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Boing Boing Founder Warns of "Internet AIDS"

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the orwell-was-an-optimist dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Cory Doctorow, founder of Boing Boing, says he doesn't have a problem in principle with the automated network defense systems that guard the Internet against malware, spamigation bots, and other network nasties. However, in his article 'The Future of Internet Immune Systems,' he bemoans the problems caused by 'Internet autoimmune disorder' — where the network defenses designed to block network attacks are automated and instantaneous, but the systems in place to reverse erroneous lockdowns are manual and unresponsive."

4 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Doctorow not a founder of BoingBoing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't know how many times I've heard Doctorow say in interviews that he is not a founder of BoingBoing. Fraunfelder is the only founder still involved with BoingBoing (I think he is also the only current contributor who was around when BoingBoing was in print before it went electronic).

  2. Re:Auto-immune != immuno-deficient by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Informative
    It's kind of a dumb rant - automatic systems are cheap and fast, manual (meat space) systems are slow and expensive. If he is trying to make some analogy between the Internet and the Immune System, well, you can do it but it's pretty crude. The immune system in a human, for example, is a complex and delicate balance between acceptance and destruction.

    There are many, many examples of problems when that balance is disrupted. AIDS on one hand when you don't have enough of an immune response, Lupus when your immune system is too jazzed up. Furthermore, the immune system is incredibly complex and has layers and layers of feedback systems, redundancies, control loops and things we really don't understand well. I suppose AIDS would be a Windows box hooked up to a cable modem. Not long for this world.... Lupus might be what Doctorow is complaining about - too much "immune" activity.

    Unlike the Internet, the immune system has had millions of years to evolve to it's present state - and it is still hardly a perfect system. Perhaps some up and coming "Internet Immunologist" might start out with this course to take advantage of those millenniums of experiments

    Or perhaps we should just chuck the immune system thing and try to come up with a car analogy.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  3. Re:Blacklists by s7uar7 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Fine, block it for the duration of the attack, but don't keep it permanently on the list. Most spam and DoS attacks originate from hijacked PCs on dynamic IP addresses, so you're not only blocking the PC that's been hijacked, but also the guy who happens to get that IP address next, and the one after, and the one after that, etc, etc.

  4. Not founder, not AIDS, otherwise, w00t! by mouthbeef · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hey there -- I wrote the FA, and for the record:

    * I didn't found Boing Boing -- I co-edit it with Mark Frauenfelder (who *did* found it, along with Carla Sinclair), Xeni Jardin and David Pescovitz

    * I didn't use the word AIDS in the article, and I don't think that this is comparable to AIDS; I used "autoimmune disorder," as in "allergy" or even "lupus" -- that is, any time when the systems that are supposed to protect you end up attacking you

    Otherwise, many w00ts for this making it to the /. front door!