Slashdot Mirror
GIA to use P2P to Avoid Litigaton
DrMorpheus writes "With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary.
The two MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community.
Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way."
Wouldn't Kazaa be a better model? Napster was brought down by the centralization of the network. Kazaa can claim ignorance as to what people are downloading because they lack central servers that route the traffic. Instead they use a distributed network that .... well you guys know what I'm getting at.
Nitpicking asside I think this is a great way to circumvent the not so liberal media's grip on information. Now if I could just figure out how to install the internet on my computer.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Get the information correct in the first place, instead of posting wild and false conspiracy theories about the government.
So anyone running the client is giving the researchers access to a minimum portion of their computer?
What if one of the researchers goes rogue?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Using a distributed P2P network? Isn't that what Freenet is all about? It also has the added bonus of offering strong encryption...
I fail to see what's new here, except the fact that it takes place in the USA.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
How exactly will citizens posting information about government officials be helpful? Most important information is usually classified as Top-Secret and many can go to jail and lose their lives to reveal it.
P2P will make it so sekyure.. not! Didn't the RIAA just file out thousands of lawsuits against P2Pers? I guess these researchers aren't aware of the fundamental security flaws of the internet.
Methinks the Freenet Project is a much better solution for anonymous, distributed publishing.
Hopefully they'll adopt this protocol and give Freenet the recognition it has deserved for so long.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Or what about Freenet? Barring the troubles it's had recently, it might be useful. And couldn't the MIT researchers be sued anyway for just starting this program? The RIAA sued Sharman Networks, even though they don't have control over what Kazaa distributes.
Oh, thank goodness! The magic of P2P will allow researchers to libel mercilessly without any fear of repercussions! Tell us again about the FREEMASONS!
When did "information wants to be free" become "information wants to be indemnified"?
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Maybe it's just me, but without a system in place for fact-checking and followup, it seems to me this would quickly turn into a breeding ground for conspiracy theories of the worst sort, be they from the Right or the Left or anywhere in between.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
I will love this plan more than you can imagine if they can find a way to make it easy to upload information in such a fashion that it's organized and easy to find. One of the main reasons I gave up on FreeNet was the nigh impossibility of finding new and interesting content. If they could fix this, I think it would be a great thing for increasing government accountability.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Imagine a beowulf cluster of p2p networks???????????
WHOA.....
What does this have to do with the Gemological Institute of America?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
If they're worried about their postings proving false, then haven't they not researched them enough to be posting them just yet?
:-)
I like the idea of distribution of information using P2P and all, but the tone of this post implies that people knowingly want to post articles that they know may be proven wrong... Isn't that what Weekly World News is for? I don't seem them getting served with subpoenas
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
So if I parttake in the P2P network and have information
stored on my computer does that mean that I can get
screwed for what gets stored on my computer???
If I download a bunch of music aren't I liable??
So when the government scans the networks and sees
that I have a document that is bogus,
can they go after me as being the source of the document??
Does it seem to anyone else like the GIA program is going to drown in its own chaff? I mean, if it's really supposed to be giving people "insider" information about the government, how are they going to confirm that any submission is true? Think of all the just-shy-of-slanderous commercials that air around election day... and that costs money. If people can anonymously, cheaply spread whatever "information" they want about their least favorite candidate, we'll never know whether anything we read is accurate.
how do you think the government (or the loosely attached to the government) would react to such information being distributed? In the beginning it would be easy to target the small amount of computers/people possessing the information. any p2p network is only as good as how wide the file ditribution runs. Who would be willing to take the risks?
Topic sez it all.
link: http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Ok, yeah, it's slow as molasses in January, but it *is* exactly what they are trying to (re)build here, no?
the file tranfers were p2p, but the file searches were centralized; napster was sued and forced to make it's searches filter 100% of coptyrighted files by the courts, which was infeasible, and that was the beginning of the end.
This sounds like typical Alex Jones kook material. The best place to keep up on government activities is to watch CNN and FOX news and from the government themselves. Don't read the seditious trash you see on sites like From the Wilderness or Prisonplanet.com. It's all false and none of it is what people should be reading. There is no need to worry about the government since they are honest and caring people. They're making sure that the terrorists are caught, gun owners are burned to death, tax protestors are brutally beaten and jailed, grandmothers are stripped searched at airports, marijuana smokers are imprisoned, etc. It's all good stuff they do to keep America free, so don't be subversive.
. . . how do we vet the legitimacy of the information posted?
/. or kuro5hin) to determine an item's validity? Otherwise, it just becomes another rumour mill a la F---ed Company, of little value to anyone except the tin-foil hat crowd.
The article was much too short to provide detail, but the one concern I have is that posting reports of suspicious government activity doesn't guarantee its truth. Will there be some type of mechanism that will allow peer review (just like
What they have to do is create a /. type system. For example, everyone would be able to rate the quality of the information, so information that is of high value is "modded up", and the poor information, the insulting/wrong info is modded down. Unless they install a rating system, the entire project is going to all the nutcases who believe all sorts of trashy things.
Good Luck in getting any FOI information about Federal Judges. Even though they are subject to the same public information disclosure laws that everybody eles in the federal governemt there is one aspect that is different. To insure their safety all FOI requests about them are highly documented about the requester and then vetted by the Judge before any information is released. In other words 'they' know about all requests for information and the specific Judge controls whether the information is released or not.
zenray
In light of that, I propose they call it "Slashdot II"
All's true that is mistrusted
Read more about how your "elected" officials are
profiting from the "war" on Iraq.
I have three questions:
1. Where is Osama bin Laden?
2. Where is Saddam Hussein?
3. Where is President-Vice Cheney?
Thanks and have a nice day,
W00t
DrMorpheus didn't "write" this post, he just cut & pasted the first 2 paragraphs from the article he linked to. If you're going to do this, you need to specify that you're quoting the article.
Finally a website where I will be able to tell everyone how the smoking man kidnapped me and sold me into alien slavery where they stole my dna to make a human/alien hybred so they will be able to take over the world soon! Maybe now I can take off my aluminum foil hat. Scully won't return my phone calls. :(
"A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary." so, basically a forum? Why do they need to distribute content? whats the legal threat? "Postings are the responsibility of the poster" or "we do not claim what we say to be true" why go out of their ways to distribute files that, IMHO, correspond to free speech ??? they have the right to post that stuff. if you ask me, its just a way to disguise a technical project.
The next step should be a discussion forum somewhat akin to slashdot where readers also moderate posts to flter up the interesting ones, while keeping it decentralized over P2P.
I'd like to see more technical details. How does the posting work? This model would be different from a normal data-driven website where PHP and a DBMS could reside on a central server and retrieve information. Will the server at MIT be a P2P client that gathers posts from clients together on the fly for each http request?
Anybody have more info? Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't see any links to technical info on the site itself.
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
What makes them think that they would somehow be responsible if they were to do something simple and straightforward like a discussion forum? The high court has already ruled on several of these kind of cases and free speech won. For example, they struck down the CDA and they also said that Yahoo didn't have to rat out an anonymous Yahoo Groups poster.
Why use an obscure technology? That will have more of a chilling effect on active participation than any other factor.
why use something like napster when freenet alrady exists? of course, it is very slow right know,but instead of making their own new thing, why don't they help make freenet better and then use it as the basis of their network. dunno, just my two cents
Investing forum
Now we can make up lies about the government (or anyone really) and they are guaranteed to be unable to punish anyone for it! Hooray for freedom of speech!
If you are willing to wait long enough, history repeats itself.
Now, the citizens of the USA (academics at that) are having to resort to using the tactics of the underground to disseminate information about the conduct, actions and transgressions of their government for fear of persecution.
There was a time when people respected the US for its stance on individual rights, freedoms and the ideals of America.
While not a direct, damning criticism, one of the HUGE indicators of a state entering into an oppressive regime is when academics are not valued, and when academics are not free to openly discuss, read and disseminate ideas.
This has already happened in the US... is this an indicator of what is to come, or just an anomaly?
No Total Government Awareness program would be complete without chronicling information on every single police officer, district attorney, etc.
Imagine how hard it would be for police to get anything done when it's public knowledge that they beat their wives, run every single red light they've ever come across (see video), and go to "massage parlors" for hours at a time (maybe to meet up with their congressmen).
Firstly if the information is wrong, and you can't remove it, it destroys the value of the site as a resource.
Now on liability.
If someone posts fraudulent information, wouldn't they be the ones that are liable?
If the hosting site is liable then you have the second issue.
1 The place where the information is.
2 The holder of the link to that location could also be found liable. Some courts have ruled that linking is.
You think the intelligence agencies will go to court if someone reveals top secret information to the public? How naive... - If they can get hold of name and adress of the offendant, they will execute him one way or the other. THAT causes the need of strong anonymity...
"they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way"
The main problem with Napster and the reason why it failed was because it kept a centralized list of files available, so they could simply shut down those servers.
The newer p2p clients do not have this centralized list, but are truly distributed.
I've heard this comparison a couple of times before and it is just wrong.
(Here's a mirror of the GIA, for those of you who care: http://terror.snm-hgkz.ch/mirrors/www.thegia.com/ )
The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way.
That's great... We're worried about getting sued, so we're going to borrow a technique from a company that was sued out of existence. Smart plan.
I've been running a local GIA of sorts for a while, and the ACLU says all we need to do is use a small disclaimer at the end of every page stating that the comments belong to the posters of said comment.
I delete server logs on a daily basis, and almost all information is submitted anonymously.
I understand the fear of prosecution, but is P2P really well suited for this?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just a distributed messageboard. Or maybe closer to an anonymous mailing list. You send out a message and it gets sent to a bunch of machines...
Like several others here, I don't understand the legal issues. Slashdot is a central server architeture, yet slander abounds. How is this different then a distributes storage slashdot?
Like all good things music was shared heavily throughout the smarter people in the 'scene'. Unfortunatly, p2p type programs like napster came around and brought yet another thing to thet mass's of undeserving people. This is the way it is with all things, so many undeserving people...
http://interserver.net/
I designed that network independtly of actually hearing about it.
Its original purpose in my mind would be to make Diablo 1 unhackable even if there is no central server.
Basically every node polices the other and stores as much character information. Then when one logs on, it gets the character information from the other nodes.
Its tough to think about P2P, and its work coding them, so bleh.
My newest P2P invention would be a serverless quake game. All computers spam out whats going on on their side, and other computers take in all the information and try and draw a picture with it. Its risky buisness, but it should average out latency so there are no lag spikes.
God spoke to me
you must be kidding? eXPose the georgewellian fuddite southern baptist freemason corepirate nazi payper liesense stock markup FraUD execrable, right on the wwweb? yikes.
lookout bullow.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator.... get ready to see the light.
gone are the daze of deception, published as "news" being suppLIEd buy phonIE ?pr? ?firm? hypenosys talknicians/stock markup FraUDs?
Remember, you might not like who's in power at the moment, but secrecy has valid purposes, such as keeping alive sources of intelligence [Many Bothans died to bring you this information...]
...-.-
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
I thought this sounded familiar - here it is!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It is about time we fight the evil parts of the government!!
-Seriv
Does it seem to anyone else like the GIA program is going to drown in its own chaff? I mean, if it's really supposed to be giving people "insider" information about the government, how are they going to confirm that any submission is true? Think of all the just-shy-of-slanderous commercials that air around election day... and that costs money. If people can anonymously, cheaply spread whatever "information" they want about their least favorite candidate, we'll never know whether anything we read is accurate.
Good observation! Information on this network might become rather worthless.
Why don't they just write up the allegations in the form of a song (popular music, i.e. "folk" music, *used* to be used to transmit stories after all) and stick it out on kazaa etc.
... hmm, that *would* be an improvement on the usual dull droning on and on about sex like 90% of the crap the listening public has to endure.
Angry music and properly satirical lyrics
Like I say, kill two birds with one stone.
That's not going to protect them from legal action, it's just going to ensure that any such false postings stay online forever, eventually turning this system into the most unreliable source of news there is.
...that P2P has legitimate uses, and is not some tool for thieves and hax0rs and rebels and whatnot...
:(
Expect p2p to become ilegal, in a store near you...
Did anybody else read that as "GNAA to use P2P to Avoid Litigation?"
What implications would a system like this have on US national security?
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
I could have sworn that Poindexter's program was called "Total Information Awareness", not "Terrorist Information Awareness".
/., saying "information collection" and "government" in the same sentence automatically leads to a conclusion that the system is designed to take away every bit of your privacy for the NWO to exploit.
Equally, I was under the impression that the aim of TIA wasn't total domestic surveillance of every bit of your life. But then again, on
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Why not just move the site offshore & hire foreigners to maintain it from anonymous submissions? It seems to be the answer for everything else and CEO's love it.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
The problem is that averages don't matter. The average child is never injured by firearms. But "Every year, 500 children die gun-related deaths." gets legislation passed.
Even in journalism, only information that supports the journalist's side (or doesn't harm it considerably) gets included. That's where "out of context" quotes and "sound bytes" come in.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
This opens new horizons for the Internet ! No longer will contents be censored ! It will be like a Free Internet !
They should call it "Freenet" ! Oh wai
I understand the attempt to diffuse legal responsibility for false and defamatory information in the GIA database, but wouldn't the public interest be better served to create a GIA-like database where the information was known to be unbiased and accurate?
The credibility of such a database is defined by it's weakest links. If the database becomes cluttered with inaccurate information from any conspiracy loon who comes along or person with an axe to grind against a political rival it will fail to be a credible source of information on individuals and organizations who influence public policy. This problem is exacerbated if sources of information remain anonymous and can't be verified.
Such a database could typify the old adage of "garbage in, garbage out" with truly important information getting lost in the noise.
I think Ferris Fremont is on the line
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
There's a neat idea that could be borrowed from freenet: digital signing. A person could choose to digitally sign all their postings to the p2p network, even if they remain anonymous and don't give their name. In this manner, a person can build a reputation for being trustworthy, or "on the inside", or "a thinker", etc. System support for searching for legitimately signed docs might be helpful.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I've heard this comparison a couple of times before and it is just wrong.
/.ers don't agree with it (and for the record, neither do I), at least not completely, but I've seen and heard a great deal of this kind of sentiment coming across the wires lately. I'd even go so far as to guess that it wouldn't take much research to come up with a published article or three where the author has at least intimated ideas like this.
/. poster. As long as something can be called into question and made to look "bad", anything else that you want to look bad can be associated with it regardless of those annoying "facts" that so many of the weaker minded fools tend to rely on.
I've heard the same "Napster = P2P" argument myself, and what you have to consider is that it doesn't seem to matter to non-geeks how Napster, KaZaa, or whatever accomplish what they do. Replace "Napster = P2P" with the definitions that a lot of people use, at least as far as their understanding or apathy will let them define such things, and you get "copyright infringing illegal thing = copyright infringing illegal thing".
There are hours of expletive-laced debate behind that definition, I think, because a lot of
To the dark powers of FUD-osity, Napster is P2P is Linux is the Free Software Movement is a communist is a typical
I do so hate having to correct you people.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
In Soviet Russia the government watches... ummm nevermind.
When are people gonna realize the beowulf cluster comments are stale and stopped being funny after the first 5 posts? Morons.
Fool! Don't you know everything on the Internet is true!
Oh, except that scientology stuff. Those guys are fucking nutters.
Sort of like the purpose behind Iraq Coalition Casuality Count. Check out thier methodology. It would be nice to have a collection or reliable sources all together from public (read=verifiable) information.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Having been on the scene since the early 90's,
heres a little "music file sharing" Prior Art:
1.) IRC (still the largest non-p2p source; #mp3jukebox, #mp3passion, etc)
2.) FTP (both anon. on public dumps and l/p within the right "group")
3.) WAIS (what you used to search all those Anon. FTP sites, ftpsearch.yahoo.com kind of replaced it for me)
4.) USENET (brazenly open sharing up until the napster case popularized it all, still heavily traded under alt.binaries.*, although encryption has certainly made being part of "the group" a pre-req. for participation)
these are certainly not the only places music was traded "illegally" prior to the glorious birth of napster.
the important point to make here is that the 4 previously mentioned methods were not music-centric. mp3's/wav's were just a fraction of the content, albeit a very desireable fraction.
napster was the first protocol/service specifically designed for just trading music.
which is where the creators crossed the line of service ambiguity. all the other methods have legitimate uses outside of music swapping as well.
/* * pope1 */
Don't intentionally distribute information you know is false, and you won't have a problem. Newspapers, for example, publish all kinds of nasty things without getting nailed by liability suits. If a major concern of a project is how to protect themselves from liability when they screw up (or worse), something has gone wrong with that project.
You can get some of this information from opensecrets.org.
A way to get around lawyers suing you to oblivion for revealing the raw truth of people, organizations, and agendas.
You are what you do when it counts.
No court of law - no lawsuit - no legal strongarm tactics will ever change that fact. Sounds like this just might work to keep checks and balances if it get enough inertia and hits mainstream use. On a side note this is just one more installment of how technology and ideas will get around any obstacle you throw at it. Go true innovation go!
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false.
And why, exactly, should they (whomever they may be) be immune from legal action should they post falsified data?
Check your sources before distributing some random bit of gossip.
Too bad slashdot did not think it was worth posting at the time.
But I had the same idea of using P2P as a under ground internet, with data being store in multiple locations in fragments each fragment would also be stored on multiple machines. This way could get around copyright with fare use, since no one machine had a complete data file.
Only when accessing the data would the file be pulled back together from the diffrent locations.
And if one site was shut down a redundent site would be used to download that data fragment.
Also would have random data check to compare fragments for corouption, sites that send out coroupted fragments would be rejected.
To help prevent corouption from outside sources, aka the government or other sources. If a site sends out too many coroupted data fragments, it would be black listed.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
One, use anonymous, public keys. Create a reputation system where anybody gives a personal rating to anyone else. (Sorta like Slashdot "friend or foe"). Reputations build over time, and some sources will be more reliable than others. You can decide who you will trust to tell you what's going on. You can rate sources, and you can see how others rate sources.
Two, use what's called 'triangulation' in interview journalism. If three or more 'independant' sources agree on a datum, is more likely to be true than if just one says it's true. (if there is some kind of sinister collaboration to hack the triangulation system, fall back on the reputation system).
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet
Isn't information distributed around the internet basicly what Usenet is? One can only hope however that this medium won't become saturated with Viagra, Human growth hormone, and "Male enlargement" ads.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
FreeNet is quite easy to use, once you get the hang of it...Now if our friend NineNine cant understand how to use it welll...
For those who question the need for protection from lawsuits, consider that you can be sued for publishing the truth. Also, a distributed system is less vulnerable to destruction than is a central-storage system.
Opengov intends to illuminate of the dark corners of government where nasty things hide, by collecting information from a contributors. Done properly, it will combine information from all sides of the political spectrum to produce a coherent picture of our government. I have high hopes for its success.
All about me
We accept that the government and the justice system constantly make suboptimal (and sometimes dangerous or vicious) decisions, even with respect to widely-agreed-upon objectives. Given the current state of understanding about the nature of society and cognition, it isn't too much of a stretch to say that the error in the system arises from the fundamental "axioms". You can't have the possibility of a solution without the possibility of error.
In public discourse, I consider libel, incorrect statements, fallacious and incorrect arguments, crackpot-ideas, statements made by vested interests masquerading as altruists, etc, as part of the scope for solution error. An issue to be managed, but one which doesn't bear on the need to better solve the problem (with a more-transparent government, the freedom to inform, to become informed and to engage in public debate), or on the valuable outputs of the problem-solving process.
In conflict, it is a common technique to use the inherent imperfection of a proposal or activity as a straw man to attack the central premise. The value, to the public good, of an informed public debate is central to democratic mythology, even if the debate and the media which support it are not perfect.
This P2P proposal attempts to build a platform for public discourse, one which could provide another counterbalance to the integrated and well-defended machine that is organized government. Even if there is libellous or clearly offensive material posted on such a system, we can't fall into the trap of confusing the lack of perfect function in the P2P system with a lack of great public value.
If we can accept the massive amount of error and waste in the operation of government and judicial systems, why can we not accept the relatively minor disadvantages of a platform for public communication and debate?
Perhaps (and maybe not) the growth in the size of society and the increasing integration and consolidation of institutions requires, as a counterbalance, the freedom to publish anonymous statements widely, to inform your fellow citizens without the fear of institutional vengeance.
I believe that as our governments and corporations leverage the value of technology to their advantage, and not in ways which are necessarily aligned with the public good, that the public uses of technology needs to match the institutional use stride for stride in order to maintain and improve our quality of life, and further, that we need to recognize this, accept it and encourage it, warts and all.
The freenet project is an excellent tool to publish anonymously. With normal P2P you have to be connected in order to share the content, but with freenet you can publish, turn off your computer, and your content will still be there available to everyone.
Freenet is a work in progress, but there is no doubt that freenet will become a p2p force to be reckoned with, it's just a question of when.
Freenetters out there should just take it upon themselves to publish the GIA material on freenet, it will become the defacto database for this project, and the GIA project is one of the projects that Freenet was created in mind for.
Thomas Jefferson was a self-proclaimed Unitarian, not a "Deist" as somebody has labeled him. The Unitarian Universalists of America have districts named after both TJ and his scientist/philosopher friend Joseph Priestley.
That label might be more accurate for Washington, really - AFAIK he never claimed to be Episcopal, and attended several churches of different denomination.
Jefferson's OPPONENTS accused him of "deistical beliefs" (a phrase which has little or no meaning, then or now) and he DENIED it.
If this is an example of how the system would work, it's just another heap of propaganda and bad journalism. They grabbed somebody else's chart of US president's religions and didn't check it out!
In essence, since the Recording Industry Ass. of America and it's partner in crime....er...film, the Motion Picture Ass. of America are against P2P, that would make 'em a terrorist organization (not that we didn't know this already).
Hopefully, Ashcroft will beat the snot out of the RIAA and MPAA for being pro-terrorism since for hell sure he ain't gonna do it for them being the latest, next-generation mafia families (techno-mob).
The value of the speech protected is weighed against the harm that such speech can cause to the community. "Fire" in a crowded movie house and all that.
The most highly protected form of speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution is political speech.
Commercial speech, by comparison, receives far less robust protection in the courts. Clearly, there are types of speech which are neither political, nor commercial.
This action ties specifically political speech to the free use of P2P networks. In doing so, the users of such networks now bind the interests of powerful parties to those of file swappers.
Threaten to shoot down alleged file swappers, and the alleged swappers will now be able to complain that their political voice is being hushed.
Consideration of chilling effects against political speech often weigh heavily in high court decisions. Legislation that would silence such speech--or even make it less likely or more costly to speak is weak.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Oh my god... this is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Hehe! Ya, it's about time! Congradulations guys, you've we're doing something.
I'm not anti-microsoft. I'm anti-bullshit. Which means I'm anti-microsoft.
I think this might be the first ever attempt to create a forum with less credibility than USENET!
BUt this is the stupidest fucking idea I've heard of! Who the hell is going to post shit on this board? How can you trust anything on it? WTF?!?!!? The idea sounds cool and makes sense for about 5 seconds.
Moderation: +1 pwnage
It could also be used to prove some accusations untrue!
take the anti-authoritarian stance of much of the P2P community, the technology that's getting the most mentions on mtv news, add a few doctorates for that glossy, self-righteous veneer, and this is what you get. freenet's doing it already, doing it better, and doing it for people who actually need protection in order to speak out against their governments. this = +5 lame
P2P is fine if they want to use it, but I don't think that hiding behind technology is a very good solution to their problem, if indeed the problem is real.
A much simpler defense against false reports is to encourage people who submit reports to suggest ways to verify their report, and at the same time to encourage others to actually do the verification, possibly attaching/linking a claim of verifcation to the original report. Readers would be openly informed that unverified reports should be treated as exactly that, and may be false.
The problem that P2P might help solve is the case where the government, or a group of individuals within the government, gets pissed off enough to try to shut the site down. Then you'd have a giant legal Whack-A-Mole, which would be fun to watch.
Wow, this might turn out to be the start of the 21st centurys witchhung. If only mcarthy was still around, he'd be for this like crazy.
How many lives are you prepared to ruin? And I'm serious, the media will be all over this like crazy, pulling ideas from it like crazy, and doing the finger pointing. Along with the feds being cranky, you'll have wrecked an innocent life. Wow, not the greatest idea eh?
Welcome to the End
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
TIA was a product of DARPA, under the auspices of the Department of Defense, and concieved by a private NGO. Your petty politics are disgusting.
Whatever amount of related legislation gets passed is a tiny drop in a bucket compared to what would be passed if the average was "every year, one out of two average children die gun-related deaths". Averages do matter. Even though they don't matter to the complete exclusion of outliers, they're still highly relevant.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Here's another one for you: What exactly is the difference between this and the free press? I thought we already had dozens of magazines that target precisely this kind of thing. To name three:
weekly standard
new republic
2%6d0l0dotcom
note that I got a right wing, left wing, and radical nut wing all at once.
(sorry guys, You have good info, I read you, I like your stuff, but lets face it, you are loony, and you are radical - "but 'ey, Don't us girls jus' love tha'?" - trainspotting)
(btw, I'm a guy)
-ron
... at first glance you thought the subject of the article said "GNAA to use P2P to avoid litigation" :-p
litigaton? Is it anything like litigation?
Now, watch me be modded troll for having the audacity to point out an error.
That's the funny thing about Slashdot: most people here would agree that errors in language meant for consumption by a computer are a bad thing, that code should be as error-free as possible, and that writing code with few errors is the mark of a skilled and educated programmer, and that identifying bugs and other coding errors that you happen to see in publicly available code (e.g., GPLed stuff) is a good thing. However, if you dare to point out an error in language intended for human consumption, you will be denounced as a troll and grammar nazi.
You can mod me off-topic (this is OT, after all) and I will not object, but anyone who mods me troll is simply wrong.
It seems like an easy way to have the stories distributed in a fashion guaranteed to come from these guys is to use something like Konspire2B (http://konspire.sourceforge.net/)
It supports sharing of files through "channels" and you are always guaranteed that files received through a particular channel because of public/private key encryption.
Cheers (:^)
.gentoorc
Brilliant, people. Just brilliant.
Remember: When the government dissimates propaganda and disinformation, it is perfectly ok; but if you do it, it is not ok...
Children should be taught that in school... oh wait, they already are...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
The site seems only to cover the public lives of politicians, but the TIA and such things monitor denizens in both their private and public lives. I didn't expect the project would follow senators to their homes, but, maybe it should?
Why don't they just write up the allegations in the form of a song and stick it out on kazaa etc.
It's a song about 'party time.' It goes something like, 'Come to the party.' It sounds of course like a fun party; you know. Then later the vocal line goes, 'Join the party?' The singer says, 'Everybody join the party.' And a subtrack goes, Is everybody at the party? Is everybody present at the party?' Only if you listen carefully, they're saying, 'Is everybody president at the party?' and the singer is singing something about 'joining the party' at the same time the word 'president' is said - repeated, in fact by, by an ensemble answer: 'President, president, president, join - joined - the party,' and so forth.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
There's already a project for this.
http://freenetproject.org/
Why is it news that they want to reinvent the wheel?
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
Freenet allows you to post things others might not want you to post, anonymously, securely, and if your computer is turned off, that information can still be stored over the network in a nodes 'cache'... the more popular the file, the easier, faster, and more distributed the file gets....
Freenet
Freeweb - easy way to post websites(freesites)
Frost - a message board frontend for downloading/searching freenet, very neat!
...but that's what the original story said. I don't know if the MIT researchers actually meant Napster or whether the reporter got it wrong.
Debunking the "59 Deceits"