Should the Internet be Policed?

[JesterRaiin]

Simplicity.

I like this idea, but who is going to pay for playground. If it's not commercial ...

In my opinion anarchy is the most wonderfull thing of the internet and I think there should be always exist a place where total freedom(with everything from troll to hatemail to political activism) is guaranteed.

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Nowadays the Interent consist mainly of useless clones of similar sites. We use shiny CSS effects, heavy animations, cinematics, flash commercials, on line creators and sh*t. We got used to this stuff, but we don't really need it.

All we need is to resign from such sh*t, and enough people to start and mantain personal webservers to have self supporting, self sustaining medium. It's really not that big deal.

Anarchy ? It's only for strong people. Not in the sense of physical strength, but strong willed. There always will be weak and broken ones who simply can't think, speak and do what should be done. They'll choose any kind of government that'll promise them protection. Even dictatorship isn't out of question if the personal status quo is discussed.

Just look around. With the exception of a few very strange cases like Switzerland most countries are run by people that shouldn't be trusted more than typical shoplifter. :|

 

[Wulfheri]

Anarchy ? It's only for strong people. Not in the sense of physical strength, but strong willed. There always will be weak and broken ones who simply can't think, speak and do what should be done. They'll choose any kind of government that'll promise them protection. Even dictatorship isn't out of question if the personal status quo is discussed.

Just look around. With the exception of a few very strange cases like Switzerland most countries are run by people that shouldn't be trusted more than typical shoplifter. :|

And we should believe in that strenght, if we lose that believe then there is nothing more that has real value.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Anarchy ? It's only for strong people. Not in the sense of physical strength, but strong willed. There always will be weak and broken ones who simply can't think, speak and do what should be done. They'll choose any kind of government that'll promise them protection. Even dictatorship isn't out of question if the personal status quo is discussed.

Just look around. With the exception of a few very strange cases like Switzerland most countries are run by people that shouldn't be trusted more than typical shoplifter. :|

And we should believe in that strenght, if we lose that believe then there is nothing more that has real value.

Unfortunately, despite what some religious fetishists think, no amount of "believing" will change poor loser into true man.
We have this saying around here "kto się pizdą urodził, kanarkiem nie umrze". It's suitable i guess...

 

[CrystalShadow]

Well, there's a few practical problems here.

The internet, by design seems very difficult to police in any meaningful way.

What can you do to someone after all? I mean, it's a big hassle even figuring out what's happened.

If a person tries to rob a bank, everyone at the bank pretty much knows about it. If you try and break into a website, you'd have to be incredibly clumsy indeed for anyone to even know you've done so without them actively looking for someone.

The internet isn't anonymous, but it's a lot more challenging to track down an actual person, and most activities aren't obvious.

Do you know who else is on this website right now? The forum admins probably have an IP log. But the rest of us don't even know if there's another person around.

Now imagine going to a nightclub. You know right away if there are 20 people, or 3000. Some may be trying to hide, but it's not easy to do.

Here, being hidden is the default state, and being visible requires considerable effort.


Furthermore, the internet is, after all, the 'world wide web'. That has implications that are quite pronounced, because that means no one nation has jurisdiction over it.

And, in fact, if you're at all familiar with maritime law, it's surprisingly difficult to enforce anything (even murder and the like) if it's done in international waters.

The internet isn't 'in' any given country, so it's akin to being in international waters.

Combine this with the fact that you have a hard time seeing who else is online, and that it's even more complex than 'international waters', because... Well, for instance:

The Escapist is a US website. It has to obey US law, and if it is punished for anything, the US government is expected to do so in most cases.

I however, am using this site right now, and I'm not a US citizen, not directly subject to any of it's laws, and am directly subject to the laws of my own country.

If you wanted to punish me for doing something illegal on this site, you'd have to contact my government to do so.

Worse still, what's illegal for me, may be different to what's illegal by the laws the website has to obey...

For that matter, this site might potentially contain content that is technically illegal where I live, yet perfectly legal according to the jurisdiction it is in.

Now, if I were to visit the US, I'd be subject to US law. Yet I'm still in my own country, while using a site that in some ways could be considered 'US territory'.

That brings up the problem of me legally speaking being in two places at once, and if they have contradictory laws, you'd have to decide which takes precedence.


The only way in which the internet could be meaningfully policed, is if there was a unified set of laws that were valid worldwide, or all sites were restricted to only those people who were in the same legal jurisdiction as the website...

(Or of course, declaring 'the internet' a seperate country in it's own right. But this would result in much the same problems, since anyone 'on the internet' is still physically in their own country as well. - Not to mention that it seems unlikely you could meaningfully treat the internet as if it were a unified whole.)

It's such a convoluted, impossible mess, because it presents problems that are alien to how the legal system and policing was conceived, and plays havok with the concept of legal jurisdiction, because in practice it makes it possible for a single person to be in multiple places at once, and for all practical intents and purposes completely ignore any kind of border controls.

Yay for being on US property without a visa, or passport, or any legal check whatsoever by the US government... Oh, and as soon as you try and enforce US laws, I'm gone, and you can't touch me without resorting to extradition treaties.
See how messed up that gets when you think about what it implies?

 

[The Unworthy Gentleman]

I don't understand people who believe the Internet should be an anarchy. A playground for scammers and spammers and blackhat hackers and pedophiles. If we accept that police should be around to deter criminals in real life (which I'm assuming you do), why shouldn't there be police on the internet to deter cybercrime?

And if you agree, why is there always such massive resistance to any attempt to regulate the internet?

Because the police will be controlled by politicians. Politicians have no idea what the internet is and never will, it's in their nature. Politicians are aspiring minds from private education, everyone with that personality that is on the internet does something to do with computer science, not politics.

I'd rather see a playground for anyone than a run down park where only the homeless sleep.

In the real world, we have to have some form of policing and we have to limit some of our freedoms in order to protect other ones. We can't have both the right to not be murdered, and the right to kill people, for example.

Bullshit. Of course we can, I can still kill people even with police. The only difference is that we have justice rather than revenge. People just aren't willing to accept the fear of death and fool themselves into thinking they're actually safe because of the justice and police systems we have.

 

[MetalGenocide]

It is policed by it's users already. But instead of combining power in one center, it is managed by countless local groups.

Seems to be working rather fine, no need to change.

 

[Gecko clown]

I would just like to see what internet police would look like. Would they have powers like in The Matrix?

OT: Lots of laws are different depending on the country so pinning down what the laws should be would be difficult.

 

[BlueMage]

OP: You want someone who effectively controls the near-uncontrollable.

Believe it or not, Anon fills that role. Pedos? Anon has targeted and taken them down, as in delivered them into police custody.

Folks who encourage racial violence? Yep, Anon has done their part as well.

The internet is a place where public opinion is king - that which is right, which is just, is what is tolerated by the masses.

Old Anon may have been unfeeling pricks (we were funny though, so fuck the rest of you) but New Anon at least has what I would hesitantly call a calibrated moral compass. Not always correctly calibrated, but if you used it to find the North Pole, you wouldn't be too far wrong.

It basically comes down to steering such a group. There are ways, and they've been used to steer them before.

 

[DEAD34345]

In the real world, we have to have some form of policing and we have to limit some of our freedoms in order to protect other ones. We can't have both the right to not be murdered, and the right to kill people, for example.

Bullshit. Of course we can, I can still kill people even with police. The only difference is that we have justice rather than revenge. People just aren't willing to accept the fear of death and fool themselves into thinking they're actually safe because of the justice and police systems we have.

It's not a completely perfect system of course, but we're a lot less likely to be murdered when murder is illegal than we are when murdering is legal. My point was that we should try to give people as many rights as possible, but if we give them the right to murder other people (for example) then they will take the right to life from those other people. Overall it's much better to (attempt to) stop that happening, so we don't have the right to murder people in real life, and we have police and the like in an attempt to enforce this.

On the internet none of that is necessary because, very broadly speaking, you can't hurt people unless they let you. We can have complete freedom without many of the serious negative repercussions that this would have in real life, and why would we want to get rid of that? Total anarchy is what the internet is for, in my opinion. It's the one place where everyone is equal in anonymity, and no one is restricted except by choice. I don't want that to ever be spoiled by some misguided attempt to "protect" ourselves with online policing.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

No.

Less tolerance should be held for those who do things that can be universally seen as wrong, though. People who develop malware can fuck right off, for example.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

Australia tried that once, it involved blocking a list of unnamed websites and slowing down our already shitty speeds by up to 50%. I don't think we've yet figured out a way to do it properly in an un obtrusive way, it's still too new and the people making these laws too old.

 

[Torrasque]

The better question to ask yourself is CAN the internet be policed?

I think this kind of sums the thread up. Is it possible? How do we know such power couldn't be abused? How would we police such a thing - some kind of three strike system before your internet is turned off forever? We really need to answer such questions before we can say if it's right or wrong to do so.

Agreed.

Also, since the internet is access to unlimited information, I absolutely hate anything that can or may restrict that. I don't care if it is internet police or caps on my downloads, I refuse to accept either.
Now, if the internet could be policed so only those who are doing seriously bad things are punished, then by all means punish the fuck out of them. I know several police precincts in Canada have cyber crimes units and they focus on on pedophiles and child pornography. But you have to ask yourself, "how much of my freedom am I willing to sacrifice for security?"
Absolute freedom is anarchy and while there may be mods and certain security protocols in place on sites, the internet is near-anarchy in some corners. I'll accept total freedom to search for what I want whenever I want over censorship and policing any day.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

The better question to ask yourself is CAN the internet be policed?

I think this kind of sums the thread up. Is it possible? How do we know such power couldn't be abused?

Now, if the internet could be policed so only those who are doing seriously bad things are punished, then by all means punish the fuck out of them. I know several police precincts in Canada have cyber crimes units and they focus on on pedophiles and child pornography. But you have to ask yourself, "how much of my freedom am I willing to sacrifice for security?"

The question of CAN the Internet be policed is a very important one. But that's the NEXT question. So many people immediately reject the idea of any kind of policing (as is rather obvious, even from this thread) that whether or not it's possible to do in a highly democratic, intelligent, ethical way is currently redundant. Even attempts to discuss the possibility of regulating the Internet is met with massive global outcry, such as Sarkozy's e-G8 Summit [http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20110525/103062.shtml]. People hated the idea so much the British Prime Minister himself was pressured into condemning it before he'd even sat at the table.

Policing on the internet as you propose is impractical, but it's already done. That's basically all I initially said. but since you brought up regulation and Orwellian themes, it seems you do not understand what legislation has been proposed, or you ARE supporting Orwellian measures. Not sure which. The above assumes the former, rather than the latter.

However, if you didn't name me for something I didn't say, I wouldn't have done even that.

Um, this is a bit awkward, since you launched into that whole thing, but you were right from the beginning. I didn't intend to lump you in with the Orwellian conspiracy theorists. The part of my post meant for you was the part where I talked about some of the things that could be changed to make policing of the Internet more practical.

SOPA is a completely different issue, and I'm very opposed to that. SOPA is about bending the laws to suit corporate interests. I'm not suggesting any changes to the law, I'm talking purely about re-structuring the Internet so that it's easier to catch serious criminals.
Contrary to popular belief, the Internet is actually constantly being changed and restructured, as new technologies are developed and incorporated and the obsolete stuff is abandoned. The Internet of 2000 was totally different to the Internet of 2012. So the idea of a safer, non-anarchous public Internet is entirely possible.

If you don't like it, you always have the option of using a Darknet or VPN to interact. The point is, criminals wouldn't be able to operate so freely, and interact so much with innocent bystanders.

 

[Rylingo]

Considering how terrible people are at policing things in general, no.

Lets the internet remain as it is. Otherwise we will just end up with a split between the internet and darknet(or something).

 

[Belated]

Firstly, where did you get the idea that people who post dirty pictures of kids are simply kicked off the website with no repercussions? Usually those people are reported to their local police and end up punished.

Anyway, no the internet doesn't need policing. Sure scams are common on here, but they're difficult to pull off. On the internet, you can fact-check things at light speed and get external input. You can't get scammed easily because you can usually do a google search for any "too good to be true" opportunities, asking "Is this legit?" and there'll usually be a forum post somewhere that answers that question. You can't be virused easily - you just need to use common sense and be careful where you do your downloading. And for obvious reasons, you can't be a victim of violent crime on the internet. And frankly, I don't care what kind of copyright infringement goes on. The only methods any companies or courts can come up with for combating piracy are way too strict and involve either ridiculous punishments or fines so heavy they border on extortion. So screw it. Big companies will survive just fine whether the internet sees policing or not, anyway. (The facts and evidence [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114537-File-sharing-Remains-Legal-In-Switzerland] prove it.) Porno? No big deal. Pics of naked women aren't going to turn anybody into a psycho. And it's up to parents to "protect" their kids from that stuff, not our government.

The only bad thing on the internet that's hard to avoid is bullying. But anybody who wants to police the internet over bullying is a massive pansy.

 

[Zantos]

Unfortunately the technical capabilities that would be required to police the entire internet are enormous. To this end, although the internet is policed, it tends to focus on threats to national security. Scammers, pedophiles, cyber-theives and so on are occasionally caught by smaller groups or private companies, but to completely cover these types of crimes too it would be more or less impossible and incredibly costly with currently available technology.

Quantum man to the rescue! (In 20 years).

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Anyway, no the internet doesn't need policing. Sure scams are common on here, but they're difficult to pull off. On the internet, you can fact-check things at light speed and get external input. You can't get scammed easily because you can usually do a google search for any "too good to be true" opportunities, asking "Is this legit?" and there'll usually be a forum post somewhere that answers that question. You can't be virused easily - you just need to use common sense and be careful where you do your downloading. And for obvious reasons, you can't be a victim of violent crime on the internet.

The only bad thing on the internet that's hard to avoid is bullying. But anybody who wants to police the internet over bullying is a massive pansy.

This is actually the only properly rational argument against Internet policing I've come across. Everything else seems to be a knee-jerk "I don't want policing because it feels wrong". But your argument is a classic "I don't want policing because the crimes don't affect me".

I don't mean to pick on you, but that frame of mind is both incredibly short-sighted and very selfish. You can argue over the accuracy of certain statistics, but the fact is people are infcted by viruses every second, costing millions of dollars and massive loss of personal data worldwide. Large scale cyberattacks are increasing, both in their scale, damages, and the ease by which they are enacted. Tens of thousands of people are the victims of scams worldwide. Spamming is a billion dollar underground industry, generating more and more profit for members of organised crime every year. Same with child pornography: both fund gangsters and drug dealers, and both are increasing. Cybercrime is getting bigger and more sophisticated every year.
And you can fit the amount of people trying to stop all that from happening in a small office building.
This will effect you. It's only a matter of time.

Lets the internet remain as it is. Otherwise we will just end up with a split between the internet and darknet(or something).

Is that such a bad thing? A public Internet which is kept safe, and a darknet for everyone who loves anarchy. After all, the darknet will always exist. What we're talking about is catching criminals who operate in plain sight, attacking citizens in the open streets, so to speak.

 

[Rylingo]

Lets the internet remain as it is. Otherwise we will just end up with a split between the internet and darknet(or something).

Is that such a bad thing? A public Internet which is kept safe, and a darknet for everyone who loves anarchy. After all, the darknet will always exist. What we're talking about is catching criminals who operate in plain sight, attacking citizens in the open streets, so to speak.

...good question.
I really fear that there will be an attitude attached to darknet whereby, you are automatically a criminal. I could definitely see this being an issue with government reactions and sanctions with the system. I also worry that if bad things happen to those on darknet, the reaction would be, "they deserve it".

I do like the idea of government rating system like the ratings on movies where websites can apply for an age label and browsers can be set to show only certain age ranges, maybe controlled by parents.

 

[Something Amyss]

I'm not suggesting any changes to the law, I'm talking purely about re-structuring the Internet so that it's easier to catch serious criminals.

But you asked why people are against regulating the internet, and such regulation usually comes in the form of changes to the law. You even noted loss of anonymity, which would involve legal changes beyond merely "restructuring."

At best, you worded your intents poorly and should see exactly why people would jump to Orwellian terms. SOPA appears to be exactly what you want from your initial post. Or if not exactly, pretty damn close. Your revisions haven't really helped much, either.