The idea of online anonymity dates back to the days when September was not the only month online. The Penet remailer was created in 1993 just to prove the point that people could send and receive email without using their real names if they wanted to do so. Many of the designs concepts in modern systems like Tor can be traced back to Penet.
In fact, the US government has historically been more limited in what it does domestically than abroad. Voice of America, for example, is a propaganda broadcast that cannot be broadcast within the United States but which was famously broadcast along the USSR's borders.
It does not affect everyone by a factor of 10, because most email users are not composing messages as quickly as their computer can send those messages. If every email message you sent took an extra second of CPU time, you would probably not notice.
The only non-spammer people who would be disproportionately affected are people who like to send mail to dozens of addresses at a time. These people are already impacted by spam mitigation measures, and nobody seems to mind.
Well, let's put it this way: if the spam can send ten messages per second per machine in a botnet, and you force them spend one sec per message to compute hashcash tokens, then you have reduced the rate of spam by a factor of ten. Reducing the rate of spam doesn't end spam, but it does help.
On the other hand, hashcash would work. No tax revenue from people offshore, but you still force them to burn CPU cycles which has basically the same effect.
Usually I just find some other website to read to be honest. Javascript is not needed to load text, and using it in that way breaks all kinds of things, so I figure those websites can just get one less impression from me.
More like, "My client has been using NoScript for years, and only enables Javascript when absolutely necessary to accomplish some task." We keep Javascript turned off for the same reason we keep Autorun disabled, security. Not that anyone should need a reminder, but a prominent global corporation once tried to exploit Autorun to enforce copyrights too:
You turned Javascript off, potentially committing a crime
No, I turned Javascript off for security reasons. There are a number of attack vectors involving Javascript, and it is pretty straightforward to see that running arbitrary software you receive from a website is a potential security problem.
Newsflash: your website does not have any right to run whatever software it pleases on my computer, and I am not under any obligation to run your software regardless of what you claim it does.
Using NoScript is without a doubt the simplest solution. No clicking needed, you just read the article you want to read without running whatever software the website is asking you to run. You also benefit from improved security, improved privacy, and less wasted CPU time.
And the best way to not support that business model is to buy alternatives and boycott protected media
The problem is that the alternatives have a substantial disadvantage in the market. If you want to try a market-based approach, you need to live in a world where the market is fair, not a world where some businesses enjoy a legally protected monopoly.
Stealing
We are not talking about stealing, we are talking about copyright infringement. These are completely different categories of law.
it's a way of justifying obtaining something you want enough to download but not enough to pay the asking price for.
Why is that a bad thing? I am not willing to pay for a horse-drawn carriage ride either, that's why I get in my car and drive it to my destination.
PGP is not something you "turn on." If the recipient of your message has a PGP public key, you can encrypt the message and only the recipient will be able to decrypt it (or more precisely, only someone with the corresponding secret key, which is theoretically only stored on the recipient's computer). This is slightly different from an envelop, in that it requires the recipient to set something up before it can be used.
One proposed solution to this problem is identity based encryption, which would allow the recipient's name to be used as a public key. Unfortunately, IBE requires a trusted key-issuing party, and so it opens the door to various abuses of power (of the NSL variety); on the other hand, the sender can choose which key issuer the receiver will get their key from, and so the sender can distribute their trust (e.g. use Microsoft to issue keys for a GMail recipient). A second issue with IBE is that it is buried in patents right now, so it is going to be years before we could possibly see wide deployment.
For many, many reasons the ability to securely load and boot an OS with trust starting almost immediately on boot is desirable
Right, which is what happens when users can install their own keys and sign their own bootloaders. Which is curiously absent from this standard, and even forbidden by Microsoft on some devices. Yup, users came first on this one.
It is an open solution
No, it's a booby-trap meant to sneak DRM into our computers and kill free, personal computing. If it were "open" nobody would have to go to one vendor who has a vested interest in promoting their OS to get a signing key; users would be able to install signing keys of their choosing.
The high-level view is this: Microsoft wants to ensure that nobody can run unapproved software on their home computers. As a first step toward this nightmare, they bullied computer makers into shipping a bootloader signature system that could potentially prevent people from running GNU/Linux. Red Hat, a multibillion dollar GNU/Linux distributor, decided to play along and got a special signing key from Microsoft. Linus apparently does not want to play along (and I commend him for it).
Barter is legal too, but you are required by law to pay taxes on it.
It's not just taxes, of course. Most businesses have debts to repay, of one form or another, and the law makes provisions for debts in USD and not in BTC or cigarettes or livestock. There are also things like child support, various torts, civil fines, fees, and payments for government services of one form or another. All these things are done in dollars because all these things involve the US government.
It has value because I can go to the store and be assured the man behind the counter will take it
Unless the store is in Canada. Strangely, they want to deal in CAN and not USD. Hm..
We do that because it's better than a barter system, and we've all mutually agreed to use dollars
You say this as though the agreement process is something magic or instinctive. Again, why don't Canadians accept it? Why don't Europeans? Why is the use of a currency so neatly aligned with national borders, anyway?
the only reason ANY currency is worth ANYTHING is that people are willing to exchange it for something else.
What this misses is the reason why anyone would be so willing. Why, for example, is everyone willing to take USD from me in the US, but almost nobody will accept USD in Canada?
The answer is staring you in the face, of course: laws. Most adults in the US are required, by law, to give the government some amount of USD every year. Most Canadian adults must give the Canadian government some CAN each year.
In reality, the economic value of all things, currencies included, is determined by supply and demand. Money demand stems from the laws surrounding money: tax laws, debt laws, tort laws, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember a time when videos were being shared on P2P networks. Kill youtube and bring back peer to peer video sharing.
The idea of online anonymity dates back to the days when September was not the only month online. The Penet remailer was created in 1993 just to prove the point that people could send and receive email without using their real names if they wanted to do so. Many of the designs concepts in modern systems like Tor can be traced back to Penet.
In fact, the US government has historically been more limited in what it does domestically than abroad. Voice of America, for example, is a propaganda broadcast that cannot be broadcast within the United States but which was famously broadcast along the USSR's borders.
It does not affect everyone by a factor of 10, because most email users are not composing messages as quickly as their computer can send those messages. If every email message you sent took an extra second of CPU time, you would probably not notice.
The only non-spammer people who would be disproportionately affected are people who like to send mail to dozens of addresses at a time. These people are already impacted by spam mitigation measures, and nobody seems to mind.
Well, let's put it this way: if the spam can send ten messages per second per machine in a botnet, and you force them spend one sec per message to compute hashcash tokens, then you have reduced the rate of spam by a factor of ten. Reducing the rate of spam doesn't end spam, but it does help.
On the other hand, hashcash would work. No tax revenue from people offshore, but you still force them to burn CPU cycles which has basically the same effect.
Yeah, that's what I did years ago: I turned off Javascript.
Personally, I am more terrified of a world where not running anti-copying software in my browser is a crime than a world where copying is a crime.
Usually I just find some other website to read to be honest. Javascript is not needed to load text, and using it in that way breaks all kinds of things, so I figure those websites can just get one less impression from me.
More like, "My client has been using NoScript for years, and only enables Javascript when absolutely necessary to accomplish some task." We keep Javascript turned off for the same reason we keep Autorun disabled, security. Not that anyone should need a reminder, but a prominent global corporation once tried to exploit Autorun to enforce copyrights too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
You turned Javascript off, potentially committing a crime
No, I turned Javascript off for security reasons. There are a number of attack vectors involving Javascript, and it is pretty straightforward to see that running arbitrary software you receive from a website is a potential security problem.
Newsflash: your website does not have any right to run whatever software it pleases on my computer, and I am not under any obligation to run your software regardless of what you claim it does.
Using NoScript is without a doubt the simplest solution. No clicking needed, you just read the article you want to read without running whatever software the website is asking you to run. You also benefit from improved security, improved privacy, and less wasted CPU time.
Even easier: turn Javascript off. Or will allowing websites to run arbitrary programs on your computer become a legal requirement too?
Not only did NoScript completely defeat this system, but it actually revealed which company they hired to create it:
http://info.icopyright.com/
And the best way to not support that business model is to buy alternatives and boycott protected media
The problem is that the alternatives have a substantial disadvantage in the market. If you want to try a market-based approach, you need to live in a world where the market is fair, not a world where some businesses enjoy a legally protected monopoly.
Stealing
We are not talking about stealing, we are talking about copyright infringement. These are completely different categories of law.
it's a way of justifying obtaining something you want enough to download but not enough to pay the asking price for.
Why is that a bad thing? I am not willing to pay for a horse-drawn carriage ride either, that's why I get in my car and drive it to my destination.
You still have legal threats under the six strikes system.
PGP is not something you "turn on." If the recipient of your message has a PGP public key, you can encrypt the message and only the recipient will be able to decrypt it (or more precisely, only someone with the corresponding secret key, which is theoretically only stored on the recipient's computer). This is slightly different from an envelop, in that it requires the recipient to set something up before it can be used.
One proposed solution to this problem is identity based encryption, which would allow the recipient's name to be used as a public key. Unfortunately, IBE requires a trusted key-issuing party, and so it opens the door to various abuses of power (of the NSL variety); on the other hand, the sender can choose which key issuer the receiver will get their key from, and so the sender can distribute their trust (e.g. use Microsoft to issue keys for a GMail recipient). A second issue with IBE is that it is buried in patents right now, so it is going to be years before we could possibly see wide deployment.
ALL email is just POSTCARDS that anybody in the middle can read plainly.
The 1990s called, they want their unsolved problems back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
This was a big factor in the Arab Spring. There is a chance of good things resulting from that (it will be years before we know).
For many, many reasons the ability to securely load and boot an OS with trust starting almost immediately on boot is desirable
Right, which is what happens when users can install their own keys and sign their own bootloaders. Which is curiously absent from this standard, and even forbidden by Microsoft on some devices. Yup, users came first on this one.
It is an open solution
No, it's a booby-trap meant to sneak DRM into our computers and kill free, personal computing. If it were "open" nobody would have to go to one vendor who has a vested interest in promoting their OS to get a signing key; users would be able to install signing keys of their choosing.
With some colorful language and amusing metaphors.
The high-level view is this: Microsoft wants to ensure that nobody can run unapproved software on their home computers. As a first step toward this nightmare, they bullied computer makers into shipping a bootloader signature system that could potentially prevent people from running GNU/Linux. Red Hat, a multibillion dollar GNU/Linux distributor, decided to play along and got a special signing key from Microsoft. Linus apparently does not want to play along (and I commend him for it).
Barter is legal too, but you are required by law to pay taxes on it.
It's not just taxes, of course. Most businesses have debts to repay, of one form or another, and the law makes provisions for debts in USD and not in BTC or cigarettes or livestock. There are also things like child support, various torts, civil fines, fees, and payments for government services of one form or another. All these things are done in dollars because all these things involve the US government.
It has value because I can go to the store and be assured the man behind the counter will take it
Unless the store is in Canada. Strangely, they want to deal in CAN and not USD. Hm..
We do that because it's better than a barter system, and we've all mutually agreed to use dollars
You say this as though the agreement process is something magic or instinctive. Again, why don't Canadians accept it? Why don't Europeans? Why is the use of a currency so neatly aligned with national borders, anyway?
Hint:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_law
the only reason ANY currency is worth ANYTHING is that people are willing to exchange it for something else.
What this misses is the reason why anyone would be so willing. Why, for example, is everyone willing to take USD from me in the US, but almost nobody will accept USD in Canada?
The answer is staring you in the face, of course: laws. Most adults in the US are required, by law, to give the government some amount of USD every year. Most Canadian adults must give the Canadian government some CAN each year.
In reality, the economic value of all things, currencies included, is determined by supply and demand. Money demand stems from the laws surrounding money: tax laws, debt laws, tort laws, etc.