Piracy Police Chief Calls For State Interference To Stop Internet "Anarchy"

An anonymous reader writes The City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is determined to continue its anti-piracy efforts in the years to come. However, the unit's head, Andy Fyfe, also believes that the government may have to tighten the rules on the Internet to stop people from breaking the law. PIPCU's chief believes the public has to be protected from criminals, including pirate site operators who take advantage of their trust. If that doesn't happen, then the Internet may descend into anarchy, he says, suggesting that the government may have to intervene to prevent this. The Police chief believes tighter rules may be needed to prevent people from breaking the law in the future. This could mean not everyone is allowed to launch a website, but that a license would be required, for example.

Comments

Police??

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not police but more like a paid thugs or enforcers working for a group of corporations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Police??

[NotInHere]

Where is the (+1; Insightful Troll) mod?

Re:Police??

[demachina]

It should be noted that the City of London is a tiny part of London, like a square mile. Its the financial district, the Wall Street of London.

It isn't suprising they are taking a pro big business stance.

Re:Police??

[NotInHere]

That tiny part has financed most of englands colonisation efforts. It has helped building a world empire. However, nowadays its weird to see such a relic in a country that calls itself democratic. Having a queen who stays out of politics isn't a big deal. An institution where companies can vote based on the number of their employees, thats in the press and uses titles like "police" is however. I don't object to companies to publish their opinions, but they shouldn't use titles that sound like they were part of the state. This clearly shows their position towards democracy.

I know other companies fuck democracy, too, but to some extent that can't be avoided as the line between "legitimate participation in public discussion" and "lobby government" is thin. Companies should just clearly state its them.

Re:Police??

[ShanghaiBill]

They are not police but more like a paid thugs or enforcers working for a group of corporations.

Corporations have a legitimate interest in fighting piracy. It interferes with shipping, and endangers the crews. But it seems silly for the London Police to be involved. It would be more reasonable for anti-piracy to be handled by the Royal Navy, as part of a coordinated international effort. This could include arming merchant ships, providing convoy escorts, and/or retaliation against ports providing sanctuary to pirates.

Re:Police??

[gl4ss]

well, of course, why else would they try to argue for government(police) to have to step in to stop crime, crime that's already illegal since it's a crime...

I mean, I don't fucking get the premise. Does the chief want more things to be illegal or does he want other governments(of other countries) to make more things illegal or does he want powers to declare anything he wants as illegal, not just things that are crimes now but anything his clients want?

Re:Police??

[mwvdlee]

As a territorial police force of sworn constables, are they responsible for proposing laws?
Because that's what they're doing here.

Re:Police??

[WillKemp]

That tiny part has financed most of englands colonisation efforts

Bullshit! Robbing the victims of colonisation is what financed it.

Re:Police??

[mwvdlee]

They are indeed free to do so just like you and me.
But it's not part of their job and they have no more legal standing to do so than you or I.
So in proposing laws they are NOT acting as a territorial police force of sworn constables, they are in fact acting as a corporate lobbying group.

City of London Police when enforcing laws = territorial police force of sworn constables.
City of London Police when proposing laws = corporate lobbying group.
It's important to distinguish these two roles and their difference.

Re:Police??

[marcello_dl]

Personally I'd wait to be retired before going public with suggestions done as a police officer. It is true that everybody can suggest laws, but those whose task is enforcing it should stay well damn separate. Separation of legislative, executive, judiciary power, do you remember?

Re:Police??

[Anonymous Coward]

and/or retaliation against ports providing sanctuary to pirates

Hey now, leave port 6881 out of this.

Re:Police??

[flyneye]

Well, let's hear it for good ol' fashioned Anarchy.
Did he mean anarchy, as in the anarchy England descended into briefly in the 1800s, or Kropotkins Anarchy, or will it cause teens to become disaffected and wear black t-shirts with the @ and listen to "Bella Lugosi's Dead" over and over?
Perhaps the internet will only descend into Feudalism.
Stupid bastards! This is where your taxes go. Perhaps a revolution, followed by anarchy is getting to be more and more attractive...

Jarre is dead brilliant.

Re:Police??

[NotDrWho]

As a territorial police force of sworn constables, are they responsible for proposing laws?

No, but if the UK's politicians are anything like their American counterparts, the politicians will use their statements to support the new laws--as in "See, the police are saying they NEED this authority, to protect us from the T E R R O R I S T S ! ! !"

Re:Police??

[Archtech]

"In a mature society, 'civil servant' is semantically equal to 'civil master.'"
- Heinlein, "Time Enough for Love"

Re:Police??

[cayenne8]

I saw this quote "

If that doesn't happen, then the Internet may descend into anarchy,

" and thought to myself, where has this guy been?

The internet started out as and has always been anarchy, and that is what made it good. It has been the last bastion of personal freedom and expression since inception. The lack of regulation and rules has made it what it is today.

The internet, was NOT created and constructed for the purpose of business and monetary transactions, that is something that came later and while welcome, was not and SHOULD not be the total focus of the network of networks.

Re:Police??

[Frobnicator]

You are right that they are operating outside their area, and they ought to be going after things inside their area.

But if they are going to go after infringement, let's have them start going after corporations that are engaged in wholesale copyright violations, not just individuals involved in it.

Sites like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Upworthy, and other clickbait sites that take images from the little guys, use the images in their clickbaiting business, and profit from the copyright infringement. Just take a moment to search for the assorted sites, " stolen images". Buzzfeed and HuffPo are currently fighting many such lawsuits, yet they continue to use random images found online without permission and without compensation to the photographers.

It would be nice if the City of London police started by black holing those sites, too.

Re:Police??

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me because I'm American, but no. It's not the job of the executive branch - police for example - to propose or write law. Not in America and I'm sure not in England either. It's their job to enforce it.

So no, they aren't "free to do so". They are free as citizens, in their personal off-work time, to propose laws and/or generally engage in politics, but certainly not as officials of any capacity whatsoever.

How about protecting the public

[crioca]

How about protecting the public from the lobbyists and legislators pushing oppressive copyright laws?

Re:How about protecting the public

[Anonymous Coward]

There is alrady a mechanism in place for that. It is called a VOTE. Although people are complaining all the time about the government, hardly anyone here is ready to get their ass up and go vote when they are able to vote.

Yeah that's great! As a wonderful right I get for being a citizen I get to make my very own choice. My options are: Candidate A that got there because of lobbyists and funding and will be friendly to corporate interests ... or Candidate B that ... got there because of lobbyists and funding and will be friendly to corporate interests BUT uses different rhetoric.

Wow. This is truly an awesome and definitely not-broken mechanism. Of course! Your belief in this system is definitely not baseless and naive. At all.

If the sheeple ever get a clue and figure out how rigged this game really is and fucking WAKE UP from their hypnotic zombie groupthink daze, maybe they can write-in somebody who takes no money. Till then, best of luck to you.

Re:How about protecting the public

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then. Revolution it is.

Re:How about protecting the public

[DoofusOfDeath]

Well then. Revolution it is.

It would be a horrible civil war, at least in the U.S. The citizenry is so divided on so many issues, that I believe the battles would continue long after the federal government was overthrown.

Re:How about protecting the public

[Opportunist]

What good is your right to vote if your choice is between a corporate shill and someone depending on handouts from corporations?

You may vote who you want in power, but they get to choose the pool of people you may vote for.

Re:How about protecting the public

[Bert64]

The people complaining do tend to vote for someone other than the main parties, it just doesn't achieve anything.
The vast majority don't understand whats going on and dont want to, they believe what they hear on mass media, and those media outlets are controlled by the main parties.

Without power your voice will never be loud enough for the masses to hear it.
Without a loud voice, you will never get enough votes and thus no power.

The current system is simply designed to maintain the status quo, while giving the false impression that people have any say in the matter.

Re:How about protecting the public

[AK Marc]

There is alrady a mechanism in place for that. It is called a VOTE.

Great, so how do I vote against the police chief of London City?

Re:How about protecting the public

[Keyboard Rage]

Oh, come on. There's precedence for this, and all it takes is the intervention of an misinformed outside heavily armed army force to solve things. Just look at Afghanistan. Cesspool of internally battling militias becomes fairly pacified economically bankrupt democratic country. We just have to find a country willing to save the United States of America. My votes go to Russia, France, and Canada.

Re: How about protecting the public

[mSparks43]

An Internet revolution.

And it's happening every day.

And idiots like this Fife character and the small clique of people he represents are loosing.

Which is why he's understandably upset.

Never mind. Just laugh at them and get on with building a brave new world without them.

Re:How about protecting the public

[aaaaaaargh!]

I've come to think about this a lot recently, as I'm currently writing a science fiction novel that plays in the near future after the US has been torn apart by a civil war. (BTW, I'm writing in German, so it is unlikely that any American will ever read it.)

With modern sattelite surveilance, DNA sampling, automated biometric scanning, fighting robots, and the total information awareness of the federal government, I find it increasingly improbable that any (legitimate or illegitimate) freedom fighters/rebels/terrorists could stand a chance against the whole power of the federal miltary apparatus in a high tech country like the USA. Drone strikes alone would probably eliminate most of the resistance very quickly, no matter how many small handguns they have, and social network analysis would allow them to decapitate the leadership of the movement in targeted assassinations. This is one of the reasons I'm personally against surveillance and advocate privacy, because I find it hard to imagine a democracy that could never ever turn into a totalitarian oligarchy or dictatorship by an unfortunate sequence of events. There should always be a balance of power between the people and the force of the state.

The only scenario I find credible and that is perhaps not so unlikely is that large parts of the army and national guard would split off and join the resistance movement and at the same time the rebel controlled territory has plenty of high tech weapons manufacturing companies, too. EasySurface to air missiles and anti-tank weapons would be crucial. Anyway, without a halfway even division of the professional military force, a modern civil war in the US would not last long.

Re:How about protecting the public

[dargaud]

The only scenario I find credible and that is perhaps not so unlikely is that large parts of the army and national guard would split off and join the resistance [...]

Which is basically also the only way that any rebellion/revolution has managed to succeed in the past.

Re:How about protecting the public

[UnknownSoldier]

/oblg.

The Problems with First Past the Post Voting Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The Alternative Vote Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Gerrymandering Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Mixed-Member Proportional Representation Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

From:
http://www.cgpgrey.com/politic...

Anarchy???

[_Sharp'r_]

The Internet has already descended into Anarchy.

That's why we like it. The rules are made by the people who own/run/create/manage it, by mutual agreement, not enforced from the top down. If people don't agree, they go their separate ways, because you can't be forced to allow someone on your network if they violate your network's rules.

The Internet is fine. We like it how it is. No need for more government regulation to ruin it on behalf of those with influence with government officials/politicians/bureaucrats.

Re:Anarchy???

[fabioalcor]

The Internet has already descended into Anarchy.

It has not descended, it was born as an Anarchy. Internet is anarchic by design. That's the way it always was, is, and must be.
A computer net with strict rules is not internet, it's something else.

Re:Anarchy???

[hey!]

Somebody forwarded me an article the other day about how we should all switch to dairy from grass fed cows. Now many of the points in the piece I happen to agree with, but one of the claims was that grass-fed dairy has fewer "toxins". Whenever I see "toxins" used without further specification as to what exactly the "toxin" is, that's a signal that someone's trying to sell something expensive but useless -- which turned out to be the case. The piece was hawking stuff you were supposed to mix into your grass-fed milk, which is a good way to expose yourself to toxins given how weakly regulated supplements are.

People use ideas like "law and order" in just the same way as marketers use "toxins". It's all well and good to say you're going to stop people from breaking the law on the Internet, but what specifically are you proposing to do? Set up an anti-fraud unit? I'll cheer you on. Monitor everyone's email? That cure's worse than the disease.

But I also have to say that the word "freedom" is just as subject to misuse -- or in this case "anarchy". Now there are many things about anarchy I like. There are others I don't. I don't like having to remove malware off my wife's computer. I don't like having to be vigilant that my older relatives aren't taken in by Internet scammers. I don't like having to deal with attacks on my websites. Even government agencies poking around in your Internet data -- that could be seen as a case of the agency exploiting a specific lack of Internet regulation.

I'm all for reducing my exposure to toxins, but I'm not going to get colon irrigated. I'm for cracking down on Internet crime, but not at the expense of the government doing things that *ought* to be criminalized. I'm for freedom, but not the freedom to interfere with other people's freedom. It's really not that complicated. Find out the specifics of what people are proposing to do, even when their stated goal sounds reasonable.

Re:Anarchy???

[DivineKnight]

He's a police officer...he doesn't understand any kind of design other than an Authoritarian hierarchy. You can tell him how the internet works, and he won't believe you...or he'll look at the DNS servers, see the hierarchy there, and claim that it is hierarchical after all. He's spent his entire life fighting against 'Anarchy' (watchword), and he'll be damned if he'll let it exist once he's discovered a 'nest' of it.

He's off in his own little world, fighting a war against tilting windmills...

Re:Anarchy???

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: *Risen* into anarchy ...

Re:Anarchy???

[Opportunist]

Well... almost, but not quite. In its actuality, the internet is a collection of a lot of tiny absolute dictatorships. With the main difference being that you can easily start your own if you're not happy with any of the other ones. With blackjack and hookers if you so please.

The difference to reality is that it is trivial to vote with your boots if you don't like the dictatorship you're under. So those tinpot dictators have to be civil if they want to have any citizens. But, in the end, the word of the owner of the board, webpage or whatever else he may run is still law in his tiny corner of the planet.

The only threat to freedom in this setup is when such a tinpot dictator is getting too much power, i.e. when it becomes near mandatory to live under his rules. For reference, see Facebook.

Re:Anarchy???

[drinkypoo]

It has not descended, it was born as an Anarchy. Internet is anarchic by design.

The internet != TCP/IP.

TCP/IP was designed to be peer-to-peer, and assumed that you could trust your directly connected peers to behave themselves. There's your anarchy. But the internet depends upon things like IP allocation and name resolution, which are the opposite of anarchic.

Re:Anarchy???

[Doghouse13]

Um. You mean "Tilting against windmills". It was Don Quixote who was doing the tilting, not the windmills.

(To "tilt", in this context, is an archaic verb meaning to joust with a lance. Knights on horseback, and all that.)

"Tilting AT windmills". Darn it. First rule of internet pedantry - any pedantic post will inevitably contain at least one howling error that isn't spotted until the post has been irretrievably committed....

Re:Anarchy???

[oobayly]

Also known as Muphry's Law.

What a fool

[chromaexcursion]

Pay a fee for a license?
This idiot lives in the UK. Obviously totally clueless.
I though US lawmakers were stupid. This toad is a dumb cop from a different country. Gives new meaning to stupid.

I suspect this story won't get much more press, this guy is up there with Sarah Palin for intelligence.

Re:What a fool

[Jason Levine]

Not to mention: How are you going to enforce this?

Let's assume that this guy somehow is successful and starting tomorrow, everyone in the UK needs to obtain a license before starting a website.

First, they would need to define "a website." Is a Facebook page a website? A Twitter feed? A Google+ page. People can those just like any WordPress blog. What if you're starting a new web service that you hope to go commercial with at some point. Do you need to apply for a license before you can publish one line of HTML code?

After this would come the big problems: Namely, how do you identify these rouge, unlicensed website operators? If I were living in the UK and opened an account with a US hosting firm, using a domain registrar located outside of the UK, how could the UK authorities tell that I was the one behind the website? Registrars have privacy settings that enable you to hide your WHOIS address and I doubt many non-UK registrars would bother with UK police calling them up demanding the personal information of their clients. Same goes for those non-UK hosting providers.

I almost want them to try instituting a "create a website license" just to see it crash and burn. Almost. In reality, I realize that they wouldn't attempt to apply it 100% but would simply use it to either add a charge onto someone whose online opinions they don't like or to silence critics. (You want to speak out against us? What a coincidence, your website license has mysteriously been revoked. You have a week to shut down your blog.)

Re:What a fool

[Calydor]

how do you identify these rouge, unlicensed website operators?

By catching them red-handed.

Re:What a fool

[3.5 stripes]

Russia being belligerent, and invading the US via Alaska..

oh, wait.

I have an idea

[viperidaenz]

Change the law to make what everyone does anyway legal.

Who does this benefit

[EmperorOfCanada]

Does this benefit the population at large or does this benefit corrupt officials and the large corporations that corrupted them?

Obligatory

[Areyoukiddingme]

Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

And... the Internet shall descend into Anarchy! With a capital Anarchy!

The "City of London" - A Lawless Square Mile

[curmudgeon99]

That is certainly rich. The "City of London" is a lawless square mile in the center of London that is not subject to the laws of England. It is the center of all the tax evasion secrecy jurisdictions around the world. If you think of the rampant and lawless tax evasion that goes on in places such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Isle of Man and Jersey, they are all directed from this cesspool of lawless behavior known as the City of London.
For context I direct you to the magnificent book by Nicholas Shaxton called Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens . But don't stop there. Further evidence of the vile and lawless damage the City of London does to the world:

• The tax haven in the heart of Britain
• City banks ‘cheat’ Europe in €600m tax avoidance trading scheme
• How Tax Havens Stole Your Money
• The Missing $20 Trillion

Re:The "City of London" - A Lawless Square Mile

[TheMathemagician]

You missed out the Freemasons, Rothschilds and giant shape-shifting lizards. It's depressing that you've been modded Insightful. The City of London is subject to the same laws as the rest of England and is not a tax haven.

Re:The "City of London" - A Lawless Square Mile

[Anonymous Coward]

The city of London is not subject to the same laws as the rest of England. It has at least three special rights granted to the City of London by parliment.

1) In no other jurisdiction in the UK ( England is a part of the UK ) do corporation have the right to vote in municipal elections. The City of London allows corporations to vote in municipal elections.

2) In no jurisdiction in the UK does a person have more than one vote as based on their family size. The City of London allows that the number of votes a corporation has is based upon the employee count of the corporation.

3) In no jurisdiction in the UK can a human have only a post office box inside the voting boundries and be considered a valid voter. The City of London has the right to allow corporations with no presence in the municipal boundries other than a post office box to vote in municipal elections.

4) The City of London has a special officer in parliment whom is not considered a lobbiest even though the activities of the special officer are sometimes presented a "reminding the members of parliment of the rights granted to the City of London and it's voting members" oh and those rights were granted centuries ago.

5) It is not a tax haven by definition ... because it has greater input and in some degree a bit of control of the corporate (specifically finacial industry ) tax rates in the UK than any other municipal jurisdiction.

City of London Police

[Jason Levine]

I'm not an expert on the UK by any stretch of the imagination, but I seem to recall that the City of London Police are a small force that are responsible for a small section of London. They are mostly known for making outrageous statements about expanding police powers.

Can someone with more UK knowledge clarify the "City of London Police" situation?

Re:see his employer...

[ktetch-pirate]

Nope, bang on wrong. He's the head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit - a unit of the CoL police, funded with a few million from the movie industry, to 'work on copyright issues nationally', and the CoL cops got it because theyre 'the lead cops for fraud nationwide'. Just to clear up, its not quite like the US,where the forces are limited to geographical restrictions, certain squads and units are 'national' in usage.

Dear PIPCU

[spiritplumber]

no. signed, the internet.

Oh no, days of downloading movies are over!

[SlovakWakko]

What a neat trick! Now nobody will be able to create a pirate web site... on a server located in the City of London. Wow, we're all screwed.

Re:Oh no, days of downloading movies are over!

[SuricouRaven]

PIPCU has a very flexible idea of jurisdiction. It extends at least as far as Canada.

Re:lol

[DivineKnight]

Agreed. The man has zero understanding of how the internet works...he might as well have said "let's all meet together on Sunday with our flying rainbow pegasuses." And it's painfully obvious...to the point where I am running out of facepalms for this year...I just can't handle the stupid. Obnoxious third-parties spitballing bad ideas at hundreds of miles per hour starts to add up...IT doesn't get paid to do their own job anymore, let alone put up with this political shit.

The next time some moron gets up to talk about 'fixing duh Interwebs,' I vote we trap 'em in a room with a router, with their release contingent upon successfully configuring it. I'll even be kind and leave the manual in there so they'll have something to read.

Up north

[Engeekneer]

Oh Scotland. You had a chance to get away from this madness. You should have taken it. Maybe it would have encouraged others to follow and eventually left a small insignificant cluster of insanity.

Re:Talk About "Nanny State"

[MrKaos]

What has the UK become with regulations and "attitudes" of law enforcement & government officials like this?

The City of London is different from London City. City of London is more like a Chamber of Commerce that started over a thousand years ago

Governors

[CaptQuark]

I think he feels he isn't getting enough cooperation from "main companies" so he wants more control on who can use the internet. Want to use the internet? Get a license. Want to create a web page? Get a license. Want to buy something on the internet? Want to download something? Want to copy from a site? He wants more control to be sure only legal uses are allowed.

It's almost like the speed limits on the highways aren't enough, he wants government-controlled speed governors installed in all cars.

“There may well come a time when government decides it’s had enough and it’s not getting enough help from those main companies that control the way we use the internet – they’re not getting enough help from them, so they’re going to start imposing regulations, imposing a code of conduct about the way people may be allowed to operated on the internet,” Fife says.

~~

Re:Governors

[Snowdog]

I think he feels he isn't getting enough cooperation from "main companies" so he wants more control on who can use the internet. Want to use the internet? Get a license. Want to create a web page? Get a license. Want to buy something on the internet? Want to download something? Want to copy from a site? He wants more control to be sure only profitable uses are allowed.

FTFY.

OMG!!!! Rapidswitch

[whoever57]

I realized that I have a Virtual Private server that is hosted in the City of London. There must be countless others.

Imagine the things that they could be used for. Perhaps even watching UK television "catch-up" services. Or, actually running a website in this idiot's own turf. OMG. What should I do?

Re:just wow

[Microlith]

The rest is but a websearch away.

I hate this shitty mentality, but apparently it's worldwide. No, I'm not going to go searching to dig up evidence for whatever wild claims you choose to make, you need to present it then and there.

Quickly! Stop the information!

[Tyr07]

Oh that's fantastic.

Hey bob, it seems these people are able to spread information and when people in power do shitty things, they have ways to let everyone know
without us being able to quickly arrest them and stop it.

Better control that shit now. Oh hey look, people are downloaded content illegally. Uh..we need to..stop internet piracy...from...causing anarchy...and stuff...and only people we say can have websites.
Get fucked.

What's next? The USA finds out the internet has oil and decides it needs freedom?

Re:Rules and freedoms

[Anonymous Coward]

... will know that freedom is self-limiting ...

You're equating freedom with anarchy. One can say "freedom" and mean 'the government must protect this choice' instead of 'no-one is allowed to stop me'. We have various phrases for describing how actions of the individual are limited by a hierarchical social group : Most popular is 'the social contract'.

WTF? BAD summary!

[oneandoneis2]

Seriously, I RTFA, AND the link on TFA to the original source. The guy just says he wants to open up a debate about how much policing of the Internet there should be. Where the FUCK did "get a license for a website" come from??? This isn't even a biased summary, it's flat-out misrepresentation. Get this shit off Slashdot.

Twins

[dcw3]

I saw the name Fyfe, and couldn't help but correlate it to Barney Fife. Two of a kind.

protecting Auntie Beeb's pie...

[Thud457]

Anglicize (Andy Taylor + Barney Fife) = Andy Fyfe ?
Except more like the guy that insisted on flipping the switch to shutdown the illegal phantasm containment system in Ghostbusters.

Re:Protecting Ain't Bea's Pie...

[sudon't]

I'm glad I'm not the only who noticed this bastard child of Andy and Barney. But, back to the original topic...

"In the end, that might mean that the Internet becomes completely ungovernable..."

That's how these idiots see the internet - as something to be governed. So far, it's been reasonably ungovernable, but as it's gained popularity, we've seen more and more "regulators" try to step in and control what happens on the internet. These nanny types have been very successful in other areas of public life, and they never seem to go away, so I'm very concerned. After all, we've already seen what dictators can do, so a clamped-down internet is technically feasible. I'd hate to see a situation where, in order to maintain freedom of information, we have to resort to a darknet model, and we lose useful things like search engines because those sites can no longer be indexed. But maybe that would be for the best? Either way, I'm not very optimistic.