Taming the Web

Thomas writes: "A story on Technology Review outlines the closer-to-reality-than-you-think fact that Internet regulations are right around the corner. It points out three false hopes held by web 'libertarians.' 1. the web is too international to control. 2. the net is too interconnected to fence in. 3. the net is full of hackers that are impossible to control. This is a good read." Bingo.

Comments

As long as I can connect...

[cr0sh]

As long as I can connect two computers together, the internet will exist...

For me, it started with a null modem serial cable strung between two TRS-80 Color Computers, so that I could "share" the single floppy drive I had.

I quickly moved to a 300 baud modem - and I suddenly had a whole new world at my fingertips.

Later came a 2400 baud modem, a 14.4, a 28.8. BBS's all over town - the city - Fidonet - across America, and in some cases, around the world.

I messed around with connections over telephone wire, building funky parallel port bit-bangers, to create a po-man's networking system.

Now I have a personal network inside my house - cobbled together from parts and pieces the corps didn't want - picked off the scrap pile of electronic hubris...

I hear talk of 802.11 - lasercomm - radiocomm - it is in the air. Hackers will do it. Fidonet will be recreated.

What are they to do? Regulate radio - oops, they already do! Regulate 2.4GHz - yep, that will come. Regulate sell of lasers? That could happen, too. Regulate light making devices? Perhaps.

Maybe I will then hack together a system that only transmits/recieves during the daytime, using mirrors to reflect the sun over long distances, to be received and converted using homemade selenium photocells (and yes - I know how to make them). Regulate mirrors?

Then I will stand on the roof of my house - and shout to the heavens, and my friend beyond, who will relay my message. It may be slow - but to shut me up, you will have to kill me.

KILL ME, DAMMIT! DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND, YOU GODDAMN FUCKING CORPORATE GOVERNMENT MACHINE?!

/end...fucking...rant>

What about Morpheus?

[nougatmachine]

The article mentions that Gnutella is moving to larger servers to facilitate traffic, and this makes these servers prime targets for shutting down, thus slowing the networks. But what about Morpheus? This company licenses the same technology as KaZaA (but without the spyware), which lets broadband users serve as intermediate "super-nodes" which will automatically have more queries passed along, if I understand right. I might have gotten that detail wrong as I'm not very familiar with the technology, but the point is that Morpheus automatically sorts the bandwidth for you, and presumably does not rely on a centralized server while still giving adquete performance. The webpage also claims that information on the network is "encrypted", but not many details are given.

I think this kind of thing would be pretty hard to police.

Rights language less useful than legal constructs

[hillct]

While we've been focusing on rights language, and discussions of what should be, WIPO, with the support of many old-economy publishers have begun to implement the legal constructs which will allow prosecution for net based offenses, related to intellectual property. The first evidence of this in the US was the DMCA, but for the rest of the story, read the WIPO whitepaper "Technical Protection Measures: The Intersection of Technology, Law, and Commercial Licenses" (available in M$ word format and PDF format). It's a vary interesting read.

--CTH