Poll: End of the Web As We Know It

[Sronpop]

They can try, and they might well succeed in some regard, but no way in hell are they ever gonna have control of the internet. It will be like prohibition, it didn't stop anything. Unrestricted internet will become weed.

Google will never let it happen anyway, it ruins their business.

 

[xDarc]

As soon as they start making laws against masking your identity on the web, or attempting to, and making you more transparent than you already are; and people start getting prosecuted- all the bravado is gonna dry up pretty fucking quick. Guarantee it.

There is a real national security risk in the relative anonymity of the web, and taking that away will sap any resistance that young rabble rousers might offer.

Think deeper then an ip attached to a billing address. Think registration. User id numbers. Think about what happens when you get caught driving a car without a license.

 

[Chewster]

As soon as they start making laws against masking your identity on the web, or attempting to, and making you more transparent than you already are; and people start getting prosecuted- all the bravado is gonna dry up pretty fucking quick. Guarantee it.

There is a real national security risk in the relative anonymity of the web, and taking that away will sap any resistance that young rabble rousers might offer.

Think deeper then an ip attached to a billing address. Think registration. User id numbers. Think about what happens when you get caught driving a car without a license.

First of all, you assume that this supposed registration is an inevitability. It isn't.

Second, the RIAA has prosecuted people, and it still isn't stopping piracy or unfettered use of the Internet. You assume that silly American laws apply elsewhere. They don't. The internet isn't a centralized, solid mass that can be controlled. It is an evolving system that incorporates innumerable countries, not all of which agree on what is to be done.

And third, what is this supposed "national" security risk (ignoring that the Internet is multi-national)? Who is at risk and from what, specifically?

 

[Zacharine]

As soon as they start making laws against masking your identity on the web, or attempting to, and making you more transparent than you already are; and people start getting prosecuted- all the bravado is gonna dry up pretty fucking quick. Guarantee it.

Which will be the point where various groups will begin putting anonymous wireless routers into ships sailing international waters, and selling bandwidth via those anonymous routers.

Please, the very nature of the internet makes it impossible to police it to such a degree. It is a de-centralized architecture with no absolutely essential control nodes. Heck, you could crash all name servers (all 13 or something), and the internet would still be up ; you'd simply have to write down the IP addresses of your favourite sites.

And how much do you want to bet, if the internet ever became policed like Orvell's 1984 predicted/warned for society, an underground net made uo of wireless servers would pop up. Yeah, good luck trying to scramble radiowaves / decode those levels of encrypted radio traffic on international scale....

You'd have to outlaw all technology that could be used to send and receive information wirelessly. In fact, you'd have to outlaw the possession of such technology and components: constructing a basic radio is ridiculously easy.

With our current technology, internet cannot die as long as there are enough people willing to keep it alive.

 

[xDarc]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20012253-245.html

From the article where someone involved with WikiLeaks was detained by the FBI

"While he was on stage at Next HOPE, Appelbaum urged the largely sympathetic audience to support Wikileaks by volunteering or by donating money, by addressing recent criticisms of the document-publishing Web site, and by boasting that Wikileaks remains uncensorable. "You can try to take us down...but you can't stop us," he said. He also challenged modern U.S. foreign policy and called for civil disobedience in the form of exposing heavily guarded secrets."

What do you take away from this paragraph in particular?

If you take away, "Threatening the United States' government," give yourself a cookie...

Only beginning, the internet war is.

 

[xDarc]

And how much do you want to bet, if the internet ever became policed like Orvell's 1984 predicted/warned for society, an underground net made uo of wireless servers would pop up. Yeah, good luck trying to scramble radiowaves / decode those levels of encrypted radio traffic on international scale....

Even if you weren't talking about things that sound like they came straight of some early 90's computer movie *hackers*, i'm pretty sure finding a signal's source is not beyond a world power... I'm also pretty sure that so few people would be aware of or understand circumventions and private networks, that the influences of such things would be inconsequential.

Kind of like an early 90's BBS. Which reminds me, if anyone has the Amateur Action collection please hook me up. Been looking for that stuff forever, can't find any of it any more after that famous obscenity court case shut it for good.

 

[Zacharine]

And how much do you want to bet, if the internet ever became policed like Orvell's 1984 predicted/warned for society, an underground net made uo of wireless servers would pop up. Yeah, good luck trying to scramble radiowaves / decode those levels of encrypted radio traffic on international scale....

Even if you weren't talking about things that sound like they came straight of some early 90's computer movie *hackers*, i'm pretty sure finding a signal's source is not beyond a world power...

No, it wouldn't. But with encrypted traffic you'd first have to analyze if the signal came from a cellphone, a radioset, radiotelescope bounceback from the atmo etc.

Then there is the matter of decrypting the traffic to prove it was an intentional data-transfer of recognizable information. Assuming of course that some forms of wireless data transfer would still be legal.

like I said...

"You'd have to outlaw all technology that could be used to send and receive information wirelessly. In fact, you'd have to outlaw the possession of such technology and components: constructing a basic radio is ridiculously easy."

I'm also pretty sure that so few people would be aware of or understand circumventions and private networks, that the influences of such things would be inconsequential.

And come governmental crackdown on international scale, that information would be made available and public and in-your-face within weeks. Booklets sent trough post, flyers trough mail-slots etc. And interest for such measures would likewise spike. Certainly, the amount of people would be small compared to the internet of today, but it would be there.

Kind of like an early 90's BBS.

Hmm, yes. Except this time, the name of that BBS would be Facebook Underground, Twitter Resistance, Youtube 4all etc, instead of a minor curiosity for a fringe group. People are kind of used to having cellphones, sending email, and using aforementioned 'net services. The interest for creation of Internet 2.0 already exists in large numbers, should Internet 1.0 suddenly vanish.

 

[Zenn3k]

The governments and businesses of the world can try all they like, but the Hackers of the internet will never allow its status to change from what exists today.

 

[MiserableOldGit]

Politics don't enter into the equation. Your vote at the ballot box may stop a political party from trying to limit access, but unless you own major shares in ComCast or Telekom, there is literally jack shit you can do about anything that they may be planning.

I'm sorry, but to suggest that these companies are outside of control by law or legislation is ridiculous. Would it take time? Probably, but there's really very little you can't do via a change in the law. Unless you're suggesting these companies are going to stage a coup or hold the nation at hostage.

These companies arent outside the law, merely ran by the lawmakers. I understand that any suggestion that our great captains of industry are greedy controlling sociopaths marks you a looney conspiracy theorist, so I'll say no more and leave it to you to research the careers of leading politicians in developed countries and decide for yourself if there is perhaps a conflict of interest, and room for corruption/overt control.
My personal fav was the Bush administration - here's a fun game, check out their careers-take note of the companies they worked for, then get a list of the top ten companies to get contracts for reconstruction in Iraq. I'll wait (*slurps tea, smokes cig*)...
...they is some cheeky sods, no? If you can set up that kind of racket, gaining meaningful (if not total) control over the internet would be a piece of piss. See, the thing is, most people will cheerfully trade freedom and morality for a comfortable existence, especialy if they don't actualy have to state they are making that choice.

 

[Sronpop]

I think it is pretty much impossible, no one country 'owns' the internet. Sure the USA might make a law that restricts websites and force all isp's in america to block access to those sites. But what about the rest of the world, its just not going to happen.

First of all it ruins the ISP's business, what happens when one ISP restricts access, they lose business and the customer goes to a different one. ISP's will never agree to it. Its the government sabotaging their business. They tried to do something like that in Ireland in the moment, some music organisation sued the main ISP(Eircom) and they have a 3 strikes rules for use of torrents or visiting torrent sites or something. What happens when the 3 strikes are up, you lose a customer. The scare tactics seemed to have worked slightly, or at least all the people who really wanted to continue found an easy work around. Needless to say I don't know anyone who has been disconnected.

If the USA implemented a ban on ISP's, what is to stop them using different technology to connect people to the internet, satellite technology works. Who is to stop a Russian ISP taking all of americas internet business and connecting everyone via satellite. The us government can't do much about that can they.

It will ruin internet business in general. Take google. Millions of websites have google ads placed on them. Advertisers pay google money to have their product advertised on sites with google ads on them, and in turn the website gets money from it and so does google. What happens when millions of those sites becomes unavailable. Yeah not gonna happen.

The people deciding this stuff are so far behind in terms of technology anyway. They could never accurately do what they propose. And I really don't think any self respecting computer scientist would agree to help them do what they propose.

What it comes down to is trying to reverse a decade of progress. I don't think it can happen, people will vote against it once they realize that all the good stuff on the internet comes from the non mainstream sites.