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Freedom Box Foundation Wants Plug Servers For All
An anonymous reader writes "From the NYTimes.com article: 'A Columbia law professor in Manhattan, Eben Moglen, [is] putting together a shopping list to rebuild the Internet — this time, without governments and big companies able to watch every twitch of our fingers. ... Put free software into the little plug server in the wall, and you would have a Freedom Box that would decentralize information and power, Mr. Moglen said. This month, he created the Freedom Box Foundation to organize the software.'"
Take the power back to the people.
"Once everyone is getting them, they will cost $29." -- Eben Moglen
And then everyone will get to watch their Internet bills double or triple as the ISP discovers that they're "running a server" in violation of the ISP's acceptable use policy and "helpfully" upgrades their service to business class.
Why rebuild the Internet? Just call this Internet 3. The Internet was built with redundancy in mind. This sounds like it would be the ultimate redundant solution. My question would be how to prevent an attacker from taking out a multitude of nodes from a single point. Or, how hard will it be to return your node to the network after it has been brought down by an attack?
I just want a small wifi router with a built in raid array. :(
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Wouldn't network devices be more useful in building a network? I love small ARM systems and have a couple myself, but they're all attached to the same old internet as the laptops and desktop PCs.
A one-man effort is not going to work; and if it is, it will certainly take way more than one year to build a free open network.
You need lots of intelligente people working hard, and once they have the design, they need an important amount of money; not just 500k.
In soviet russia the government regulates the companies.
Wires. That requires an external provider, either a private monopoly or the government. And of course that lets them tap the wire.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
What the hell do these wall plugs attempt to achieve?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Yes, this would be a security nightmare. Anarchy is fun!
How will this stop whatever local govt exists from compelling the ILEC to give optical tap access?
It won't.
If the world isn't beating a path to your door you're doing something wrong.
The article (I read it! Okay, I skimmed) is light on details.
How exactly is putting a server in your house rebuilding the Internet?
How would one of these in every house in Egypt have kept them from turning off their Internet access?
I am going out on a limb and assuming there's more here than a wall socket computer involved. Are these things supposed to talk to each other and build their own network? How will that cross oceans, little alone continents, little alone states, little alone... (etc)
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I hope they're planning a modular approach for the communication links. Simply relying on one wireless technology leaves you vulnerable to very easily implemented(by govt or private operator) jamming.
Something like hardwired connections, longwave/shortwave links, or even optical mixed-in with the wifi approach would make the system much more robust.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
First 25 posts, no brilliant 'freedom fries' snark. Selective jingoism sensitivity. Typical moonbats.
This looks like a good time to plug the Default Deny security model, as this server might adopt a new Operating System.
If a default deny environment, programs are never trusted, and the OS keeps them within the capabilities they are provided at runtime. This makes it possible to run untrusted code in a secure manner.
Such a system would be MUCH more secure in the long run.
It's also known as Capability bases security, principle of least privilege, etc.
There will need to be some other way for them to network than through ISPs. They are the bottleneck. Perhaps, some sort of mesh network?
Otherwise, Your ISP takes exception to a server running on your domestic network - despite the fact that a large amount of people on /. do just that. Even if they allow that, they can limit what goes across their wires - in times of emergency perhaps no encrypted traffic or HTTPS.
You are going to either have to live in high density housing or figure out how to fit microwave relays all over the suburbs.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I have about 5 of the guru and sheeva plugs, they all eventually brick from bad power supplies or shutdown and when they overheat.
Now combine that idea with free software and the Distributed Administration Network, and you have end-to-end freedom.
singlehandedly, anyway.
It's a teensy tiny computer. By itself, it does nothing.
Nothing I've seen in this vision explicitly addresses the real freedom value proposition, and the real risk of the Internet as we know it: connectivity. In principle, connectivity and communications should be independent of governmental or commercial interference. And yet, at this point, Freedom Boxen talking to other Freedom Boxen is simply assumed.
To be blunt, that's assuming away the real hard work. Computers independent of "Trusted Computing" and backdoors are old hat, thanks to the libre software movement. Networks independent of the same interference are where the work really needs to be done.
The real risks to Freedom are in the net, not in the nodes. That's the part of the equation really controlled by the Powers That Be. And subversive communication has always been the real threat to oppression. Samizdat isn't about typewriters and printing presses, it's about distribution and dissemination.
So, Mr. Moglen, what are we doing about allowing our Freedom Boxes to communicate without the permission of those who think they can control us? Pay particular attention to width of coverage (i.e., how many nodes a particular Freedom Box can talk to, directly or indirectly), undetectability, and confidentiality.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The problem is the Internet is fancy TV. At least until you want to pay for both ends. I guess you can use face book, as long as that lasts or gets to slow to use when we neglect 'Net Neutrality'.
What we need are many ISP's that's called Capitalism. What we have are 1 or 2 ISP's that Feudalism. The way to make this happen is to define and allow roof top routers that by pass the last mile as we know it. 4G speeds seem adequate to me. If you want a hard line Its your money and there control over what packets you get. Just do not take away my access to the Town Square. You remember the Town Square, where our government was born.
And we can then pick ISP's with out evil restrictions. IMHO The Web was designed for people to publish not just for TV.
If you're part of a revolution, being able to communicate digitally with your local peers is just as important as being able to communicate with someone at the other end of the world. Cheap plugs that build/connect a wireless mesh network could achieve that goal. I feel like most people in this thread aren't thinking big enough. The revolution isn't happening in the outback, think "central and crowded". The main problem might be getting one plug to cover enough area that it network can form at all, but should be a solvable problem. They'd also have to be configurable enough to be resilient to any cheap/directed attack (so not using a hard-coded frequency, whatever)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
We're out of IPv4 addresses, and not all ISPs yet offer IPv6. Good luck getting other people's Diaspora nodes to connect to your Diaspora node if your neighborhood is 250 customers behind one public IPv4 address.
And this man is special.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You want to decentralize the Internet?
Break up the big telcos and ISPs.
It's as simple as 1...2...Net Neutrality!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Dude. That like recursively blows my mind.
not sure why you want to include DAN. i don't want nobody but me administering my 'freedombox'...that's the whole point!
It may be nice that, if every house has one of these, the devices created a wireless or powerline ad-hoc network which would then be out of reach of any government agency for a kind of kill switch short of cutting power. Kind of like what OLPC envisioned. It'd be interesting to see the latency/hops in this kind of network. And before "OMG H@X" comes up, it shouldn't be any different than your already-conencted computer/router...
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
"Or a complete Freedom Menu? We are forbidden by law from offering a free Freedom Toy with the Freedom Menus for the kids, but for a ridiculously small surcharge, you get the Freedom Toys. But please note that the Freedom Menu Toys are not in fact free so we are not violating the law."
First step in starting some wacky software campaign . . . choose a non-wacky sounding name . . . Freedom Box?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Well, FCC rules trump their contract. Their recent net neutrality findings, which were broadly criticized here, won't allow ISPs to discriminate against servers
Provided that enforcing these rules on U.S. soil is within the powers delegated by Congress to the FCC. Otherwise, state law freedom of contract allows ISPs to discriminate all they want.
Text is nothing. [...] 25 friends
Tell that to someone who just got tens of thousands of hits after having been linked from the front page of a site like Slashdot.org.
Since everyone's going to be hosting the internet on their own little wall plug dongle, couldn't you just make them all encrypt the traffic? At least you could encrypt it up to the final wall plug which sends it to whatever sever it's going to; in that case, it wouldn't be possible to see the original source of the traffic, just that whatever traffic that was ended up being sent to the server by whatever node in whatever house.
I'll take two.
See that "Preview" button?
The federal legal justification is covered in detail.
What the FCC thinks is its legal justification is covered in detail. Whether the courts will agree is another matter entirely.
Sure, I've wanted something like that for years. The problem is that we all need a fixed IP address so we can get to our server from anywhere, and so email can be sent directly to it P-to-P, and so our little OSS distributed facebook profile can be linked from outside (i.e. from our friends FB server).
I use Speakeasy DSL service, in spite of the fact that it has less capacity than cable, because they don't have nastiness in the license. In particular, they allow servers. I run an HTTP server as a symbolic act, to share material with a few friends, and to test things (there's not enough capacity to use the server for anything substantially public). Speakeasy also allows me to share my connection (I run a free unprotected hotspot), and even offers to split the monthly bill between me and any neighbors I share with.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
Proposed solution would not rebuild the Net, it would work over it. What would be cool is if these boxes had Ethernet over power lines built in with intelligent peering. Everyone on the same leg of a electrical circuit automatically peers with others and it builds a network. Tricky part would be a "backbone" to connect segments not on the same electrical circuit that won't connect...and do so not using the Internet (or wireless)...and be able to do so with the hardware limitations of a plug in server.
Everyone in an apartment building or with close neighbors could plug in a server and connect into the "grid," it really would bypass the Net. And speeds would be pretty darn good if the peer was close to you. Backbones, that's the killer weak spot.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
If they came in a watertight box covered in solar panels and talked up a wireless mesh they could double as roofs for birdboxes and we could all have actually free internet as well as more places for birds to nest
Korma: Good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6wRkzCW5qI
This is all fascinating. I even listened in to one of his lectures and things like Diaspora have always been appealing to me. However, what he actually proposes is changing the very topology of the net, changing the whole client server relationship and buildup, which kind of "evolved" as the internet grew. If this structure, topology can be changed in a... more peer to peer oriented fashion it would be an accomplishment equal to creating the internet itself. This gets those geek nerves pulsing doesn't it?
Not on your box, but on the ones you access.
Imagine internet, computers, and software, all with no singular points of control.
If you want a city-wide mesh, put OpenWRT on your router and get rid of the wireless encryption. If you pay for internet, set up a proxy.
Seriously, what has this guy actually done? Except point out the fact that everyone can have their own private server, which was already possible. The difficult part is how accessible the software is, that's why ubuntu was so successful. I mean, you need to ssh into those plug computers, I don't see the majority doing that.
You are betraying your addiction to low latencies. This project is simply giving to the masses what most intermediate nix hackers already have at home - a personal net shard.
The problem identified by Moglen is that most people will need help doing this properly. Once you have a shard, there is very little need to use the Internet for anything other than lightweight conversations or transmitting encrypted differentials to your crew. The diffs of even a busy set of gap'd nets rarely require more than a single external drive, and usually fits on a pocketful of USB keys.
All this assumes you are a content producer or consumer. I have no idea what people attempting to use the net to replace meat space interactions are going to do in the future - that isn't content trading - it's advertising your tastiness to preds... As it is they all look like fat, wounded prey.
Anyhow, if you aren't already using a gap'd shard to do your real work, then jumping consumables to a propagation point via dumb media you should really really really consider doing so. Just yesterday I was consulted on a potential firmware flash triggered via Web resulting in an instant brick'd drive for the client. I have yet to examine the metal, but the description of what happened was extremely disturbing.
Check out his new organization:
www.freedomboxfoundation.org/
Given the choice between consuming content about how to have a better society and government, or Facebook and sports, society has by and large decided that they want the latter. Having everyone running a server with some free software on it will not make the internet any better than it currently is. The utility of the internet is not being severely hampered or impeded by the government "watching every twitch of our fingers". Its utility is being diminished by the users failing to leverage it to its full potential.
what he wants to make is a tor/freenet node that is plug and play, that one can put between the in house network and the isp router and act as a net actvity proxy and decentralized and version tracking cache?
This way, any page accessed is cached, dated and checksummed, so that if ever the main source "dies" a cached version can be grabbed anonymously and distributed as needed?
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
This thread is great. It's about distributing access, and all posts are by AC. Does it get more paranoid?
Of course I had to post this as AC. You understand.
You can buy a 3g USB stick today, with official open-source drivers, sign up with TMobile, and surf free.
But those who want to watch Netflix or keep games or other large applications up to date can't really use T-Mobile due to T-Mobile's 5 GB/mo cap. So they can choose from two providers: the cable company, and the phone company (or those who resell its service).
in a peer to peer network who is the server and who is the client?
The side calling connect() is the client, and the side calling listen() is the server. It's the same reason that a terminal using the X11 protocol is called an X server: it listens for display connections from clients.
sucks to be in the US :D
I've read that Ireland and Great Britain are just as bad. How would you rate the ease and cost of immigration to industrialized countries in mainland Europe for a U.S. citizen who isn't yet fluent in a language other than English but is willing to learn?
Get a decent ISP.
Moving to an area where a decent ISP offers service may cost tens of thousands of dollars. What is the best practice for affording that?
What we need is a server with everyone running some kind of Freenet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet) approach.
Skype users with properly configured NAT
We're out of IPv4 addresses. ISPs will start plopping residential customers on 10.x.x.x subnets, with 250 customers on each public IP.
Look folks, down at the ISP's level it's all just packets. Up in the application level is where we say "client" or "server"
IP has four layers: data link (OSI 1-2), IP (OSI 3), TCP/UDP (OSI 4), and application (OSI 5-7). Whether a packet is a TCP SYN or not is at the TCP layer, not the application layer. As I understand it, only the client sends SYNs, and only the server sends SYN-ACKs.
When I notify Youtube that a new video is ready Youtube's client compulsively "downloads" my server's video to add to their ridiculous random collection.
That would be true if YouTube used FTP PORT. In FTP PORT, the user agent is a client that connects to the well-known host to send filenames back and forth, and once a file transfer has started, the FTP server acts as a client that downloads the file from the user agent, which acts as a server. But YouTube uses HTTP, which acts like FTP PASV: the user agent is always the client and the well-known host is always the server. Most FTP clients that I've used that do not perform FXP use PASV exclusively.
Wires. That requires an external provider, either a private monopoly or the government. And of course that lets them tap the wire.
You might be able to get around that by using encryption (if that's legal in your country and if the encryption is easy enough to use). But encryption isn't going to help you communicate if your government pulls the kill switch on the internet, as Egypt's dictatorship did on Jan. 28. Moglen's talk was on Feb. 5, so you'd think he'd mention that, but he never mentions Egypt once in the whole talk. It could easily happen in the U.S.
Find free books.
I read the article. I still have no idea what he's trying to achieve or how it would be achieved. With a court order or whatever other means the government could shut down comcast/charter/warner, at&t, verizon, sprint...as in "here's a court order, shut down internet access to your customers". That would be an extremely large number of americans right there. Everybody on those ISPs with a "freedom box" would effectively be shut off anyway. No access, no freedom box. So no, I don't get it. As long as there's two or three companies that are handing out the internet access for large a large percentage of people this won't really matter or protect anything.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Then one savvy ISP discovers they can greatly increase revenue by allowing servers to run on the cheap
And discovers that it has no access to the phone company's or cable company's last mile.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a fascinating idea: while I like the idea of running an always-on server for teh freedomz, I don't have a clear idea of what that entails (freenet? gnutella? anyone still using these?) or how many bytes of data / "bad things" being passed through my node would just get me disconnected by my ISP under a "no servers" clause or RIAA paranoia (neither us nor you knows how many naughty files are passing over your 4096-bit AES freedomware, but your $29 a month ain't worth the liability, click...). Just as importantly, the power consumption of an always-on server that may or may not even be being used is hard to justify. A more 'standardized' software suite and micropowered "plug in and forget" computer goes a long way. As for that last part...
Ultimately this thing would have to take its activities off the ISP-dependent internet, full stop. To really be feasible, these freedomboxen would need to be coupled with inexpensive p2p (mesh networking) *hardware* as well. There are a few possible, if not ideal solutions:
Unlicensed Wifi and wifi-alikes (microwave links), as others have pointed out. Typical ranges from 10s of meters (omni wifi indoors) to hundreds of km for the suitably dedicated (highly directional point-to-point antenna links). Several existing implementations and choices of ad-hoc routing protocols (AODV, etc.).
Freespace optical links. Have a look at RONJA for a low-cost, open-source transceiver that provides 10Mbps duplex links over a km or more. Advantages: highly directional; more resistant to regulatory attack (no RF), high resistance to congestion even in extremely dense deployments. Disadvantages: Point-to-point only; more likely useful for backhaul between local onmidirectional meshes.
WiMAX: High speed, long range, but license requirement and the cost of equipment ($thousands) mostly defeats the purpose.
Kinky Stuff: HAMs and similar have successfully bounced signals off clouds/etc. using banks of IR LEDS, alongside plenty of RF-based solutions. How long until well-heeled geeks loft "low-cost" cubesats for emergency internet comms?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose - Kris Kristofferson
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
What I don't understand is why users are posting comments that say running a plug server, for either personal or business use, will put you in violation of your ISP's contract. First of all, IT WON'T. The contract that ISPs have with everybody are unenforceable when it comes to plug servers. You are using your infrastructure, and their contracts do not apply to your electrical wiring. Period. The ISP contract takes over at the connection between the cable box and the modem. Your house wiring effectively becomes your own private network, and the contract is not enforceable upon your private network. This could become even more detrimental to the ISPs when people start using plug servers to communicate between private networks using electrical infrastructure, as you will not be using the ISP's network or infrastructure. Any contracts involving infrastructure that you own (i.e. electrical wiring), or is not owned and/or operated by the ISP is not enforceable under any contract that you may have with the ISP, as it will not be using any of their services or systems. Basically, this is a potential headache for ISPs, since they have absolutely no legal way of regulating it, or enforcing contracts on it.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Unplug them. Pull out the 120VAC to DC converter. Install a $25-50 Solar panel on your roof, or wherever you have Sol access. Power the Plug PC by straight DC. End of heat problems, or add a fan where the converter was..
You could even add a modified UPS in the mix.
Come on this is /., where's all the hacker, geek solutions?
Pfft.
Then again, TFA didn't even attempt to give a solution for how to bypass the ISPs, whose wire your traffic is going to flow over.
It's a temporary solution at best. Until someone builds a new network that doesn't rely on easily switched of wires. Until enough people start running their own wireless networks we are all at the mercy of those who would control.
The long name is "Invisible Internet Project" and the I2P acronym was chosen to signal that its P2P-friendly. Technically the software is called a "router" because it routes as it anonymizes, much like Tor.
Fundamentally I2P is a network transport layer (like IP, whereas Tor is more like TCP) that comes with a few applications to handle email, web and torrents. You can get plugins for it now that provide things like a distributed filesystem (a port of Tahoe-LAFS) on top of which distributed websites (called deepsites) are being built.
I know that I2P has weathered some attacks. I think it can do this mainly because the network is less centralized than Tor (there are no directory or other 'authorities' programmed into I2P).
geti2p.net
Methinks people who propose this do not understand the concept of networking, and how such 'nodes' need upstream nodes else the network becomes utterly and irreversibly saturated.
Either that, or they're simply greedy: like the people who latched onto revolutionary figures like Marx and Che to push their own agenda to selfish deeds (not that Marx and Che were exactly what you'd call humanitarians), these people are pushing utopic bullshit for their own financial/social gain.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why not also give them a wireless network with a distributed mesh network?
Here is my vision al la Vernor Vinge's military network takeover in Rainbow's end http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End combined with TerraNet's peer to peer cell phones. http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/terranet-creates-peer-to-peer-cellphone-network-20070912/
You have an event like Haiti or Egypt or the unthinkable and you fly a plane over the site and rain thousands of solar powered network nodes that can create a backbone, route voip, circuit switched voice, twitter, or what ever. The bandwidth, frequency processing power etc can all be cost driven but if you pre-seeded the society with network access points, cell phones, and the like with a compatible hardware model it would scale better.
Government tries to turn off cell phones? Fuck em. Government kills the ISPs? just link the chain to a satellite or a border. AT&T makes you contemplate suicide? Just route through your neighbor's link to the tower.
Now we through in computing power to boot. What do we get a ad-hoc, mesh peer to peer, internet with distributed computing. The only way Egypt could have blocked that is with some serious military jamming. LoS?
Eben Moglen on taking back control over your data, privacy and freedom in the age of cloud services.
Summary:
- Don't accept any cloud services that come with free spying, free built-in man in the middle attack (Facebook as the worst offender, GMail and many other services mentioned as other examples)
- Thus avoid lock-in, avoid anyone limiting your mobility and freedom, stop being exploited and spied upon.
- Instead of centralized services use P2P (or federated services), protected by strong encryption
- A $29.90 plug-in, power-supply-sized appliance (the "freedom box") providing these services, and much more (VoIP telephony, TOR, etc.) at home.
1. Freedom in the cloud: http://www.isoc-ny.org/?p=1338
(talk from February 2010)
2. How We Can Be the Silver Lining of the Cloud: http://penta.debconf.org/dc10_schedule/events/641.en.html
(talk from August 2010)
(I wrote this summary back in August 2010, so it's somewhat outdated.)
I was in the audience when he explained the concept. The comments and the article I've seen so far does it no justice. Just watch the video.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, excuse me, but my ISP (and most, if not all, others in Europe) could not care less what I do with my connection. Running a server (or whatever) is explicitly stated to be normal and acceptable use.
Perhaps you should change to a less crappy ISP? One that actually delivers what you pay for?
'A Columbia law professor in Manhattan, Eben Moglen, [...]'
For those who don't know (really?), Eben Moglen has a leading role in drafting the GPL licenses and in enforcing them (or had), see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html
He's also the head and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center which has the FSF as one of its clients. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen
SFLC had a podcast, the Software Freedom Law Show, hosted by (among other) Bradley M. Kuhn, the former Executive Director of the FSF and currently on the board of directors.
In other words, Moglen is deeply involved with free software community organizations.
No one else except lawyers would craft such an obdurate, meaningless phrase as ', insofar as such person is so engaged, '. Seriously; what value (other than billable value) does that little snippet add?
Unless a lot of people have these things they won't provide redundancy at all. What is the range on a good wifi AP? 30m indoors?
Instead he should concentrate on building a pluggable Tor box. Basically a box that you can connect to your hotel room's lan port or bridge to the cafe's wifi and it encrypts everything for you transparently. I can see a real market for something like that - zero config privacy for travellers, but also for people wanting to avoid spying and censorship.
Tor is fairly responsive these days, almost to the point where I am tempted to do all surfing through it just to avoid the UK government spying.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If these little boxes have wifi, can talk to each other and are running freenet. otherwise they're just another place where your information can be tapped
I've always been interested in the concept of portable cloud computing since reading the SF trilogy Red Mars.
Basically everyone has a PDA/Tablet, which are all wirelessly connected, and the information on the network is stored via a cloud across all devices, and computing power as well.
Not sure how far along that sort of technology is, but that anonymous internet thing, the "Open freenet", seems to be that kind of software, so if we had the devices linked wirelessly, either the Plug Servers or some kind of tablet or iphone equivalent, running that kind of thing...
Interesting times..
An ad-hoc mesh network does all that, and it does it for free. It requires a critical mass of nodes, but short of cutting the power, it's unkillable.
You got a better idea?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
And then an ISP will see the niche of a more "liberal" aproach
I responded to that in another comment.
my ISP (and most, if not all, others in Europe)
Please see my reply in another comment.
But what about the net-part? All they have to do is tell 3 major providers to stop their DSL services.
That's the Egyptian option.
The American option is to tell the providers, that they might be liable for users' behavior and they will come up with some acceptable content restrictions all by themselves.