11-16-2010, 07:02 PM
There's one tiny problem for them though.. No one has been able to police the web so far. Even enormous and suppressive nations like Iran and China have not been able to do this. When Iran tried this they effectively turned of the internet and still the students that were protesting came through to the outside. The internet was actually designed to not be vulnerable to centralized control. Theres all kinds of crypto systems and crypto tunnels in place. And if the US blocks access you can make a safe bet that that will be circumvented in minutes. In Holland they're trying to block a popular pirating site, you know, the one with the boat. It was actually scheduled to be taken offline months ago.. And since that time it indeed had a few hours downtime.
To me it falls back to an ancient hacker idea, information wants to be free. You don't lock up the data. Partly because of the ethics, but mostly because in the end you just can't.
What will happen though if these plans are pursued is that we will see more and more civil injustice taking place... Attempts to whip the people into submission and this will for 99% only hurt the innocent.
And there are alternatives but they require techies and visionaries more than politicians can offer. As popular news sites are showing you just can't stop the mob mind. The round routes around censorship are already fully in place and tested by the warez groups, which incidentally includes groups which existed before the internet.
Switching from warez to news and propaganda is already happening. Wikileaks uses those channels too and once it's out there it's everywhere.
It needs a new approach, openness and the implications that this brings. But openness brings tremendous power with it.
To me it falls back to an ancient hacker idea, information wants to be free. You don't lock up the data. Partly because of the ethics, but mostly because in the end you just can't.
What will happen though if these plans are pursued is that we will see more and more civil injustice taking place... Attempts to whip the people into submission and this will for 99% only hurt the innocent.
And there are alternatives but they require techies and visionaries more than politicians can offer. As popular news sites are showing you just can't stop the mob mind. The round routes around censorship are already fully in place and tested by the warez groups, which incidentally includes groups which existed before the internet.
Switching from warez to news and propaganda is already happening. Wikileaks uses those channels too and once it's out there it's everywhere.
It needs a new approach, openness and the implications that this brings. But openness brings tremendous power with it.