The Empires Strike Back

Alien54 writes "Back when the Internet was young - oh, say, eight years ago - there was a school of thought that held that cyberspace was its own sovereign nation. For one thing, 'The Net perceives censorship as damage, and routes around it.' What government could control what was said on the Net? [...] Maybe it's time to change that into, 'Governments perceive the Internet as damage, and gang up on it.' So says Net War columnist Wendy Grossman in an article discussing the recent raids on Indymedia. She makes an interesting case."

Comments

Re:First post?

[sangreal66]

"That's called the electoral process, in a true democracy you can do exactly that. Perhaps the question is do you live in a true democracy or a two party state."

Ever think the reason the two parties remain dominant is that the rest of the country agrees with them?

Many things the internet never was.

[ducomputergeek]

At the end of the day, the lines of communication are owned physically by someone somewhere. Whether it be the high speed backbone fiber lines, the satilites, routers, servers, etc. someone owns it. Countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba have been effective at filtering contents. Now can governments ever be 100% effective, none ever has. How many people ever read an underground newspaper? I did in college, also might have written an article or two also.

However the nature of the internet has changed in the last 8 - 10 years. I remember designing simple webpages back in high school 10 years ago and even my first couple years in college when search engines, especially Google in the early days, brought a wealth of research information. However one had to be careful and double check facts because like every medium, not everything publish on the net is accurate. That has only gotten worse. I can remember the dates of people's birth being wrong. Although most likely due to editing/typing error rather than intentional misinformation.

Today, I find the internet an increasing annoyance, not a convience. Granted, I've made a pretty decent living as a consultant in IT because the world of the internet has gotten a lot darker. Even with Spamassassin and Junk filtering, 50% of my email or more is still spam or viruses. I even switched to Macintosh for my daily use. Partely because I fix everyone's Windows machines all day, partley because its a Unix OS with application support from major commercial vendors, and because it works. But I've gone from website design to helping businesses deal with Spam, viruses, spyware, etc. etc..

Searching on google anymore is oftentimes annoying as the first 20 results are someone trying to sell me something that's spent lots of $$$ for SEO. Not only that, but there is a lot of crap on the internet these days and a lot of it is Opinion. If I want to get opinions, and a good laugh, I'll watch Bill O'Riley for the first 10 minutes or so.

Anymore I check my email, visit a couple sites on a routine basis, and get off. Even my dad picks up a dozen or so spyware cookies just going around visiting his couple sites a day every week.

I work with more average joes than geeks or lawyers and people are fed up with it. They don't care if it does take government intervention to do so. They don't really want government to be involved, but to them clearly the internet cannot regulate itself has was the popular belief 5 years ago.

Something has to give, and generally people (for better or worse) will turn to government.