About 10 years ago I bought an SF Novel by K.W Jeter called "Noir", the background of the story was a world where copyright theft was punishable by death, if you were lucky.
The book itself was good but I thought that copyright crime as a capital offence was a fun idea but just a step too far away from reality to be believable.
Not now. Science Fiction can tell the future and it's not one I like.
The European commission and parliament is turning into a bureaucratic corporate playground.
This sounds very US-centric. Building backdoors into networks? The rest of the world will be very interested in buying equipment which the US Government can tap into any time. The question, "Is it American built?", will be answered by, "Don't touch it with a bargepole, it's got US backdoors in it". I can see American companies going for this one big time.
Since I use one of the ISP's mentioned in the referenced article, (Demon), I got interested in what the proposed technology Cleanfeed actually does. If I got the right site, it seems to be a standard filtering proxy and if you go to www.cleanfeed.co.uk/products.php you'll see that there are 44 categories defined and 12 blocked in a standard configuration, more than just child-porn.
Some of the interesting categories are Religion, Web based e-mail, Health and Medicine and Usenet.
Though Cleanfeed only blocks 12 of these categories it can log access to all of them.
In my case I use Demon's web proxy to be a good citizen and cut down on bandwith usage on the net, therefore all my web accesses are logged in the proxy anyway - but I don't have to do it. I have the choice not to as Demon allows direct access by-passing any ISP proxies. If Cleanfeed comes in all my web accesses to sites that somebody else may deem inappropriate will be logged regardless. The list is defined as the, "Cleanfeed Master Database of classified Internet domains", and any domain of interest could be inserted into it. The use of Cleanfeed as a monitoring tool for anything that an ISP, and by extension a Government, may not like is obvious and it's use to block sites may only be secondary to its ability to monitor people's access to sites.
Have a look at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html
"A fundamental tenet of creationism is that all life looks designed, and a commonly cited example of this design is the bombardier beetle. Supporting such a claim requires an examination of the bombardier beetle and of what "design" really means. Upon examination of these issues, however, the bombardier beetle shows evidence of evolution and seriously challenges the concept of design."
Slashdot Mirror
...sign from the local police saying "NO TRICK OR TREATERS HERE" will be going up in the window.
Speaking as a Brit, I feel Hallowe'en here is talked about far more than it is actually celebrated.
Willing to be proven wrong!
No, you're speaking as an Englishman. We've always celebrated Halloween in Scotland.
The U.S. got their Halloween customs from us.
I now know why obesity is a problem in the modern world.
It's not been brains or an opposable thumb that got us to the top, it's just been a good appetite.
Humanity has eaten its way to the top of the simian evolutionary tree.
About 10 years ago I bought an SF Novel by K.W Jeter called "Noir", the background of the story was a world where copyright theft was punishable by death, if you were lucky.
0
http://www.amazon.com/Noir-K-W-Jeter/dp/055357638
The book itself was good but I thought that copyright crime as a capital offence was a fun idea but just a step too far away from reality to be believable.
Not now. Science Fiction can tell the future and it's not one I like.
The European commission and parliament is turning into a bureaucratic corporate playground.
This sounds very US-centric. Building backdoors into networks? The rest of the world will be very interested in buying equipment which the US Government can tap into any time. The question, "Is it American built?", will be answered by, "Don't touch it with a bargepole, it's got US backdoors in it". I can see American companies going for this one big time.
http://www.gmail.co.uk/
http://www.gmail.de/
http://www.gmail.no/
http://www.gmail.it/
http://www.gmail.dk/
http://www.gmail.ru/
http://www.gmail.net/
http://www.gmail.org.uk/
http://www.gmail.cn/
Will they be as good as Rogue Trooper"?
Since I use one of the ISP's mentioned in the referenced article, (Demon), I got interested in what the proposed technology Cleanfeed actually does. If I got the right site, it seems to be a standard filtering proxy and if you go to www.cleanfeed.co.uk/products.php you'll see that there are 44 categories defined and 12 blocked in a standard configuration, more than just child-porn.
The category list is on www.cleanfeed.co.uk/catlist.php
Some of the interesting categories are Religion, Web based e-mail, Health and Medicine and Usenet.
Though Cleanfeed only blocks 12 of these categories it can log access to all of them.
In my case I use Demon's web proxy to be a good citizen and cut down on bandwith usage on the net, therefore all my web accesses are logged in the proxy anyway - but I don't have to do it. I have the choice not to as Demon allows direct access by-passing any ISP proxies. If Cleanfeed comes in all my web accesses to sites that somebody else may deem inappropriate will be logged regardless. The list is defined as the, "Cleanfeed Master Database of classified Internet domains", and any domain of interest could be inserted into it. The use of Cleanfeed as a monitoring tool for anything that an ISP, and by extension a Government, may not like is obvious and it's use to block sites may only be secondary to its ability to monitor people's access to sites.
Have a look at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html
"A fundamental tenet of creationism is that all life looks designed, and a commonly cited example of this design is the bombardier beetle. Supporting such a claim requires an examination of the bombardier beetle and of what "design" really means. Upon examination of these issues, however, the bombardier beetle shows evidence of evolution and seriously challenges the concept of design."