

Remember the "borderless" Internet? It's officially dead - hornokplease
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/the-borderless-internet-is-officially-dead.ars

======
hammock
The traditional argument for why the Internet can't/shouldn't be controlled
always had a heavy dose of "it's not practical" in it. But ask yourself, when
has the impracticality of regulation ever stopped a big government from
lumbering in?

Knowing that stuff like what the OP mentions would eventually osmose into the
internet, I have often been a critic of things like Net Neutrality and other
structures which would effectively subsidize the current model of The Internet
as we know it, locking it in place and creating a barrier to entry for any
NEW, more free models which are as yet unheard of but may come along in the
future!

Typically it has been very hard for me to get people to wrap their head around
the idea that the Internet may not be the end-all be-all pinnacle of human
achievement most people consider it to be, and that soon alternatives may
arise which if given a fair chance could do even better.

~~~
doron
Consider the Postal service, A highly regulated platform bound to
international agreements that control traffic.

The evolution of the postal service was an important milestone for
international communication networks and how they are governed, and like the
internet, utterly revolutionary in its day.

The postal service today suffers from many problems, and faces competition
from private entities that are faster in delivery, but the very regulation
that govern its operation still offer some advantages over FedEx, UPS and the
like. the extensive regulation does not seem to have a substantial effect on
the success of the alternatives.

the UPU is the second oldest international organization worldwide. and has
survived two world wars, not all regulated fields are alike.

I think the idea of Net neutrality is important and should be pursued, ideally
as an international agreement similar to the UPU - <http://www.upu.int/>

~~~
TruthElixirX
You should look into the history of the post office. It didn't revolutionize
much. There have been competing businesses throughout history and a few of
them were shut down by the government after out competing USPS.

~~~
hammock
Is it a stretch to imagine that once the government has all their surveillance
and control set up on the Internet (actually a lot of it is already in place),
they will attempt to shut down competing models in a similar fashion?

~~~
krenoten
Let's see how they regulate mesh networking

~~~
adrianN
There are two simple ways. First you could require a licence to run any kind
of wireless network with a range above 20m or so and second, as it is already
the case in Germany, hold the operator responsible for any kind of illegal
behaviour that is done through his connection ("Störerhaftung"
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B6rerhaftung>). The chilling effect of
that law is a big reason why people here don't run open networks or Tor exit
nodes.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I bet you could get around that by becoming an ISP. Make sure your network
offers _public_ IPs that you don't use (possible if your own ISP offers you an
IPv6 range), and you're all set.

In France, doing that would require that you log the connections (who connects
when with which IP) for a year, but the "who" part can be a mere MAC address.
You also have to declare yourself as an ISP.

If you happen to _share_ your own IP, then it's different. In France as well,
you can be considered responsible.

~~~
adrianN
But as an ISP you don't get around legislation that forces ISPs to filter the
net.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Luckily, such legislation isn't yet enforced in France, and, I guess, most of
Europe (though it will come with LOOPSI, ACTA…).

It is rather difficult to hold an ISPs accountable for its users, unlike
content providers. The first is akin to snail mail, while the second it akin
to journals. No one ever sued FedEx for mailing Anthrax or hate pamphlets. But
the one who sent those? You bet he's accountable!

I agree with you, by the way. Just pointing out that a legislation that forces
ISPs to filter the net is a Major Screw-up that should flag its country as an
active Enemy of the Internet. I have hope (though I wouldn't count on it) that
they won't put a Great Firewall of China.

------
mvanga
When I look at laws like E-PARASITE that are aimed at "taming" the internet
(whatever that means), I do not see a big lumbering government trying to gain
control over the internet. What I see are big lumbering corporations trying to
keep the money flowing without having to work to keep up with the rapid pace
of technology.

From the Wikipedia entry on SOPA/E-PARASITE:

Rogue sites legislation receives broad support from organizations that rely on
copyright, including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording
Industry Association of America, Macmillan Publishers, Netflix, Viacom, and
various other companies and unions in the cable, movie, and music industries.
Supporters also include trademark-dependent companies such as Nike, L'Oréal,
and Acushnet Company.

I can't imagine what the landscape of the internet will look like in a decade,
but it's worrisome that the next generation will grow up in a world that would
make even Orwell roll in his grave.

~~~
hammock
You are also right. One and the same. Those organizations intend to use the
muscle of the government to entrench a specific self-serving model. Without a
large and powerful government, it would not be possible for such an agenda to
succeed.

~~~
Avshalom
With out a large and powerful government it's dealing with a small number of
huge Telcos. Harder, but certainly possible.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Geeks are a lot smarter than telcos; we'd win that battle easily. Geeks are a
lot smarter than government, too, but they have big sticks to hit with; that
battle requires a bit more care.

~~~
ericd
We're not nearly as organized as either, though - that would need to change
first.

~~~
waqf
Any group that is as big as government and as organized would be already on
government's radar as a major threat. So you might want to work on your
robustness _before_ working too hard on your organization.

~~~
ericd
Fair. No one said it had to be the same size, though :-)

------
nextparadigms
RIAA's statements usually make me sick to my stomach. So are we really going
to kill the best of the Internet, and ultimately the Internet itself to "save"
the music and movie industries? I think if those industries died tomorrow,
we'd still have artists singing songs and movies. Perhaps they won't be as
"high-quality" (read: expensive to make) but we'll still have new ideas, new
art.

~~~
atomicdog
Music has existed ever since a caveman decided that banging a stick against a
rock made a cool sound. It'll continue to exist long after EMI, Island Records
and the RIAA have gone.

------
JoshTriplett
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John
Gilmore

I think we need to do some routing work. Attempts at regulation suggests that
we haven't made the Internet sufficiently robust.

We can't easily stop countries from regulating the activities of entities
which have a legal presence within those countries; anyone who wants to have
an online identity tied to their offline identity risks having their online
activities regulated through offline coercion. We also can't easily stop
infrastructure providers from simply disconnecting _all_ traffic at the
infrastructure level, at least not until we have reliable mesh-networking
protocols.

However, we _can_ stop countries from regulating the activities of any
individual entity which doesn't have a presence in those countries, or which
avoids tying their online identity to their offline identity.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it._

The bureaucrats are coming to realize this. That's why part of the bill is to
make such routing illegal. So, unsatisfied with just chilling our right to
free speech, they also want to break the robustness of Internet itself.

~~~
JoshTriplett
We can fix that, permanently, and we should.

~~~
waqf
You can? How? Who is 'we'? How many people, how much time and how much money
do you need?

~~~
rwmj
Encrypt everything. Not much money required.

~~~
JoshTriplett
A bit more complex than that, but yeah, it doesn't really require funds so
much as hacker labor.

A few examples of technologies that would help:

\- Pervasive use of end-to-end encryption by default, at the host level in
addition to any application-level security.

\- Virtual Ring Routing: layer-2 mesh networking that scales to Internet-sized
networks and never needs to floodfill the network with packets. Use encryption
key fingerprints as the host addresses, so that this works well with end-to-
end encryption.

\- Tor-like onion routing.

\- Key-fingerprint-based host naming, making DNS an optional (and selectable)
directory service rather than a required core component. Of course, having
end-to-end encryption means you can easily select a DNS server which gives you
correct results, rather than one with various entries redirected to
governmental agencies.

With all of the above, you have a network where you can't prevent or intercept
any communication, without pulling the plug on the entire infrastructure at
the hardware level. And even then, the pervasive availability of mesh
networking means that packets can find and use any available egress, which
includes satellites, cell towers, and long-distance wifi.

~~~
__david__
Sounds a lot like D. J. Bernstein's DNSCurve[1] and CurveCP[2]. CurveCP in
particular seems like a good idea and supports some cool stuff like
connections transparently moving across different IP addresses.

[1] <http://dnscurve.org/>

[2] <http://curvecp.org/>

------
rhplus
When you look at the internet from the protocol level, it seems borderless,
but - as we saw during the Arab Spring - at the infrastructure level it really
isn't. You have to get traffic into and out of a country somehow, and for the
majority of users (excepting satellite and long range wireless) that means
traffic flowing through a telco/ISP. That also means physical networks with
physical peering points and traffic exchange contracts, all of which fall
under local laws. For many smaller countries the number of 'border
checkpoints' exactly equals the number of telcos/ISPs operating there. In the
case of Egypt, all it took to shutdown ~100% of traffic[1] was a phonecall to
the 4 biggest ISPs. Whether that shutdown was legal in Egypt or not is a
matter of local law. Until there are international conventions governing
traffic exchange, the internet is not borderless.

[1]
[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/?r=EG&l...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/?r=EG&l=EVERYTHING&csd=1294957800000&ced=1297377000000)

------
ChuckMcM
One can hope that our judiciary would toss out the more egregious parts of
this effort at censorship and control as they did with the CDA. However, given
that the Internet is seen as the proximate cause of governmental overthrow in
some places I suspect fear will over come common sense.

~~~
marshray
But in Egypt, the shutting down of the internet was an even more proximate
cause.

The US is not like China where this massive firewall infrastructure is
practical for two simple reasons.

1\. There are people who will compromise for the sake of protecting children
or "property", but just about any voter will laugh at the idea of a
government-run morality enforcement service. Particularly given the cost
involved.

2\. Other censorship-minded countries seem to be able to concentrate their
resources on border firewalls to keep the inharmonious concepts out. This
requires a big infrastructure even in a little place like Iran or Syria.

But the US has a healthy mix of users and controversial servers. Any given
router may have users and websites on either side. There simply isn't enough
rack space in the world to do deep inspection and blocking at every node.
Instead you'd end up with prohibition-era like raids on some small random
sample of servers and users. That would be simultaneously one of the most
expensive and unpopular government projects ever.

My guess is the DoJ is going to stick to "takedowns" of small video streaming
and fake handbag sites for a while yet.

~~~
gbog
It would be ironical for USA government to ask for Chinese expertise.

~~~
jwhitlark
The don't need to. Most of the expertise came from multi-national
corporations, who would be happy to help out.

------
slowpoke
His entire argument - if you could call this boatload of FUD one - fell apart
at the moment he implied that anarchy is equivalent to chaos. I can't take
anyone serious who does this. It showcases ignorance.

~~~
zecho
It's "ignorant" only if one narrowly defines (or conveniently ignores common
definitions of) anarchy.

Anarchy can be a state of political confusion or disorder and/or defined as an
absence of authority. Both are common usages.

Chaos is confusion and disorder.

So sometimes anarchy is equivalent by definition.

~~~
king_jester
Anarchy is only a state of political confusion or disorder if you believe that
a central authority is a requirement for a political system. Anarchists
believe and participate in non-hierarchical social structures, which does not
inherently lead to chaos, confusion, or disorder.

People do colloquially use anarchy to mean confusion and disorder, but that
has a lot to do with societal acceptance and condition in regards to central
authority and power structures. In a piece directly about government, to use
the word anarchy is this fashion is dishonest and in poor taste.

~~~
slowpoke
Edit: Woops, this was supposed to be an answer to your parent (zecho), not
you.

A common definition must not necessarily be a correct definition - ask any
scientist, there's probably a number of terms that are misused by the general
populace in every field. As a very general example, theory and hypothesis come
to mind. When most people say "theory", they mean what in a scientific context
would be referred to as a hypothesis - an unproven claim that requires
verification.

Now, we can argue whether or not evolution of language justifies using wrong
definitions of a term, but technically, defining "anarchy" as "chaos" is - in
my opinion - not correct. The term denotes a state of society where there is
no governing authority, but does _not_ imply the absence of rules, laws or
values.

The major problem I have with these two definitions is that people who assume
the negative one (anarchy == chaos) are, for the most part, not aware of the
other meaning, and that quickly leads to confusion - which is sometimes used
intentionally to defame opponents in an argument. I personally try to make it
clear upfront which definition I am using (anarchy == absence of government or
authority), but it's sometimes still hard to escape the negative association
of the term.

------
CWuestefeld
Why would we want to make it any easier to vote?

It's always going to be true that it's far more expensive to educate oneself
to choose the most correct choice in an election, than to actually cast that
vote. It seems to me that as the difference in cost between these two things
increases, we risk an increase in reckless, uninformed voting.

Perhaps we should make it even more difficult to vote. People who are voting
on a whim would be less likely to make a frivolous vote. But people who had
already invested significant time in understanding the issues would still feel
motivated to use their knowledge. I'm not sure I'd really advocate a measure
like this, but I think it's an interesting thought experiment.

After pondering it a bit, I'm coming to the same old libertarian conclusion
that the apparent dichotomy is caused by giving the government too much power.
We only need to be experts when voting because the government is dictating so
much of our own lives. If we didn't try to achieve Plato's ideal of experts
running everything, but limited the government's power to policing right and
wrong, the only expertise necessary for voting would be introspection into
one's own value system.

~~~
zokier
Restricting voting to only "informed" voters would eventually lead to
aristocracy and elitism.

~~~
VladRussian
voting exposes lives, rights and property of others to danger, the same way
like driving on public roads. Thus one is[must be] allowed to drive or to vote
or to perform other potentially damaging activity only after meeting the
minimally necessary threshold of related education/skills/etc..

------
AdamFernandez
I think most agree that 'balance' is necessary, but many people have different
definitions of what this means. In relation to Internet regulation how do we
keep security, functionality, and economic/social liberty in a perfect
balance? The answer is that you can't. Too much of one thing allows for not
enough of the other. On the whole, I think it has done much more good in its
current state, but people will always attempt to balance these things out
based on their own justifications. Their is no true perfect state of the
Internet, just a constant strive to reach it.

------
feor
Given how many people use the internet, I think it is a miracle it survived
mostly unregulated for so long. I personally do not doubt it will slowly be
assimilated by society and progressively get locked down, but it is in my
opinion a testament to the first real users of the internet, and to 'geeks'
worldwide that they fostered a culture that made it possible to call the
internet a modern-day Wild West for a time.

------
smokeyj
The only loonies in support of an unregulated internet is the same crazies in
support of unregulated markets. Americans need to be free from the tyranny of
an open internet, for the same reasons Americans need to be free from the
tyranny of an unregulated markets -- that is, man left to his own devices will
destroy himself. Unless you want nut jobs to be able to post whatever they
want online, we should be honored the government is making the internet safe
for us to use. /satire

