Slashdot Mirror
Nominations Open For "Most Likely to be Shut Down By Government"
The corporate overlords at SourceForge asked me to name a Slashdot category for their upcoming
Community Choice Awards and to let you guys select the winner. I have named my category "Most Likely to be Shut Down by a Government Agency." We're going to run this like we do an Ask Slashdot call for questions — post your nominations into the comments here. Use moderation to send up good ideas. In the upcoming days we'll post another story where you can vote on the actual winner. Nominations need to include the project name, a link to some sort of official website, and a paragraph of why you think they deserve to win. The project that wins will gain fame, notoriety, and maybe a cease and desist order that they could print out and frame if they had that kind of time.
The EFF's Patent Busing Project.
Or has it been shut down already?
The GNU software radio project
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
is a good candidate. It proposes to let you make electromagnetic waves in a manner not subject to prior restraint by the FCC, and without the back-doors intelligence agencies have on many current means of communications.
This is naughty.
wikileaks, followed by cryptome.org for doing a better job and mirroring the same content
Matt
Hey, they've actually committed some crimes now, right?
Freenet, especially now that its reaching the point of widespread usability.
www.trapster.com
It's an interactive thingy where you post where cops are hiding in speed traps.
I'm surprised it's still up, honestly.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
We already have loads of censoring going on. for example, the 60 minute interview with Sibel edmunds was immediately gagged and then the studio was told to hand over EVERYTHING. In addition, ALL news org have been warned ahead to not talk about her.
In terms of software, PirateBay/Cryptome/GnuRadio. Anything dealing with encryption will NOT be shutdown, unless it involves a brand new and interesting algo.
Tor would be a good candidate for being outlawed by an overbearing government. I don't know much about it, but i can bet legal online anonymity will go if things keep going the way they are... -Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Unbreakable encryption was invented by the US Army Signal Service in 1917. It is called the "one time pad". The encryption key is random and is as long as the message. The encryption is unbreakable as long as each key is used only once.
The drawback of a one-time pad system is the logistics of transporting the keys and having only two copies, that are destroyed after they are used.
Roosevelt and Churchill had transatlantic voice conversations during World War II that were encrypted using one-time pad technology. The conversations would remain unbreakable even if recordings of the radio transmissions were available today.
I don't need any 'approval' from anyone.
It was an experimental encryption algorithm and I screwed up
my hard drive, and now I can't decrypt it.
Does that help?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Really asking what site you think is going to be taken down next by some government agency seems like fear mongering in it's self.
Most take down notices have come not from law enforcement but from companies not the government.
The vast majority of these are civil actions.
Isn't this heading into the tin foil hats and black helicopter area?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
All that music being played and nary a cent going to the RIAA is just begging for a court intervention. Now they also have the IRS looking into the Electric Sheep Company / CSI:NY promotion and whether or not the 'guides' income should be taxed and there are questions as to whether labour law should be getting involved with all the Slingo hosts and their employers. I give it two years tops.
The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of my brain.
This was the first organization that popped into mind.
Sure they have lax rules surrounding them in the countries that they are based but it's only a matter of time before it goes beyond "making an example" and they are made "a precedent".
After them, the next on the chopping block would be Mininova.
BitTorrent only offers a software package the enables user to share data with an ease rivaling that of an open share on a network but without all of the hassles of completely insecure connections. That doesn't seem to stop the RIAA and the MPAA from trying to shut down even the idea that people should be able to use the Internet for what it was intended for, a free exchange of information. The software package was and is quite novel in the way it handles traffic and allows it to be shared across multiple connections and multiple computers. This is load distribution at a level higher than "enterprise class data systems". This is a huge productivity tool that can be used for sharing information over any kind of distributed network. It allows freedom and power.
What's going to stop it? The RIAA, MPAA and giant ISP's like Comcast and Verizon that throttle back torrent traffic. They will make cases for costs in bandwidth and network maintenance. The fact that many people use these types of peer-to-peer networks successfully and almost untraceably to share copyrighted information only adds to the arguments that the RIAA and MPAA will make to get it shut down. Since there entire websites like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, IsoHunt and even the BitTorrent website that link users to a large number of seeds for the torrent swarms of information copyrighted and non-copyrighted and such, it doesn't bode well for the tool either.
The RIAA and MPAA will use strong arm tactics and cite currently pending investigations in other parts of the world against such sites that employ the use of such software to cut the problem off at the head. It will likely lead to sweeping legislation that will outlaw many forms of file sharing. For references, look at what the RIAA and MPAA have managed to successfully do against those users with home media center looking to place digital copies of their license media on to online storage. Sure, selling the means to do the illegal act isn't illegal but that doesn't mean someone won't try to make it illegal.
DIY Drones: amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and open-source Predators.
We're talking about a device that has a radio antenna, a microphone, and probably CCD. It moves around all day, seeing inputs from all those different sensors, from your unique perspective. It's practically an entropy engine.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
"Possession of lock picking equipment is intent."
Very good point. the whole 'possession with intent' argument used by our Gov't. and law enforcement/court system is just pure FUD. Currently THEY get to define 'intent' just based on possession, and that is the problem.
Common sense would dictate that 'intent' should be a seperate issue from possession, but by 'bundling' intent with possession,all bets are off.
It seems to be 'the WAR on mentality has automagically equated possession with 'intent', despite the facts actually present.
The 'facts' don't matter as long as you fit (even loosely) the 'profile'.
ARRGHHH! This 'New World Order' mentality really chaps my ass.
How is Boston Harbor setup for a 21'st century Tea Party these days? I think we need to explore this question here in the USA. Just thinking...
P.S. I know I am ranting in an offtopic direction, but when I enlisted in the US Army, I took an oath to defend our Constitution from enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC. WTF?!?!?!
I am really confused by what my proper course of action should be anymore. My instincts reload '1776-The Revolution' into RAM, but I doubt it would work now days with the apathy and 'consumerism' that is rampant here. I AM A CITIZEN (Egads- I hate this Newspeak Spelling, but nevermind), not a CONSUMER! I am a consumer when I go to a restaurant or pub- maybe when I go to a grocery store- otherwise I am a citizen, not a 'consumer'.
Is it too off-topic to say: I miss the social attitudes of my youth? (for reference, I was born in 1958- grad'ed HS in 1976- yes, I am older than dirt for most of you, and proud of it- I have seen a lot of really cool shit happening, but also a lot of not-cool shit too)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti