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The Web's Creator Thinks We Need a New One That Governments Can't Control (thenextweb.com)
The web has created millions of jobs, impacted nearly every industry, connected people, and arguably made the world a better place. But the person who started it all isn't exactly pleased with the way things have turned out to be. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web, believes that the way it works in the present day "completely undermines the spirit of helping people create." The Next Web reports: "Edward Snowden showed we've inadvertently built the world's largest surveillance network with the web," said Brewster Kahle, who heads up Internet Archive. And he's not wrong: governments across the globe keep an eye on what their citizens are accessing online and some censor content on the Web in an effort to control what they think. To that end, Berners-Lee, Kahle and other pioneers of the modern Web are brainstorming ideas for a new kind of information network that can't be controlled by governments or powered by megacorporations like Amazon and Google.The New York Times originally reported on this and has more details. (But it is also paywalled.)
That's hilarious. You go right ahead and then come back and tell us your cool idea about a global infrastructure that can't be controlled by the organizations who build and maintain said infrastructure.
Build it so that people can't trade kiddie porn, or plan terrorist attacks, or spread ransom-ware to people's computers.
We need to remember that governments aren't the only ones who censor others. We see private entities do it all of the time, too. Heck, even Slashdot's moderation system is a great example of this. A small number of people can easily manipulate what content others will see. Remember, censorship doesn't need to involve the complete removal of information. Even just obscuring it, by say downmodding a perfectly fine comment to -1 so it isn't shown to most users by default, is a form of censorship.
And hookers?
...could look at something that was conceived, paid for, and built by the US defense department and sigh "Don't you wish we could have this without all that pesky GOVERNMENT involvement?"
-Styopa
We need to invent a means to communicate via Neutrinos, so no one can intercept the message. Not even the recipient.
The problem is people.
If it's built and operated by human beings, those human beings can be co-opted to turn control over to other human beings in a position of power. Muscle, punitive, fiscal, whatever. Given a large enough operation (and world-wide is pretty large), there is zero chance The Powers That Be will be kept out.
And, if by some fantasy miracle TPTB can be kept out, they can't be prevented from destroying what they can't control.
Poor deluded Berners-Lee, finally giving in to the libertarian pipe-dream of benevolent crypto-anarchy. Kind of sad, really. I mean, it's a nice dream, but like most dreams a complete impossibility to implement. Again, not for technological reasons, but because (quoting DNA) "To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I don't think the word 'control' accurately describes what countries are able to do to the Internet. There is a big difference between using the Internet to do surveillance (legal or not) and actually controlling what information is available. I'm not sure how you build something that anyone and his brother can use, but the governments of the world somehow can't.
or powered by megacorporations like Amazon and Google.
This.
Because while our governments are slowly turning fascist, corporations are facists. Think about it. Strict top-down control. No democracy or participation at any level (I'm talking about real participation, not token "we listen to your ideas" events). All in the name of superiority and expansionism.
If we want to have a free Internet, corporations are the real enemy.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"Edward Snowden showed we've inadvertently built the world's largest surveillance network..."
Uh, inadvertently...??
Let's pretend the government doesn't exist for a moment. Yes, that's right. No NSA. No FISA courts. No NSLs. No secret data centers. Nothing.
The entities that have robbed us of our privacy and the power they wield today are legally titled under the words I AGREE, and are contained within every EULA that drives every damn app or service that this generation loves to call "free".
Sorry, but I'm not really buying "inadvertently" right now, as if it wasn't obvious enough that our government currently collects or buys most of this data from the very service providers we use every day. Government surveillance today is nothing more than an outsourced arm of corporate data collecting.
And you AGREED to pretty much ALL of it.
It's based on the faulty idea that the government must be evil so you can't give them control over it.
The government is made of people - some good and some bad. As such, ALL governments do some good as well as some bad.
There is no way to have an internet with significantly less government control without a shit load more doxing, Blackmail, identity theft, sale of dangerous drugs, pedophilie videos, viruses, hacking and tons of other crimes.
Hell, the government can barely contain the crime on the internet now.
Which means any significantly 'freer' internet would end up being banned.
The BEST they could hope for is to create a specific libertarian UN empowered organization in charge of the free-web, giving it massive enforcement powers but only related to the free-web.
That libertarian organization could possibly maintain enough control over the internet to reign in mankind's darker side, and at the same time preventing regular governments from over-regulating and controlling it.
But make no mistake, it can only be done by ADDING a new layer of government to the internet, not by creating a new internet.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
As another poster already pointed out, radio is controlled by the FCC. More importantly, the FCC maintains a fleet of vans dedicated to finding pirate radio stations, and the USAF and USN have assets dedicated to jamming radios. Try again.
Best watch that kind of talk, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A couple of people, not many, we decided that, well, wouldn't it be really swell if we planted a few gardens. We're gardeners after all. Why not come together and show each other what we know about gardening? We could connect our gardens to each other, have our plants grow together, maybe we'll find some awesome symbiosis happening! And we did. And others came and looked at our garden. It was just a little garden, mind you, there was nobody to hold your hands when you tried to only walk around in them, there were few trails and most of the time you had to carve your own, carrying a machete with you was advisable. Most people turned away when they noticed that it's going to be a bit of work to just look at our flowers. Let alone plant their own garden. Because back then, if you wanted to be part of that gardening experience, you better learned a thing or two about gardening, and fast!
Yes, there was the occasional bully who jumped into our flowerbeds and trampled over them, but we knew how to deal with them. And deal with them we did, swiftly and with lasting effect. We were, after all, gardeners. And we were good at that.
More people came along and we were overjoyed. They're really interested in our stuff! You see, nobody really cared about our plants and everyone we showed any of them called us names because, well, it was not "cool" to plant flowers. But suddenly this was the next big thing, everyone wanted flowers! And we were only too eager to share all the knowledge. Hey, the more the merrier! Knowledge multiplies if you share it!
Well, to be honest... we shared more than just knowledge. There were a few flowerbeds that had those camo nets above them, but hey, ya know, who cares what you do in your spare time, amirite? Just pass it and don't bogard the spliff.
Then people came who said they wanted to build some roads through our gardens so people could walk more easily. We agreed, it was a good idea. After all, most people by now weren't really hard core gardeners anymore. Many just wanted to wander about and smell the flowers. And those that joined were... well, let's say they were happy if we gave them a few saplings because they had no clue at all how to grow plants but wanted some good looking flowerbeds too. We didn't mind. After all, hey, it's not like I don't have that flower anymore just because I give you a sapling of it, right? And we get roads across our garden.
A seed shop opened at the corner. We thought it's cool. Hey, that makes it easier to get seeds initially. Someone's gonna buy, and then we pass 'em around and ... so we thought. But suddenly passing seeds and saplings around wasn't "allowed" anymore. The cornerstone of what we built was considered "bad" now. By whom the fuck and who died and made you king, we asked. We dealt with it the way we knew how to deal with it. The same way we dealt with the bullies, or with others that broke the rules. Only to learn that the rules have changed. We no longer make them.
Long story short, our garden is now walled in. Most of the plots have been sold, or rather, "reappropriated". We're sitting in some corners, tucked away from the busy streets where vendors peddle boring, uninspired hybrid plants (that are of course patented and don't you DARE to as much as SHOW it to anyone, let alone hand him a sapling!) where the masses stumble about, not even knowing what gardening is, for it has been turned into a huge amusement park. Allegedly there is still a tree standing somewhere in what used to be our garden, I haven't seen one in a long time, though.
So we moved on. And we learned.
We built another garden.
And this time, we will not make the mistake to invite the masses in. Leave them their amusement park, and leave them in the blissful ignorance that they don't even know what they're missing.
They most likely even wouldn't want to know.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...It's tough[er] to track down the last 1%. It's not worth the effort, purely because 99% is enough.
I am the 1%.
This is an illusion that will become more obvious to you as you realize you're not the 1%, but the 0.0001%.
When Big Brother starts to notice that you are no longer the proverbial "one-in-a-million", but more like the actual one-in-a-million, you will stick out like a sore thumb.
It's not an anti-movement that will maintain your privacy. It's the fact that you are not a part of the collective that do not care to even think or act differently than anyone else. Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, YouTube, and Instagram. Why even bother with GPS and phone meta-data when that short list can easily monitor the obscenely repetitive lives of the majority today? Seriously, humans have become ridiculously predictable. All the more reason you'll stand out.
And yeah, it sucks. I know.
Government isn't the problem - financial interests are. Government is, if anything, the solution: a governance that can make sure the playing field is level, that the rules apply in the same way to everybody etc. Looking back to history, we see that powerful people have always grabbed as much as they can for themselves with little to no regard for the vast majority of the population - this has been the case as far back as we have written records. The laws and regulations that protect ordinary people - the mythical 99% - are there because we have fought hard for them and got the government to change the rules in ouor favour. We have seen this happen over and over, every time some new technology opens up opportunities - in the beginning there are no rules, so those that are strong and ruthless enough move in, take over and push out everybody else; and then we get Government in some form to set the rules more in favour of the rest of us.
The industry - whatever industry - has always felt entitled to use any means at all to maximise their own profits; if not for government regulations, we would not have any kind of food labeling, just as an example. The producers have fought bitterly against having to tell what kind of crap they put in food, cosmetics etc - they still try to hide artificial additives behind meaningless gibberish and deceptive labeling. They hate the fact that they can't put anything they please into any product and lie about it to their customers - we would all be drinking milk "enriched" with melamine, were it not for the government. So why do people still keep talking about government as the only evil thing in the world? Government is, by and large, good for the people - yes, it is annoying that we have to pay tax, but come on. I'm not saying we should just roll over and trust them uncritically, but let us at least be intelligent in our criticism.
So, about the internet: it is again the big players, the Googles, Facebooks, etc, that want to manipulate and spy on what goes on there. Everybody on /. knows this - it is discussed regularly, it is commonly agreed that we don't like it. And then people go back to reviling "The Government" - why? No doubt one element in this is that the big players have an interest in obfuscating the issue, so have ways of ensuring that there are large numbers of anti-government muck-spreaders around, but another essential part is the sheer idiocy of the people who frequent forums on the net and never even stop to ask simple, critical questions.