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Geography, Laws, and the Internet
Sara Chan writes: "This week's edition of The Economist has the cover story and lead editorial devoted to how geography affects the Internet after all. The whole of China is basically firewalled. In France, Yahoo! is appealing the court ruling that banned its selling Nazi memorabilia. In Iran, ISPs are required to block immoral sites. Each country wants to impose its own laws on others, of course without reciprocation. The editorial concludes thus: "The likely outcome is that, like shipping and aviation, the Internet will be subject to a patchwork of overlapping regulations, with local laws that respect local sensibilities, supplemented by higher-level rules governing cross-border transactions and international standards." Not all new, but worth pondering."
What, now that someone in China may not be able to bid on your collection of Playboys on eBay, it is time to stand up?
Puh-lease. Rape, spy, kill, cheat, lie, steal, oppress - but don't limit our internet access! I know, the internet should be free, but a lot of things "should" be. Let's get everyone some food, shelter, and safe living conditions before we worry about whether they can ride the information superhighway. (haven't heard that term in a LONG time) :-)
www.poundingsand.com - Tshirt designs - check out Micropoly!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Of course it's delayed, but I hope they actually release it eventually.
Meaning, have you ever actually been here? Have you ever actually travelled in China and met people in person and talked about life here?
Somehow I doubt it.
What I don't understand is why, whenever there is any mention of China at all, there are people who have to come out of the woodwork spouting off about China when they don't have the smallest bit of first hand experience. We were talking about 'net filtering, not taiwain, tibetan genocide, or any other unrelated topic. And filtering 'net access, albeit lame, is a far cry from any of these topics your online research has clearly made you such an expert on.
I'll reply with a saying we have here: "Hell is paved with good intentions".
Just my $.02
One shall speak only if what one has to say is more beautiful than silence
Yes there is. It's sovereignty is on pretty thin ice, but it does exist, and it is technically a coutry.
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See these articles:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/16/17421
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/07/02/16025
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/12/06025
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/03/06/00252
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/09/22142
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/07/01532
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/04/17422
and this:
http://www.sealandgov.com/
Make of it what you will.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Disclaimer: I'm not a supporter of child porn ! I figure if a country wants to firewall itself - fine that's their problem (and their citizens) But France's attitude is a dsigrace. If they don't want their citizens to see stuff - then its up to them to filter it, not Yahoo's. I'm all for the having a web site be subject to the laws of the land where it is LOCATED. If its farmed into differnet countries, then all those laws will apply and the company has to deal with teh overlap. Proxies and cache don't count. We all have our problems. But in this case, its easy - you don't want your citizens to see something? Its up to you to restrict them and deal with teh consequences like being voted out of office (if your citizens have that right.
Yes in an ideal world everything would be free and all would be free to see it - but that just isn't gonna happen. Sure, we can bitch about China firewalling and filtering everything - but that's life in a communist country.
Yes, I'm American so I can take this stance since my net use is pretty much wide open unless the FBI has a bad day, but beyond that, as long as some other country doesn't try to stick their noses into an American companies business (yeah right) I'm happy :)
According to your logic, it's up to the US government to filter out those sites. The fact is, the people who run the site will probably be in an american jail very soon, and the country where the server is will be in trouble too (since only the US has the muscle to force most smaller countries).
Just ask Dmitri what happened to him. The US didn't like what he did, all you have to do is to filter out his site for all Americans. And why is he in a US jail then?
The internet is being Balkanized as nations reassert hegemony and as virtual nations (large corporations) extend their control over the communications networks.
I hope you enjoyed the last half of the '90s because it may never happen again.
There are two extremes and one middle road in controlling the Net.
One extreme end of the spectrum can be seen in the Taliban, who are tearing down their infrastructure and returning to a midieval level of existence.
The other extreme can be seen in China which is modernizing its infrastructure but increasing its control over access. In effect firewalling the country and stonewalling the internet cafes.
Either of these methods are done at tremendous cost to their citizenry. Its not that they don't care, its that they care about keeping control more. In Afghanistan, its cheap. In China its not as cheap but there are only a few key poi9nts that have to be controlled.
The middle road is making lawyers rich in every second and first world country by trying to apply technological solutions (with results ranging from poor to execrable,) to enforce nationalism and censorship.
The problem is that civilization (key word civil) doesn't scale up well to the larger aggregate of nation states.
Bejing was fine under emperor Chin but it quickly degenerated into an insular court culture. Germany was okay until the reunification which preceeded and then almost inevitably led to two world wars.
Early history in Greece is the story of city states.
The renaissance in Europe happened in and because of city states.
The story of money starts in Amsterdam and is still concentrated in and around a few mercantile exachanges. This leads to certain very large accumulations of wealth on localized centres which almost behave in a civilized manner.
Civilization is a local phenomenon. There are millions of dead and millions more dying because it doesn't scale well.
We'd do well to remember that and try more localized approaches.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The way he's covered over here, you'd think he came out of the football hooligan subculture. I guess the Media Powers That Be don't want to claim him as One Of Their Own.
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See http://www.gipiproject.org for an initiative by netizens on this topic.
I had proposed a Internet Legal Task Force (ILTF)in a mailing list discussion. GIPI could very well be the solution for this.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Posting and downloading movies to usenet is a major copyright violation in the USA and Canada with or without the DMCA. Did the MPAA invoke the DMCA or just basic copyright law to get Excite@Home to remove the newsgroups?
Hm, my experience has been different. The Chinese internet cafes often have very good access, but dialup is often very poor. At first I was using the state-owned internet service - you just dial 263 from any phone, and you get a PPP connection with username 263 and password 263, and your usage is charged per minute to your phone bill. But this is amazingly expensive - it was costing me about $100/month and that's a small fortune in China! It is possible to buy internet dialup cards, which give you a username and password which expire after 3 months. That's what I'm using now, and the service is godawful bad at times, but it is much less expensive. Most of the Chinese that I have met who use the internet (almost entirely under 30 years old, almost nobody over that age seems to use the 'net here) don't use it from home due to the expense and poor quality. They go to internet cafes.
Some of the best writing on the impact of the internet and geography comes from Frances Cairncross' (Financial Times) "The Death of Distance" and Thomas Friedman's (NY Times) "The Lexus and the Olive Tree." Both of them are more boosters of the net than this Economist perspective, but it's clear that net technology has significantly impacted geography in many unexpected ways.
- He wasn't arrested for speaking.
- The finger was pointed at him by Adobe - a corporation.
- Corporations pushed for the DMCA.
Thanks for prooving my point.Developers: We can use your help.
true as that is, if someone from one of those countries comes to the US (or a US site) they
can see port or other offensive material...
<br>
also, i would suggest that on the net, they need to respect our right 'to view' as much as we respect their right 'to hang'.
Don't worry, SaulGood
Disconnecting...that's a good one.
Informative? Informative my ass. This guy is a troll, plain and simple. This guy should get a (-666, Flamebait) and a "Go Straight to Hell" Card..."Do not pass Heaven, do not collect 200 Karma".
Once they get their space lasers set up.
Recall, historically, that fixed fortifications, if done correctly, can be of significant value.
The Maginot line in the south by the Italian border did VERY well, it was in the mountains, where the terrain was very beneficial.
Also, the German fortifications in Italy were very effective in slowing the allied advances, as were many of the Japanese defenses.
Right now, our notion of the "destination" of a packet is based on IP addresses, which are somewhat arbitrarily chosen and have little relationship with the physical location of the target machine. To make this work, we've needed to employ complex routing tables and algortihms with relatively large upkeep and administration requirements.
As the 'net becomes more strongly connected, there will be even more paths for packets to take, and it seems logical to try and simplify routing. If the "address" of a machine were derived from its physical geographic location, then packets could be routed simply by "sending them in that general direction". Instead of complex routing tables, routers would only need to know their relative geographic location in order to send packets toward the target. Conventional routing methods could be used on a local scale to calculate the final hop or two for the packet.
Needless to say, this method would trivialize the problems posed in the article as well.
Mozilla has a similar blurb on their releases page. But they don't give you the option of downloading binaries without crypto, and you don't even see the blurb if you opt to download a nightly build instead of a release build. I can't imagine someone in an embargoed country downloading and building from source just to avoid breaking a US law.
The strange thing is that the default build options don't include crypto. I found this out when I copied someone else's build script, which included the BUILD_PSM2 (build with crypto) option, and then tried to build Mozilla. It turned out that I had to install an extra program in order to make the PSM2 build work. (Why don't they link to the how to build Mozilla with crpyto page from the how to build Mozilla on Windows page?)
The shareholder is always right.
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
I'm sorry, but I was working in China for 3 weeks last month on a job for a large oil company.
This company gets it's international bandwidth from a global supplier, and this also provides internet and e-mail access.
This means Chinese employees in the firm can surf the Intranet using the corporate intranet connection, and thus completely bypass any state-controls governing usage.
And for the paranoid out there, the bandwidth is provided over a cable laid from Shanghai by MCI WorldCOM. I have used the link extensively, and I found no evidence it is either tapped, filtered, or monitored.
I also used various alleged-illegal crypto products over it, and I never got a knock on my hotel-room door at 3am to tell me to stop.
You CANNOT firewall a country. There are always ways and means, and in practical terms the effort to do so is too high. Just because Chinese cyber-cafe's are monitored does not emply everything else actually is.
Imagine orbital ISP's and servers. Who can claim jurisdiction over space? Its not as crazy as it sounds, just a few terabytes of solar powered hd and a couple satellites yields a nice remote 'data haven'. Earth is plenty f***ed, we might as well fill the heavens with spam and porn.
The Great Firewall of China, the only firewall so big you can actually see it from the Space Shuttle.
To address the second statement, I do not think freedom is an "instinct". The history of civilization has very little freedom in it, and a tremendous amount of subjugation, slavery, misery, and copyright law. Screwing is an "instinct". :)
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
For an example I don't have to look very far; my site has a .uk domain, but it's actually hosted in Norway (even though I'm actually based in the U.K.). Now suppose I slander someone from China on my site - which legislation does it fall under? It's time to face up to the fact that the internet is a global system, and is difficult to regulate nationally.
I can get www.pakchooie.cn and host it over on pushershover.sl (sealand?). Probably. As long as I can convince the .cn authority that "pakchooie" is not some anti-Chinese phrase and that my domain won't be critical of China or show China in a bad light.
I can't recommend The Economist enough. Stories are good, timely, important, interesting, and it's damned hard to find enough bias to get pissed off about.
woof.
This is the hand of fascism intruding into cultural control:
French National Socialists censoring web sites based on language.
Quebec language nazis punishing citizens for private speech in the wrong language.
The Taliban. Nuff said.
The "CDI" in the US. Also the DMCA.
All the countries from Iraq to the United Kingdom where official government news and media dominates the airwaves.
I live in China, and the firewall is *very* obvious.
Some days, I try to get through to slashdot but I get a "Access to this page is denied" error on my screen.
Most people don't realise the extent of the firewall. 90% of the time, if I send an email to another country it doesn't arrive at the destination.
One time I even had an email message changed - I was simply stating that I was feeling a bit unhappy due to lack of money, and it changed to I was feeling unwell, but *because* of all the money flowing around the place I *was* happy.
Be thankfull for what you have !
There are at this time two Chinas.
Or for that matter, how long would it be before Hussein jams a bowie knife into the thing just to spite the son of Bush?
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Geographic restrictions cut both ways.
Since the US has DMCA, those of outside want geographic walls so that we can sell software and services without worrying that it will be bought be USians (think iCraveTv.com and Skylarov).
Given the current state of affairs in the U.S., other countries should be trying to cut themselves off from you!
What will happen is an increasing distance between laws that say what people shouldn't do and what people actually do. Any "firewall" that allows some form of two-way traffic can be circumvented. Any content filter can be circumvented by encryption. Any IP address filter (geographic or otherwise) can be circumvented by intermediaries (e.g., proxy servers). If you are really determined to filter, then you get an escalation of filter and circumvention complexity, but again, any two-way communication can be exploited. Anybody involved with circumvention had better watch out where they travel to.
Barbarism seems to doggedly stay with us, regardless of the growth of physical technology.
And if something on my web site offends or breaks the law in Whatalotaland or California? I'm suppost to block them out how exactly?
In the former case you block *.wt. in the latter you block *.ca.us. The former will probably work, the latter probably not. Since the US dislikes geographic domains (most of the rest of the world uses them fine.)
If you want to see a graphic demonstration of how closely the Internet is intertwined with the physical world, just watch what happens when there's a fire at a place like the MCI pop in Downers Grove. That was a real mess from a network engineering point of view. The point is that the the Internet is, and always has been, highy centralized at the physical level because there simply are not that many backbone providers. In the US these backbones are controled by a small number of companies and in other places they might be controled by the government. But, the fact of life is that, ultimately, in any country, the Internet is controled by a very small group of entities, many of which operate without public representation. Right now much of the world likes the notion of a free Internet, and most companies don't care go what goes across their backbone as long as they get paid, but that could change.
I had interpreted the grandparent post as saying that IE would do client-side filtering based on the contents of the URL (not too far a stretch from what MS has been confirmed to have done to DR-DOS in Windows 3.1 betas).
A few others like France might be stubborn enough to hold out for a while, but the protests inside the country (the French do enjoy a good protest) from disgruntled former internet users would soon persuade a government to allow the internet back in warts and all.
Then I started thinkig about who would enforce this and disconnect countries (and deal with routing around a country, which could be problematic to say the least). And since it could not be left to any given country I suppose the UN is the only answer.
The only shame here is that it would be virtually impossible to block the US from the net because of the infrastructure, I'd be willing to go a few days without net access to raise enough protests to overthrow the DMCA for example.
Now the confusion set in. I started considering if this scheme would somehow involve un reasonable control of the net from someone elses stand point, and then I thought of virus writers. I strongly believe that virus writers should be strung from the nearest tree, but France (for example) could argue that virus writers inside France are just using the net, and if you don't like it get off the net. And I really have no arguement against that given my previous position.
I realize that this will never actually happen since there are too many politcial and technical problems with enforcing it, but it is my views on the topic.
The Germans were able to simply drive past the end of the Maginot line by taking a detour around the north, because the French government of the time thought "hey, we can save some money here... we don't need to extend it any further noth because nobody is going to be able to drive through the marshy Ardennes flatland..."
The penny-pinching government got it wrong. The Germans drove through the Ardennes.
According to the French, the people have never been defeated by the enemy. They are simply let down by incompetent leaders or are sold-out by traitors.
The analogy with firewalling an entire country would be that as soon as one [individual|organisation] finds out just where the government-organised "protection" stops, it will be circumvented. And all those nasty outsiders will be ably to flood the region with their [propaganda|pr0n|advertising].
"The internet is being Balkanized..."
.kids anyone?) which is not acceptable to many in some contries. This is what makes all external influences (external websites, such as Yahoo in France) unacceptable.
That is true, but I think the major reason for this has more to do with "identity" (maybe better "national identity") than firewalling or filtering unacceptable external sites.
Computing and the internet, more than anything else, have led to English becoming the lingua franca (irony intended);
Language, the most obvious identifier for a culture, is the main reason why many governments want to change or control the internet; (I know there are exceptions, such as China/Afghanistan and a few others). If I am Chinese, or Greek, or Russian, why can't I have my web address in Chinese, Greek or Russian? This alone identifies the internet with Western culture (.biz,
I think, until this imbalace is addressed, the Internet will allways be a target for restrictions.
Let me clarify the yahoo story. Only The French yahoo subsidiary (responsible for providing French language content for yahoo.fr) whose offices are located in France was taken to courts. And since yahoo.fr is in France it is subject to French laws and was held accountable by the French judges for the content of yahoo.com which is heavily liked to in yahoo.fr. Had yahoo been a US only company, I don't think that this would have happened.
EB
If you want to offer services worldwide, you should compy with standards worldwide.
That is completely impractical. There are millions of legal entities world wide(countries, states, counties, cities), is it beyond the capability of any business to keep track of them all. If a legal entity doesn't want content, I think it should be up to them to keep it out like China does. Not to require some foregin business to notice that somebody is french.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
That's why the US can board your boat or sink it if they think there might be drugs on it.
What I mean is.. there's no need to panic because some things are not they way they should just now. Criticism on the internet often referes to bad/unsuitable things published to the masses.
As an example, today in a large swedish online newspaper, a reporter found a huge "scoop". He found out that one of the Universities of sweden was providing computer resources to swedish nazists. After a bit of research, it came out that the university was running an Irc-server (dalnet) where the nazis held "online-meetings".
Noone would consider it a scoop that a bunch of criminals phoned each other over the telephone network, or that they sent snailmail.
The Internet will get integrated into our everyday routines, and its use will get balanced to what it's good for.
And where's the problem with china being firewalled, isn't that all up to them ? I bet there are firewalls protecting western world internet resources against china as well...
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
In the US, the corporations are trying to impose regulations to get maximum profit, while the government (for now) has mostly stayed out of it because of respect for free speech. Outside the US, where speech is not so free, governments will try to regulate in accordance with their countries beliefs. I hardly think this can be compared to shipping and aviation.
Regarding the cover story, the hinderences caused by distance will (like everything in the computer field) be overcome by technology. Data traveling from PC to server and back at the speed of light can have very little difference in travel time when the computers are next to each other compared to opposite sides of the planet. Of course we're far from this (optics direct to the computer, instant switching, etc.), but we'll get there, just like everything else. We'll look back and laugh at cover stories like this in the decades to come.
Developers: We can use your help.
Reynolds was among the 176 criminals excused in President Clinton's last-minute forgiveness spree. Reynolds received a commutation of his six-and-a-half-year federal sentence for 15 convictions of wire fraud, bank fraud & lies to the Federal Election Commission.
He is more notorious; however, for concurrently serving five years for sleeping with an underage campaign volunteer.
This is a first in American politics: An ex-congressman who had sex with a subordinate won clemency from a president who had sex with a subordinate, then was hired by a clergyman who had sex with a subordinate.
His new job?
Youth counselor.
1. Every mobile machine must be associated with a "home agent" machine, which cannot move (and therefore has a fixed IP adddress). All outgoing packets are tagged with the home agent's IP address, and return packets are sent there first using traditional routing methods. The home agent then forwards the packets to the mobile machine. To be able to do this, the mobile machine must continaully update the home agent on its current location. As the mobile machine changes location, it also changes IP addresses, and sends notifications to the home agent containing the new mobile IP address.
The advantage of this approach is that it is transparent to the upper application layers AND to the other end of the connection (it appears that the home agent is the final destination).
2. The other approach is more advanced, and requires the participation of both ends of the connection. The mobile machine, when it changes locations, sends a notification directly to the remote machine with its new IP address. This way, further packets can be sent directly to the new location, without the need of a home agent machine.
In short, mobile IP will always require somewhat of a "hack", and you already do change IP addresses when you change locations. Having those addresses correspond directly to the geographic location would simply eliminate some of the complications of routing.
Oh it wasn't me - it was Jesus Oquendo. See K5 for more info.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Get your citation right. Any mention of his name has to mention that he was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead **.
Example citation:
John Perry Barlow (who wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead)
(** on the matter of Jerry, music lovers around the world are grateful he's dead)
"DMCA "aims" (completely unsuccessfully) to ensure copyright can still function profitably (a noble aim, not everybody is motivated to create without an incentive), and Carnivore aims (with more success, but with many more undesirable side effects) to negate the effects of terrorism, the activities of child pornographers, etc etc. There are valid motives behind these things, but somewhere along the line, they got hijacked by combinations of big bizness(TM), stupid senators, and fascistic neo-mccarthyists."
No, don't you see? It is exactly those valid motives that makes those laws and technologies so wrong. Then ends do NOT justify the means, my friend. Sure one or two "good hearted" ideas turned bad won't ruin the country, but once started down that slippery slope, there is no going back. Where is the line? When do you say "No, this particular piece of legistaltion is wrong but that one is fine."? The Ministry of Love was all about good motives, you know...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Why doesn't one of you clever boffins just invent me a network protocol with a strong anonymity system.
Packets have to know where they've going, do they absolutly have to know where they are from?
Give me a network full of sourceless traffic and let them try and regulate that.. If that doesn't work, put uplinkable routers in orbit..
You do realize what the internet and this is leading to...The gasp GLOBALIZATION of corporations and governments. Personally, I don't understand why people are so up in arms about globalization. It benefits everyone as a whole...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
This ultimately means that although global access to any information on the Internet may be slowed, it will not be completely eliminated. Censorship efforts like these will certainly claim victims along the way, but are ultimately doomed to failure.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
I've never understood why the American government bother. If a foreign gov wants encryption it can always pick up the latest release through its embassy staff in the US
Because it makes them feel good, the same as all the fuss about play station 2's. Which also fit nicely into diplomatic bags....
You're mixing wars. Tuchman described the start of WWI and a double-pincer variant of the von Schlieffen plan in the Guns of August. In WWII the Germans use a weak left pincer to push through the Maginot Line after the main breakthrough on the right had gotten through the Ardennes and broken the French left.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
If a court asks you to remove some content for some of their citizens, it is not beyond the capability of any busines to do so.
A lot of companies are currently offering services worldwide and most of them are capable of complying with local standards. It's not because you are an internet venture that things become impossible.
As to the matter of finding out someones place of residence it quite simple: ask them. It's not your fault that they would be lying.
Me too and I'm American :) The worst part is most Americans KNOW they are spoon fed and honestly don't seem to care - now THAT is scary.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Reminds me of the "Dolchstoss Legende". with regards, your Anonymous Coward.
As opposed to the American plan of lining up all their battleships in a row and then letting the enemy sail up and attack them. Even worse they made a bad movie out of it.
but now we brought it up, somehow, didn't we?
A lot of companies are currently offering services worldwide and most of them are capable of complying with local standards. It's not because you are an internet venture that things become impossible. As to the matter of finding out someones place of residence it quite simple: ask them. It's not your fault that they would be lying.
.fr TLD. The same method they made a big fuss about using for advertising and which has been used for other purposes, such as TV programme websites...
Or in the case of Yahoo! block access to the
http://www.eff.org/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/ barlow_0296.declaration
or click here.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
JumpTV (some good comments on an old /. story) is currently awaiting a tarif decision by the Canadian Copyright Board. We probably won't hear any ruling on the matter until early 2002.
If they do get a tarif, it will be interesting to see how long it takes:
"Software is a tool, and as a toolbuilder I must struggle with the uses to which the tools I make are put." - Bil
Akamai's network can help to smooth out huge fluctuations in traffic. A further benefit is that the customer's web server does not have to deliver the heavy items, which reduces the load on it dramatically and makes it less likely to collapse when faced with a sudden surge of visitors.
In other wordrs, Akamai has almost finished developing a complete defense against our strongest tactical weapon, the Slashdot effect. They must be stopped at all costs.
The shareholder is always right.
I've always wondered just how they seem to think this is enforcable .. I guess the cuban tld is firewalled over at Redmond? :)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Wouldn't surprise me in the least when Microsoft someday starts 'depreciating' .pl files in URLs in favor of .asp. Why should they pander to their competitors by allowing easy interoptability? Users who *want* support for .pl can download a plugin...
As a resident of Florida, let me clarify this. Military absentee ballots sent from overseas or on-board ships were supposed to arrive by a given date with an overseas postmark. Unfortunately, ballots sent from on-board ships either didn't receive a postmark or didn't receive a foreign postmark, and hence were rejected due to an oversight in the law.
The majority of the rejected ballots were eventually added into the total. There was no 'military veto' over the presidential election, and the Gore-platform quotes in WSWS were taken out of context to imply that Gore was scared of the military; in reality (as opposed to delusion-land of WSWS), Gore didn't want the military's morale to slip at the implied "I don't care about you or your votes." Not a good thing when some data had shown that military readiness and effectiveness was already slipping.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
So long as countries assert sovereignty over frequencies in the EM spectrum, satellite will be subject to all the restrictions of land-based Internet.
Already we have seen how Canadian satellite phone providers have been pressured into compliance with USA tap-and-trace regulations, through the FBI's hook into pending applications for broadcast licenses.
Yes you do. But the rest of us aren't in the army.
Some IP-addressable objects move around. Should my laptop have to change its address every time zone as I fly across the ocean?
.leo domain.
How about computers in orbit? Yeah, we probably need a
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Well..just make sure that you don't ever visit the country that you've broken the laws for or even stop over on a flight...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Hey . . . you think you could arrange that?
May this day herald a new rennaisance of creativity and originality on Slashdot. Huzzah!
I think it is very easy: The frech authorities can prohibit the sale of NAZI-propaganda if there is a law behind it. This is ofcourse only valid as long as one of the partners (salesman or buyer) is located in France. The same is actually valid for Germany; the book from Hitler is an indexed book, so it is not legal to sell i in Germany (I am not sure if it is also illegal to buy it from abroad).
I think this makes perfectly sense that also the local Yahoo/Amazoon are held to this.
In 8 years in the Army I've been from Korea, to Saudi Arabia, Africa and Europe. Everywhere we went we were told by our chain of command to respect local laws and customs. I think we need to do that with the Interenet too.
.com does not absolve you of responsibility.
Absolutely. We need to remember that the Internet is not only about public services anymore. If you are doing business on the Internet (and that implies in other countries), then you should consider investigating the laws of the countries that you will be doing business in. ANY company that approaches foreign entities to do business on any scale do this research. Being a
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
Skylarov first entered the US, and then was arrested, and then accused of breaking the US law before he had entered the US. The last two happened in close proximity, so I don't know about the order, but its pretty irrelavent. He didn't have a chance to find out he was breaking the law before he was arrested.
Except in the case of Yahoo! , none of those examples is trying to impose its laws on others. The "Great Firewall of China...Whatever" only affects Chinese. If you want to sell your products/propaganda in an opressive communist totalitarian country, either do it by their rules or invade them and depose the government and restructure their network. They didn't set it up to server you. Iran isn't blocking ISPs in Amsterdam. If you don't like their rules, don't set up an ISP in Tehran -- or work to change the decency laws there. And actually, Yahoo! has the same option GE/Honeywell had, they can not do business in France, or they can respect the laws of that country.
There is a fairly large difference between being physically present in another country and someone from another country viewing something that may be contrary to local laws. There is no way to obey the laws (let alone the customs) of every country from which people may view a website.
In my opinion, web content should be compliant with the laws of the country in which the server that hosts the site is located.
You're not allowed to rent here anymore!
According to my logs, CodeRed can still make it through the firewall. How about censoring that? ;-)
the ever cynical, [and getting more so everyday]
--------rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
Why, citizens of the Scaled Composites Federation, of course. :)
Perhaps the internet needs to be treated the same as law on the oceans?
I respect the lesson you learned in the Army, but those other cultures need to respect our laws and customs too when we aren't forcing them down their throats. If our customs dictate gigabytes of lesbian porn, so be it.
It is not globalization per se that people object to, it is the fact that the rules of globalization are being determined undemocratically, behind closed doors, to favor the interests of large corporations over the interests of small businesses and consumers. A case in point is NAFTA. Trade for large corporations has been liberalized, but can Mexicans freely emigrate to the US? Can you legally bring Mexican pharmaceuticals into this country? Can Mexican doctors and lawyers compete with their US counterparts? Can the United Autoworkers organize Mexican autoworkers? Can US citizens vote for clean air and water standards in Mexico City or Tijuana? Of course, the answer is no to all of these questions. Worse, yet, NAFTA has been used to challenge local laws in this country, directly interfering with our form of democracy.
The internet was the first opportunity to really set the whole world free. Its a shame that it had to happen like this. Freedom to think is the only real freedom anybody has, and it sucks to have the best transfer point for that though restricted. IMHO The internet was the most important technological achievement in the history of the world, and now it's being neutered.
OB French WWII joke:
Q: Why did the French plant trees along the Champes d'Elysees?
A: So the Germans could march in the shade.
The point is that Yahoo.fr was already filtering Nazi auctions but French users were going to Yahoo.com to get around the restrictions. The judge therefore required Yahoo to block access to the auctions on its US based servers for French users.
It's probably the 42nd time somebody repeats that on /., but it's not enough apparently:
It's NOT France. It's a French judge and the plaintiff is an independent organization which has nothing to do with the government
OK ? Got it this time?
-- Colin
That is because you are going to said country, and while in that country you are to respect the laws/customs of the land. I doubt they told you "we're going to Morocco, so make sure to respect Korean customs."
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
This is exactly correct (according to my recent bizlaw class). Extradition is for criminals who have fled the jurisdiction that they commited the crime in.
The concern is for extraterritoriality and comity to become commonplace. This will be the initial source of a given nation (for example, Germany AFAIK, the location of the "internet police" imposed by the EU) employing their laws against the citizens of another nation (for example, the United States). The problem ensues when the nations are "fine" with extending comity (enforcement of another nations sanctions/restitutions) despite extraterritoriality (extension of a jurisdiction beyond its legal boundaries to violate sovereignty) concerns. In cases of clear legal concern, (like murder or clear breach of contract)this hasn't been a problem. With legislation of the Internet and "speech" however, this may be described as troublesome at best. While comity is extended on a case by case basis with diplomats playing the game of diplomatic checkers, the trouble comes when the courts begin to simply take cases of comity from courts of other nations as if they were being handed from another court from within the same nation. THIS is where globalization REALLY occurs and may NEVER be returned from.
In and of itself, the issue of globalization is not a scary one. If the entire world could live with libery, peace and harmony, each receiving the opportunity to pursue "life, liberty and happiness" everything would be fine. However, it simply comes down to the fact that governments, as a whole, do NOT look out for the interests of the people. They look out for the interests of themselves. As others have mentioned, this extends to include the interests of those that want to support those that actually legislate and in some cases to the judges (keep in mind, its not illegal to bribe in all countries, much less all states).
Keep in mind, the United States is a GREAT place to live. I know that I have at least two of my fundamental rights pretty soundly secured. I have life and the pursuit of happiness. But where is my liberty going? Today, I cannot quote from one of the web pages that I read (it has a simple javascript utility on it that prevents "right-clicking" so that users may not copy) because it would constitute circumvention of an electronic gate on top of the fact that there is no longer fair use of digital publications as a result of DMCA. While the guys there wouldn't press charges against me, what if the FBI decided that they needed to? Adobe, for instance, isn't concerned about Skylarov anymore, but the FBI sure is.
The Declaration of CyberIndependence (written by Barlow of EFF and quoted above-> find barlow) is right on. The Internet is not a nation, nor is it a portion of a nation or belong to any nation. The US HAD claim to it originally as part of ARPANET but did the right thing in turning the technology into something for commercial use and thus for Americans (and then the world) to use to their advantage. The days of possession of the Internet SHOULD BE over. Every nation wants to claim "their piece" and it simply cannot happen if we want the concept of globalization to happen the right way.
What's to be done? Well, the usual... write your congress(wo)man if you have one. If you don't, write your newspaper (if you can). If you can't, talk to your neighbor. Make sure people know that open source isn't a virus, hackers aren't bad because they hack (READ: I'm using the REAL definition of a hacker, not the stupid media connotation of what a hacker is), and that corporations of the world need to ceede their power back to their consumers and to the people of the world. If they won't? We need to let the politicians know that they will be replaced by someone who will force the corporations to do so.
Andrew 'Mickey Knox' Gearhart
The UK, if Murdock buys DirecTV.
Best Slashdot Co
They'll do whatever they can get away with.
We all have our problems. But in this case, its easy - you don't want your citizens to see something? Its up to you to restrict them and deal with teh consequences like being voted out of office (if your citizens have that right.
Yes in an ideal world everything would be free and all would be free to see it - but that just isn't gonna happen. Sure, we can bitch about China firewalling and filtering everything - but that's life in a communist country.
Yes, I'm American so I can take this stance since my net use is pretty much wide open unless the FBI has a bad day, but beyond that, as long as some other country doesn't try to stick their noses into an American companies business (yeah right) I'm happy :)
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Keep in mind, the French were never that great at building impenetrable barriers.
I think I'll stop here.
I think the biggest thing we're all waiting for is for someone to break a law in another country, and find themselves arrested and extradited.
The Skylarov case comes to mind, obviously, but it's slightly different. Mr. Skylarov was accused of breaking US law, and then when he voluntarily entered the US, he was arrested.
What scares me, and should scare the rest of you, is the possibility of a foreign nation demanding extradition of someone for breaking that nation's laws without ever entering the country physically.
It is a simple matter to break Singaporean or Chinese law - simply denounce the government. Many other countries have similar laws, and if I should put up a website denouncing the Chinese government, that website would be in violation of the law in China. But I'm not in China, I'm not a Chinese citizen, the website wouldn't be in China.
That may not matter. China can demand my extradition to China to stand trial. Certainly, today the US wouldn't comply with that demand. But how long until keeping China happy is more important than a single US citizen? China produces a LOT that's exported to the US, and enjoys most favored nation trade status currently. This gives them a certain amount of clout with the US government (admittedly, not enough to extort $1million for an airplane sitting on a runway for 6 weeks or so).
If you think this can't happen, look to the state of California extending its jurisdiction to anyone in the world (the DeCSS case). I'm afraid this is only the beginning.
Thanks for taking a moment to listen to my ramblings and consider.
Let's face it, independent of any one-worlder/monopolist/communist/trekkers' dreams, we are still goverened by a collection of nation-states that exercise authority over their land. Each one is different from the other by custom and law if not religion, language, etc. Since none of us wants to give up our unique systems willingly, it behooves the IETF, ICANN and everyone else to recognize reality and govern the internet accordingly. Therefore EVERY SITE should be under their national TLDs and thus subject to the appropriate laws under their respective nations.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
Thanks.
It's already here
One interesting thing we've been discussing lately is how the DMCA effects other countries. One such example is that Excite@Home was recently ordered to remove the some newsgroups from their servers by the MPAA. They complied, removing them not only from their American servers, but their Canadian ones aswell. Now, as a Canadian, I'm not all that thrilled about having US law applied on a server that's located on Canadian soil, available only to Canadian subscribers. However, according to the DMCA, the server is owned by Excite@Home, based in the US, and that's enough for the DMCA to apply to it. So there's no Canadian law barring me from downloading movies from USENET (though I didn't anyways... honest!), but I'm being banned from doing so by an American law, which shouldn't apply in Canada. Hrmph. Comments?
----
Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
I was talking about this.
And while running an e-business from a mountain-top sounds great, it is impractical without a fast connection or a reliable source of electricity
Not the Censorship issue.
That's a bit harsh - the ostensible aims of DMCA and Carnivore are far from nefarious.
DMCA "aims" (completely unsuccessfully) to ensure copyright can still function profitably (a noble aim, not everybody is motivated to create without an incentive), and Carnivore aims (with more success, but with many more undesirable side effects) to negate the effects of terrorism, the activities of child pornographers, etc etc. There are valid motives behind these things, but somewhere along the line, they got hijacked by combinations of big bizness(TM), stupid senators, and fascistic neo-mccarthyists.
And as for the US setting an example for freedom, well. I don't think we (non-USians) need to be taught, actually. Freedom is one of those rather instinctive things, and I'm not going to enhance my knowledge of it by reading USA Today (yes, slightly trollish, but I'm pissy about that comment).
If all the world leaders were trapped on an inflatable life raft, how long would it take before they decided to cut it up and distribute the pieces amongst themselves?
Sheck
For about 15 minutes or so in back 1995. Look at what happened since then. Big business started by taking over and putting their own rules and practices in place. ICANN by virtue of their monopoly over domain names was a major contributor too. Then the ISP's got involved by developing stringent 'Terms of Service' agreements that basically say: "WE own your part of the 'net. WE can do whatever we want to and If you don't like it, get another ISP". Finally, governments and courts got involved. To me, the net is probably man's greatest unfufilled promise. The promise of unfettered communication by and between every earth citizen. Get real though...do you really think that nation-states were going to permit that? Even the U.S. government is scared to death of that. Crazy as this seems, it's all OUR FAULT...because as geeks we could have stopped it, and didn't. Instead we have idiots making the 'virus of the day' which gives a reason/excuse to have firewalls, which gives the power to filter out whatever you want.
What France is trying to do to Yahoo, in contrast, will have a globally chilling effect. France is trying to shut down Yahoo's auctions of Nazi-related collectables not at French borders, but on servers thousands of miles away, intended for non-French audiences. If they succeed, Yahoo will no longer be able to offer these auctions anywhere.
French laws concerning shipping don't affect what goods I can manufacture in the U.S. unless I try to ship those goods into France. By the same token, French censorship of the Internet shouldn't affect what content I can produce in the U.S. Censored content should be stopped at French borders, not at the source.
To be fair: the U.S. is no better. Our DMCA gets Norwegians and Russians arrested. Our Carnivore will intercept e-mails well beyond our borders. Our patent laws affect software authors and distributors world-wide. The U.S. (and California in particular, it seems) has a rather elastic sense of its jurisdiction, too.
A country's right to exert control over the Internet ends at the country's borders.
--Patrick
Dude, I love your warez section. Damn that was funny.
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Those Who Believe They Are Free Under Any Form Of Government Are Those Who Are Truely Enslaved -
And where would society be without goverment?
The flaws of human nature prevent us from a true utopia.
Without organization we would get no where.
Go live in the Amazon if you want to be free.
I'de rather give up some freedom for a chance to eventually figure out how the universe works. The Native Americans were truly free for thousands of years and they didnt figure out a damn thing, Except how to survive.
Rename your perl files to foo.asp and fiddle with the MIME types.
If the internet is without restrictions there will be plenty if web sites that will promote illegal actions like kiddy-porn.
I think we need some restrictions at the net. But where do we set these? What kind of sites should be banned from the net? If we use filters we will filter out some useful sites like information about incest, etc...
And if we choose to put a lot of restrictions on the net, whom shall we punish? Will the ISP's be responsible for their users? Will you be responsible for friends using your computer?
If it's wet, Drink it!
We (just meeting the USians here) should be setting an example for freedom, not censorship and control.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
Quote: If they don't want their citizens to see stuff - then its up to them to filter it
I must take an aside here and mention that in the US, if 'they' don't want you to see stuff they just don't report it.
I'm going to give you a couple of links to a web site that has forced me to admit that I knew nothing about the world. The site is the World Socialist Web Site. These people have an agenda, which I find quite refreshing because once you get used to it you can quite easily learn to look past it to read the quality news and analysis beneath. There's nothing worse than the myth of of objectivism, someone who's pretending to be objective is merely hiding their opinions inside the news insidiously. Why are all those WTO protesters violent anarchists? Why can't I find information on CNN that describes why 150,000 people show up in Genoa? Besides one page that after reading other opinions elsewhere is just so much of Huxley's soma. Remember many of these people were foreign nationals who spent a non-trivial amount of money to travel there specifically to protest.
I don't believe myself to be a radical, as some may accuse me. I believe in Democracy, I believe in Capitalism, I don't believe we should all rush out and overthrow our government. The other component of government is values and that is what I read the WSWS for. I'm a Canadian so I readily identify with Socialist values and am naturally open-minded to them.
As a further aside, what about the US' last elections? This article talks about the military role is those elections and is based primarily on an article written by The New York Times. If the conclusions in the article are valid (and only you the reader can decide that) then the US has taken a step off of democracy's road and onto the road of authoritarianism.
I'm afraid of Americans.
>
> This part of the article will be a non issue once satallite internet takes off in a few years.
Owned and operated, pray tell, from citizens of where?
Fixed fortifications are a monument to man's stupidity.
WWI showed that static armies/trench warfare doesn't do much but chew through your troops quickly. Mobility is the name of the game and Germany's armor in concert with fighter/bombers became the prototype of todays modern militaries.
Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire is a great thinking game. Would you like to have a game sometime? You should play as the Data Angel's. They are balanced in gameplay by NOT being able to make the Power social model choice. I'll play as the Free Drones. They are balanced by having increased production to compensate for their lack of knowledge or up-to-date military hardware.
As you'll probably be able to compromise quite a few of my bases intially I should start with 70% of the World base population.
Surely now that Iridium offers data connections Satellite Internet is now available?
Mind you, guessing there are around 18 Iridium users I suppose this hardly constitues "taking off" *grin*
And if something on my web site offends or breaks the law in Whatalotaland or California? I'm suppost to block them out how exactly?
... with my binoculars."
Sounds like the story of the woman complaining about the boys swimming nude. Punch line: "But I can still see them officer
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
A "corporation" needs to cease having all the rights and priveleges of a real person.
:)
Or at least find a way to give them the restrictions (e.g. can only be in one place at a time) and responsibilities of a real person
It is not a person. And that causes problems with things like "copyrights persist for the life of the author plus 50 years".
IIRC this is done by having different rules for corporates.
How long can a corporation live?
How can a corporation "die"...
And how does this reconcile with the Constitution's (Art I, Sec 8) decree that IP protections last for "limited times"?
It complies with the letter, since any finite length of time is "limited". Whilst completly ignoring the "spirit" and intent.
Most USians are willing to slowly sell their freedoms away in the name of crime prevention, and in the name of greed. They've had their freedoms so long they're blase about having them. They think as they sell off their freedoms bit by bit that things just won't go that far, that they can stop the sell-off at any time. Furthermore, most USians don't really believe in the value of some of their freedoms. How many people really believe in free speech? Most people are willing to throw aside the right of free speech when someone is saying something that they consider to be really offensive. It takes groups like the ACLU to protect our right to free speech, and many people don't support the ACLU, when in reality everyone regardless of political ideology should support them for the valuable work they do in protecting our freedoms.
To keep out all the stuff that is illegal under their local laws (e.g. DVD players for Linux) ?
That there are ways around things is obvious.
The DMCA and CSS don't even slow down pirates, They make faithful bit copies right down to the FBI warning on the material they're duping.
But its not them the DMCA and CSS are after. Its you and your money and odds are you don't know enough to build yourself the hardware or write the software to get around the protection rack.., uh, schemes. (Or they want to nail your ass if you aren' smart enough to shut up about it.)
The criminals and the people in the power structure who hire them, will always have access. They just want to restrict YOUR access.
In the city-states of ancient Greece, it was knowledge of the dodecahedron that was considered too dangerous for the common man.
In the commerce-states of RIAA and MPAA its this week's top grosser that has to be protected from the common man, unless he paid admission.
They're both deluded. Information is a perishable comodity. If you wait, you'll get it for free and you'll realize that it was worth what you just paid.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Americans think porn is OK, in the Middle East you can get hanged for it.
"the idea that the Internet liberates you from geography is a myth".
This part of the article will be a non issue once satallite internet takes off in a few years.
-Im standing next to a mountain,
Chop it down with the edge of my hand -Jimi Hendrix
Write linux software in norway, without even visiting the US - its a crime!
The burden of blocking that which is illegal/objectionable/whatever should be on whatever community the content is illegal in. It shouldnt be up to yahoo to ban the sales of 'objectionable' material. If France doesnt like it, France should figure out a way to block it. If nothing else, they should tell the ISPs operating in France to not allow their customers to access yahoo auctions, if they want to continue to operate legally in France.
That's just one suggestion, I'm sure there are other ways to do it. The point is, no country should have legal jurisdiction over an internet company except where the servers are located.
Other than that, if the government of a country/state/town/whatever want to keep the people from seeing a certain site, they can figure out a way to block it themselves.
-J5K
p.s- I'm not advocating blocking sites or justifying the behavior of governments that censor what its citizens can and cant see. If they're going to censor anyway, they should just do it for their citizens, and leave the rest of the world out of it.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
I live in Texas, and operate a website hosted in Florida. Easy enough, two jurisdictions to worry about, both in the same country. But my cable modem service provider is Time Warner; I have no idea where my insidious signals get bounced on their way to Florida.
And, of course, there's the people who visit the site. I get hits from every continent, and it's been shown that it's not possible to accurately block an entire large geographic block. If some country out there decides to be as arrogant as the US, I'll be obliged to obey the laws of some country I didn't even intend to contact.
The Economist's story is good, but the conclusion should be restated for brevity: we're hosed.
we already do that here... just, on a state level. every state wants to control every other state's emails, phone calls, etc. if you do some crimes across the internet , you're going across state lines, blah blah blah, and you're in federal pound me in the ass prison. what's it matter that if i break a law in china, iraq, or anywhere else? they don't export fugitives to us, we don't to them. bah
Runnin' On Empty
If you want to offer services worldwide, you should compy with standards worldwide.
Complying with regulations in (say) Afghanistan will mean "do not use the Internet at all," as Afghanistan has banned the Internet entirely. But three words will Cover Your Ass: "VOID WHERE PROHIBITED."
Will I retire or break 10K?
A "corporation" needs to cease having all the rights and priveleges of a real person. It is not a person. And that causes problems with things like "copyrights persist for the life of the author plus 50 years". How long can a corporation live? And how does this reconcile with the Constitution's (Art I, Sec 8) decree that IP protections last for "limited times"?