basis. If my opinions are absurd then so are those of your founding fathers. So are those of the men who wrote for free markets and a free press. I have the right to do and say as I please. If I physically harm you or your property then I forfiet these rights. Nothing more, nothing less. Your "reputation" is something you will have to work out with your peers. Once upon a time the majority voted to put a short mad dictator in power who commited some of the worst atrocities our collective memory has ever seen. The majority can go off and herd itself without me, thank you very much.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Is there some way of tracking people's comments on Slashdot regarding various subjects? It would be interesting to see who the people are who:
:)
1. Bitch & moan about governments/corporations legislating our freedoms away on the 'net.
2. Champion government/corporate efforts towards reducing SPAM.
3. Champion government/corporate efforts to protect our privacy.
Of course, such a tool would be very handy if it could be used on politicians/ceo's as well (hmmm, this year they're supporting this concept but last year they said it was a joke - interesting
Unfortunately, If we want the government/corporations to do #2 & #3, we're opening the door to #1! If we want freedom and anarchy on the 'net, then we're going to get SPAM and lack of freedom. It becomes a "ding-dong" battle between the people inventing technology to give us freedom and those who would then use the technology to piss us off. How do people feel about anonymous systems being used to protect SPAMer's? Does this make up for their use to protect your "legitimate" privacy needs?
As previously mentioned, all too many people want legislation to protect them from themselves! I have been told by police in the USA that they have occasionally been called by parents and asked to discipline their children. Erm - hello???? All too many people want to abdicate responsibility and the need to think for themselves. Perhaps it's a sign of the times - they're too overloaded and just want the "simple" life (read: over regulated, hyper controlled, "I'm happy in my easy chair watching TV" life).
Anarchy vs freedom vs SPAM vs anonymity vs privacy vs legislation vs control - what's happening on the 'net is an extension of what we're seeing in life around us. Are we just going to bitch & moan about it all (and thus be part of the problem) or are we going to do something about it? If the latter, what are we going to do (or what are we already doing)?
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
Knowing how to make illegal substances is not illegal.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Why stop with regulating the internet? Everyone knows that the people causing trouble on the internet are the ones with all the computers. All computers should be registered with the federal government, because they could be used to violate copyright, circumvent access control mechanisms, produce and distribute kiddie porn, steal your credit card numbers, spread harmful ideas, and contribute to our society's moral decay. There's no good reason for a decent god-fearing person to own more than one computer - people who own multiple computers are therefore criminals and must be stopped before they destroy our peaceful civilization. It is time for us to stand up against these techno-weenies and take back the country God gave us!
This is probably one of the more relevant and interesting posts here in a long time. Kudos to the moderators.
Keep it up, y'all.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
in a court of law is VERY IMPORTANT.
Under the treaty, an online store could be liable under laws in any of the 48 member-countries of the Hague conference. That is why the American government is opposing, among other things, a clause that would ensure that consumers could sue businesses in the courts of the country where the consumer lives.
Instead, the Department of Commerce and e-commerce firms are pushing for a different solution: in effect, a new system of private laws, which would avoid the requirement to abide by the laws of the countries where their customers live. As in the Safe Harbour agreement, web firms could seek a certification that they follow certain minimum rules of consumer protection and privacy.Conflicts would be resolved by so-called "alternative dispute resolution".
Dispute resolution by who? This is the same kind of self-policing that gives business the advantage over the consumer in other global trade agreements. Who will create the forums for alternative dispute resolution?
It is essential for the consumer to enjoy protection of some set of laws when he or she uses the internet in business. as more individuals use it to maintain their livelihoods, states actually have MORE legitimate right to police fraudulent business practices on the "global" Internet.
There must be some kind of democratically legitimate constructuion of relief for consumers under a global system. If not the laws in the state where the consumer has citizenship, then perhaps some other global body such as the United Nations should step in the fray. If it can start an international criminal court to seek genocidal leaders and try them, it can try consumer fraud.
Don't let the businesses entirely police themselves.
Goat sex free since 2001
This would be OK if they just blocked pornography, but they also block hacking sites (such as 2600.com) and, as with all other censorship, they also block their fair share of non-offensive (by their standards) websites. www.newton.org.uk is the only example I can think of now, but I've seen more. Previously, an anonymous web browser could be used to get around this, but they caught on and decided to brand those as "offensive" too.
So, if you ever feel like your government is clamping down on your freedom, just remember that there are people like me in countries where the government is <WORDPLAY> just plain unjust.</WORDPLAY>
Oh, I forgot to mention that the single, government-owned ISP provides 56kbps as its fastest option (unless you are a government agency or Internet cafe, in which case you can have 256kbps for a measly $2,500 a month). So, not only does it block many interesting sites (I keep seeing links in /. comments - click - D'oh! That stupid "Important Notice" again) but it provides a very slow, unreliable service with which to access then non-offensive content.
If governments began to regulate the internet, you would more than likely see the days of old revived. Bulliten Board Services (Bobcat, PowerBBS, etc) would begin to spring up, but, of course, they would be more advanced and more accessible. I think that now people have gotten a taste of the internet they will not give it up with a nod and a wink. The underground would flourish - peer to peer connections would soar, thus cutting out the middle men, and evading regulation. Either way, it is my belief that the government can do what they will, but the people will find a way around it.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
In russia they have SORM. It's philisophically a bit like Carnivour, or the RIP software or basically privatised bits of Ecshelon. SORM is a black box that sits at the ISP and stores, indexes and analyses packets. It basically legalises what the FSB (former KGB) were doing already. It also decentralises the work which means it's easier. The guy who told me that works for a former part of the KGB that was split off and privatised with partly US venture capital. Their team is all pretty young, all pretty bright, and all prett keen on real time decryption of 56 key decryption of the voice channel on gsm cellphone traffic. keen distributed computer guys who do their jobs cos they love the intellectual challenge of it. And they are not alone. So the idea of data privacy is a joke. IBM can number crunch uncrunchable primes using quantum computer make of 5 fullerine atoms. That was months ago. A network of specialised computing devices on that sort of scale makes for some pretty interesting chips. A quantum ray tracer would be faster than light. A quantum based encryption/decryption race will yield incredible bounty for those of us whose privacy needs are minimal anyway. Let the NSA and the FSB and the banks and cartels and the triads and mafia and NATO and WTO and every damn sovereign nation on this earth spend as much of their budgets as they dare to out encrypt/decrypt each other. You can't have anything without securing it, but you can't secure it anymore. But then again, you never really could anyway. In Russia in Soviet times everyone could have been an informer. In the modern world everything will be. The 100,000+ cameras in every london street are a more insidious presence than anything the russins have done though. The footage from those cameras can be stored for future analysis and indexing. The indexing that can be done today is not bad to tell the truth. They are taged with GPS locations, the new lingua franca of where things are, as well as orientation data, such that their fields of view can be combined, like a smarter version of Canoma. That's spooky. George W Bush wants to put missiles in orbit to keep the peace. So do the Chinese - all of 'em apparently. The CIA just released a report saying the world is going to shit and needs more guns, nanotechnology is looming. run to the hills. Still even though I am subliminally aware that my every move is being watched and recorded, i work in a room fullof machines with permanent net connections, cameras, microphones, proprietory operating systems an software etc that could make a person paranoid; life is not a movie and much of my life is not that riveting.
If the They know that at 3am on the morning on 13th january i was watching the x-men on dvd and catching up on some email - mostly rants to friends, and jargon laden banter to workmates and associates, and work, mostly writing stuff that will end up online anyway, good luck to 'em. By the same token i hope the guy out there with the dungeon full of kiddies and the global napster style swap club get's busted badly, and i hope the girl and her brother, refugies from some shithole get to a webterminal somewhere, email someone, anyone and even though it bounces, an analysys system recognises an anolamy and passes in on for further analys. and as a result two kids are retreved from otherwise certain suffering.
Be sure they will be an age of all encompasing cradle to grave to indexed archive surveillence. in such an age the conspirators messing with Will Smith's life in enema of the state wouldn't have had a chance.
In amsterdam people live with huge open windows that face the street. you can see into people's houses easily, especially as you wander around of an evening and people are eating their dinner. It's weird. Their red light district is a reflection of this, with the women in neon lit up amluminum sided glass boxes. Like the Tescos of Soho. But the dutch flaunt their disregard for privacy on a social level you'd never see in england or australia (outside of queensland).
We are lucky that for the most of us, the system seems to tolerate us. As I write this my housemate has just walked in, she is opening a box of freeby makeup and saying "Look what I got for free... all i had to do is put my name and address is a website. This is hairspray!" I gotta go...
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
What I'm afraid is that the imminent clampdown of the net will lead to the same nationalistic confrontation bullshit we're familiar in the real world. A good example of this is the French decision to ban certain sites that offend the "public morale" (ugh!).
Up until now the Internet has been a great projection of the entire human culture. Everything from its darkest and seediest side to the greatest cultural achievements have been available to everyone. For awhile the Truth really was out there and the people have been free to choose either to read it or ignore it. Now the governments want back the authority to decide what the citizens are allowed to see.
Yes, the "free world" might be idealistic but nonetheless a worthy cause to fight for.
The Web is free, you can get on for free, with mildly annooying ads, or pay for higher bandwidth, ;-)
lets leave it like that, not tax it and regulate it.
Example, so many people complain about Porn, why?
Just don't look up "Sex" in a search engine, and it'll never bother you. Don't try to regulate someones for of entertainment (or exercise
We could just aswell make a big deal out of Warez, or Moviez, or people telling you how to make drugs, or any number of things that is illegal.
But that's not freedom, you are arguing for legitimized theft.
The United States was founded on a principle of intellectual property. It is a protected right by grant of the US Constitution.
An assault on freedom would be if the RIAA were to prevent you from recording your own music and selling it on the market. This hasn't been what the internet debates have been about.
If you don't like the restrictions placed on you by the content creators then DON'T UTILIZE THEIR SERVICES! Don't listen to the music, don't watch the movies, don't use the software. That is the only lawful, moral and ethical way to cause them financial harm.
Better yet, go out and create your own music, your own movies, your own software! Then compete with them fairly!
Otherwise if you just sit around whining because the RIAA, MPAA and SIIA is protecting their constitutionally guaranteed right...
You are a parasite. We don't need parasites in our society, as they provide no value.
...is that most, if not all, of the posts are focusing on *government* control of the Internet.
Sorry, guys, but that's a dead-wrong approach. The only governments that are directly squelching the Internet are a few totalitarian regimes with far worse problems of human rights violations than just a bit of Internet-blocking.
No, for most of us Internet users, the problem is not with government control: it's with Corporate control. That these corporations may weild the government as a weapon against us it irrelevant: the fact remains that it's the EULAs, MPAAs, RIAAs and suchlike that are squishing hell out of our 'net freedoms.
The government never gave two shakes about whether you and I swapped software, music or video. Only the Corporate owners cared, and they pressured/bought the changes the government made to our laws.
If you want the Internet to remain free, you've got to battle it on two fronts: you *must* pressure your government into slacking off, and you *must* pressure Corporations into backing off.
And the only way to do the latter is to cause them financial harm. Corporations must ultimately be responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders demand profits.
So you need to get serious about boycotting, serious about spreading the boycott, and serious about letting the Corporations know that you're boycotting them, and what they need to do differently to win back your financial support.
If you don't take those steps, you--and your use of the Internet--is fucked. Kiss all the freedoms you've come to enjoy on the net goodbye.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The Constitution says nothing about the duration of copyrights and patents, except to say that they must be for "limited times". Originally, the term was well under 20 years, but that was a term set by Congress, not by the Constitution.
The next ten years will be the time we fight. We will be fighting Corporations that want the Internet to be turned into the perfect medium for delivering demographically tailored marketing to Consumers and the Governments from preventing us from "being culturally subversive."
In ten years we'll know what happened. Will the Internet be a tool for individuals to share information or a tool for Corporations and Governments to spread Propaganda and enforce the Status Quo?
I'll see you in ten years.
--
Scott Brady
While some people laugh and say things like "That will never happen" or "Thats impossible" and "They can try and stop me, but they will fail, *maniacal laughter*". Let me give you a brief history lesson. 50 short years ago, policeman dressed up like militia members with ninja masks on would have shocked the nation. No knock warrants would have never been allowed, and there would have been a huge broohaa over police "anti-drug/anti-terrorist" tatics. These all exist today. We even expect our police to have fully automatic weapons when they charge into a house to resolve a custody dispute. I know that no one really wants to hear this, BUT, we have less "freedom" now than our grandmothers and grandfathers had. Between the War Powers act, the "War on Drugs" and various other "emergencies" that call for action. Get used to carrying your "ID card" and get used to the phrase "Where are you papers?"
If we continue to elect Nazi's instead of buying old memorabilia we're in deep doo doo, and that goes for the Internet as a whole. Well at least we all will look good. The Nazi's were the best dressed soldiers of modern times and I hope the underground will be alive also.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
The Internet was never immune to current law. You have lawyers who claim it isn't tacked down because there is no specific mention of electronic media in copyright law, slander laws, etc. But we know what was intended.
The Internet was never private. It was the rise of typically private transactions that led the hue and cry for privacy. In fact, the Internet was bare, naked, and exposed for all the world. We demanded privacy after-the-fact. This is the same thing that happened with telephones.
Perhaps we should understand the realism, recognize that our states and countries have laws, and instead of expected some sort of Idealistic free world to come about on its own, we should try and create it.
Despite the cynicism of my view, I think the Idealistic views of the Internet have a lot of merit. I also believe that many of the local laws being passed violate existing laws or even, heaven forbid, the Constitution (in the US anyway). Don't take things for granted, they aren't.
----------------------