Rushkoff Proposes We Fork the Internet

Shareable writes "Douglas Rushkoff: 'The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network — its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation — is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them — that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the net should be enough to turn us elsewhere.' And he goes on to suggest citizens fork the Internet & makes a call for ideas how to do that."

Comments

I think

[Anonymous Coward]

I think all you need is one of those cable splitter things.

Re:I think

[masterwit]

Make sure you get the Monster Cable version, we want nice strong clean signal!

He's right

[Omnifarious]

Both the physical infrastructure and the logical underpinnings need to be forked. The current Internet is both insecure and not private enough. The physical infrastructure is easily controlled by a few central entities. It's all broken.

We should be building our own physical infrastructure and put fences in contracts that keep any entity from ever owning a significant part of that infrastructure. We should be adopting protocols that are secure, always encrypted and make it easy to be largely anonymous.

When its built, businesses will come, because that's where we are. But they will never, ever build it themselves. At least not big ones.

It took about 15 years to find some fairly effective control handles. This time, lets make sure it's at least 30 or 40 years before it can be figured out.

Re:He's right

[spun]

Don't be stupid, we shouldn't give the Internet to policymakers, who are, after all, just tools of the rich. We should cut out the middleman and give it right to the rich.

As with all debates about regulations, the rich and powerful would like us to think that we have two choices: regulations they will control and thus get what they want, or no regulations, which means they get what they want. They want us to think we can't win. They want us to feel that our best weapon for controlling their abuses, government regulation (otherwise known as "the rule of law"), is a tool they control. But they only control it if we let them. Regulations are like guns, useful and morally neutral tools, but dangerous in the hands of the uninformed or evil. Well, the rich and powerful can pry regulations from my cold, dead hands.

To mix a metaphor, I am not going to throw the rich into the briar patch of deregulation, that is exactly what they want.

Re:He's right

[Anonymous Coward]

But the Internet was always "in the hands of policymakers". They funded its creation and have regulated its development.

Not really. Before the mid 1990s, "policymakers" was mostly Jon Postel (a single person "ran" the Internet more efficiently than ICANN and its bureaucracy). Getting routable addresses was just a matter of asking for them, and anyone with sufficient competency was able to get a SLIP line up and running on a reasonable budget. The only "regulated" central point of failure was name resolution, and that's a service that runs on top of the Internet, not part of the Internet. There really was a "golden age Wild West of freedom"; just because you didn't experience it doesn't make it any less real to those of us who had "internet" before you were born.

If you think the government will somehow make the Internet more "fair", then you are a fool. The very fact that they acquired regulatory power illegally (without any legal Constitutional or legislative authority to do so) demonstrates despotism on their part. At least with private corporations, you can choose a competitor.

The best parts of the Internet exist in spite of government, not because of it. The best that can be hoped for its future is benign neglect. The power of the FCC should be limited to open air RF propagation. It is already a tyrannical organization that oversteps its power and limits freedom in a variety of ways, and there is nothing about its recent actions that suggest any goals otherwise. This is nothing but a power grab in the name of a mythical "net neutrality" that has never been and can never be.

Re:He's right

[shadowfaxcrx]

plus you have to trust that a coalition of nodes on your non-internet doesn't form and start to control the direction of the network. And the likelihood of avoiding that is somewhere between 0 and never. At worst, the corporations would band together and make their own nodes, and make so many of them that the network became dependent on them. Or they'd just bribe the people who ran the nodes to run them the way the corporations want.

As long as humans are in control of a system in any way, those humans can be corrupted to bend the system to a large entity's will. That means that logically, the only way we can have a global information network that remains free and open is to have it designed, built, and run, entirely by machines.

Re:He's right

[spun]

First, law, as a concept, is morally neutral, but the rule of law where everyone is equal under the law, is unambiguously a good thing.

You claim that "IF" the law makes private interconnecting networks between two people without prior legal authorization, we will not be able to form a second Internet. What a huge If! Do you seriously think this will happen? Who would support such a law, and who would it benefit? What amazing logical leaps you make. If becomes when without explanation. In your final paragraph, you make the leap that your fever-dreams will certainly become reality, and if we want a free regulation, we will need to break the law. What a romantic and dashing freedom fighter you must imagine yourself to be. Too bad you have let the rich and powerful convince you to throw them into the briar patch of deregulation, and are thus fighting on the side opposing freedom.

Re:He's right

[EdIII]

That would never work by itself.

You are speaking of Mesh networking which is absolutely the way to go to help create a truly anonymous infrastructure beyond the controls that we so despise right now. However, you can't link Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Phoenix with Mesh networking. You also cannot get around the fact that the pipes need to be quite large between high density areas.

Businesses and data centers could never operate on a Mesh network either. They will still need to operate the way they do now, which is actually fine. We let the telcos operate their networks with the peering and transit agreements that allow packets from Los Angeles to make it all the way through the desert to Las Vegas.

What we need do to is get the city and communities to use their collective bargaining power and operate wireless POPs throughout the city and rural areas. Let the Mesh network attach to those POPs as needed. This would get us our anonymous infrastructure free of controls and still have the enormous bandwidth available to link our populations effectively.

What needs to be stopped above all else are the ISPs selling customers bundled packages of bullshit when we could just as easily be getting all those services online and not attached to a physical address someplace.

Of course none of this will happen because we need to be watched and controlled to be safe. Part of that of course is allowing corporations to butt rape us.

No account for reality....

[KiwiGod]

This might (slim chance, mind you) approach the realm of sane if we assumed that people actually wanted to learn how to do something, instead of the popular approach of "I just want it to work." There appears to be no concept of costs, the eventual degrade of such a system due to human nature, etc. No matter how you start a system like this, you're going to end up with a governing body at some point. People want order, they want to be told what to do, and there's always people that are willing... and on rare occasion capable of doing such.

Re:No account for reality....

[Omnifarious]

No matter how you start a system like this, you're going to end up with a governing body at some point. People want order, they want to be told what to do, and there's always people that are willing... and on rare occasion capable of doing such.

You underestimate people. First, the 'sheep' argument, even in the veiled form you give it, is a cynical and lazy cop-out. Out there, somewhere, is likely a group of people who similarly think you're a sheep because you don't question some choice you make that they think is bad. But you aren't. If you learned about it, you might agree or disagree with them, but it's just a matter of learning about it.

Secondly, most people don't actually like being told what to do. They may not always understand how they're following orders, but they usually get pretty upset once they realize they're doing it. You talk to most people, and most of them are generally irritated by the various ways in which they feel they're supposed to be 'following orders'. Perceptions of those orders and their source varies widely, but almost nobody likes to think they just follow them blindly.

So, as I said, I think you severely underestimate people. And I think you're doing it because you don't want to do the hard work you would feel compelled to do if you didn't have such a negative and pessimistic opinion. Pessimists are right much more frequently than optimists, and that's because pessimism is a fundamentally lazy outlook.

Re:No account for reality....

[timeOday]

You are speaking in generalities. Look at what has actually happened on the Internet over time: usenet was driven out by moderated web boards. Home pages were driven out by Facebook. Decentralized email is being driven out by a small handful of huge webmail providers. Now, even the idea of general-purpose computing is being driven out by handhelds and tablets that only run software from a manufacturer-approved "app store."

In Soviet Russia, Internet Forks You

[NitzJaaron]

I agree with the idea, in theory, but it's not like we can just up and start a "new internet" from scratch easily. The infrastructure would be a massive undertaking... decisions about whether to reuse old protocols or create new ones would have to be decided... hardware support would need to be dealt with... And at some point, because it's bound to happen, some government(s) are going to want to step in and ruin the work all over again. I'm hopeful about the future of net neutrality by a simple line from Serenity: "You can't stop the signal, Mal."

Just host IPv6 Net2 host servers

[WillAffleckUW]

It's not that difficult.

Just have NGOs run IPv6 stack Net2 servers that blacklist any upregulated commercial traffic and run them worldwide.

But you don't have the guts to do that.

All talk, no action.

In my day, ARPA*NET was clean and free of spam.

And then you sold us out for cash.

N00bs

[RealSurreal]

I've been telling people to fork off the internet for years

Re:I have an idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want to purchase services from a provider available to me that prioritizes YouTube and Netflix over Torrent traffic, why the heck shouldn't I be able to?

90% or more of us live in areas where other providers are not an option.
Even if there were multiple providers, I doubt you could find one who wasn't forced to prioritize traffic.

Re:I have an idea...

[Omnifarious]

Oh wait...

Newsflash: The Internet is a series of (mostly) privately-owned and privately-operated tubes. Keep your regulations off my tubes. If I want to purchase services from a provider available to me that prioritizes YouTube and Netflix over Torrent traffic, why the heck shouldn't I be able to?

The problem is when that's the ONLY Internet you can realistically get. And given the monopolistic nature of Internet access, that's the likely outcome here.

I love his old school mentality... but

[GPLDAN]

His solution is to bring back FidoNet (popular on the Amiga!) and other BBS solutions (I just KNEW UUCP wasn't dead!) or overlap WiMax or some part of the spectrum and put something akin to IPv4 or 6 on top of it.

Good fucking luck with that.

If you want to create something revolutionary, create a store and forward message system that can run on mobile devices and can transfer messages via bluetooth. It's akin to carrier pigeon, but it might actually work.

What we are doing now is tunneling INSIDE the corporate controlled networks to evade detection. Tor, old IPSEC tricks, encrypted BT - all these are methods of moving data around while avoiding the perception to the sniffing devices that data is being moved around, or at least what the data is. The idea that somehow there will be again some network of the people by the people is just a little too HAM radio modemish for me, despite the fact it can work technically.

Re:How about NO

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Forking would only empower the mega-corps to invest in the locked down interwebs, while letting the free internet rot away into nothingness.

That depends upon what one means by forking. Several projects (like theconnective.net) aim to replace the last mile of the internet with community and cooperatively owned networks and allow those networks to interoperate and bargain collectively with core network operators. That is to say, if instead of Comcast or AT&T as your choices for home high speed internet, you could go with the city or county or community run mesh network which, in turn, buys a big pipe or two from whoever offers them not only the best price but also the least limitation, then there is little ability to mess with net neutrality, especially if a large number of these start making demands as a group or boycotting your service. It would be like trying to dictate to Comcast now.

The hard part is threefold, getting enough momentum behind it, overcoming the halo effects of TV and wires phone service, and keeping it from being outlawed by crooked politicians. I'm already part of one of the largest community wireless mesh projects in the country, but it needs to go a lot further. It needs organizers and people to show communities how to do it, technologically and politically, and to help organize.

Let the umm surfer unite?

Re:I have an idea...

[Yvan256]

Newsflash:
1. not everyone has a choice between providers.
2. even with different providers, sometimes they themselves have to go through one of the big one, which filters even those connections.

Unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

How many stories do I have to find where municipalities decided they had waited long enough and started to roll out their own fiber-to-the-home networks, only to be hit by a lawsuit from one of the Big Companies citing unfair competition? You have to be a Business (written with a capital) in order to do anything that a Business Might Ever Do or else it's unfair competition.

Re:I have an idea...

[Monkeedude1212]

If I want to purchase services from a provider available to me that prioritizes YouTube and Netflix over Torrent traffic, why the heck shouldn't I be able to?

What happens when the only provider in your area is one who prioritizes Torrent Traffic over Netflix and Youtube?

Try to see it from everyone elses perspective - when you've only got 1 or 2 choices, there is no real choice. If both of them choose to prioritize traffic, against your interests, you are left with no alternatives. Too bad, so sad, a neutral net was fun while it lasted? Why are we having such trouble keeping it that way?

If you are going to retort with some statement proclaiming the positives of Capitalism, this is one situation where a Free Market doesn't apply: it is virtually impossible for anyone to produce a competing product: They've monopolized the net. They own the wires. Which wasn't even built by them, it was built with taxpayer money. They paid a pultry sum, assumed control, and avoid spending any money to upgrade it and instead gouge customers.

No really, do you think this would be an issue if everything worked the way you are envisioning it through your rose coloured glasses? If I could just start up an ISP with no traffic shaping, shifting, blocking, prioritizing, etc etc - I would make a TON of money from all the people willing to buy that service, more than half of Slashdot viewers I'm sure.

The problem is - that's not possible. Even if I went and managed to set up this giant multinational organization with buildings all across the globe housing tons of servers, I can't just "plug myself into" the net. I'd still have to run through the backbones of giants like Comcast and their rules will always apply to their equipment.

It's illegal

[Nivex]

This sounds like a great idea! A couple years ago I tried to get some people interested in building a community network based on some of the concepts from the Wellington Internet eXchange. Nobody wanted to touch it.

As soon as the people try to flex their muscle, they are immediately shouted down by the corporations. The laws in the USA have become structured such that corporations have all the power and the people have none. Just ask the citizens of Philadelphia, PA or Wilson, NC.

Both of these cities, acting as agents of their citizens, were attacked by the corporations. In the case of Philly, they got squashed. Wilson's system is still alive, but not for the lack of effort on Time Warner's part. At one point TW had someone answering the phone for one of the congressmen the night before a vote. It was only thanks to the dedication of a small group of citizens, many of whom had to take off work to attend the oddly scheduled committee meetings, that the system is still online. We know that at any point TW will try again to scuttle it.

Not necessarily

[sunbird]

Well, how about we move away from certificate authorities. Impossible, you say? Not so.

Enter the Monkeysphere, a project that leverages the GPG web of trust to build trust paths for secure browsing (among other uses). From the site:

When you direct the browser to an https site using the Monkeysphere plugin and validation agent, if the certificate presented by the site does not pass the default browser validation (using standard, hierarchical X.509), the certificate and site URL are passed to the validation agent. The agent then checks the public keyservers for keys with UIDs matching the site url (e.g. https://zimmermann.mayfirst.org./ If there is a trust path to that key, according to your own OpenPGP trust designations, the certificate is considered valid, and a browser 'security exception' is put in place to allow connections to the site.