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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.
There's one slight problem here. In my understanding of government, laws serve the purpose of jailing people who hurt other people or their property. 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. Now I would dare to say that physicial harm is not possible on the Internet. Even the damage done to my computer during a hacker attack is not physical harm. So why do we need government? Let's face it, not everyone agrees with this. Lots of people want governments to protect them from every little thing, tell them what to do and ensure they can't hurt themselves. These are the people calling for Internet regulations.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
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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.
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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.
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