
“The Dream of Internet Freedom Is Dying” - chris-at
http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/05/the-dream-of-internet-freedom-is-dying/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
======
sandworm101
I would add that the "Secret law" also encompasses the private deals struck
between various organizations that have the full force and effect of law.

For instance, I am often asked about the standards for DMCA takedowns and
monitoring of content. I cannot turn to laws and cases. I have to glean
information from patterns of activity. Youtube does X, and the MPAA aren't
screaming mad about Youtube these days, so perhaps we also need to do X. Or,
megaupload was doing X Y and Z. But a dozen other website were doing X and Y
without a peep from US authorities. So I guess Z is the touchstone even though
Z isn't mentioned anywhere in any law or case and wasn't even around when the
laws were written.

~~~
ikeboy
Youtube spent several years fighting a lawsuit against Viacom until they
settled last year. If whoever you're giving advice to doesn't have Google's
cash to defend themselves, don't tell them to copy Youtube's actions.

~~~
sandworm101
My advice goes one step further: Don't do user generated content without an
ejection plan, a means to extract all the money and shut the doors instantly
should you catch the eye of the mpaa or their ilk.

------
faragon
The dream could come back. In my opinion.

Defeating legal threats:

\- Design server architecture so can be migrated from one country to a
different one without censorship. Now is easy, with VPSs, you can move
infrastructure in few hours, if you do automated deployment.

Defeating cost threats ("run your own software like a 'megacorp' "):

\- Services running on cheap hardware handling 10-100x more users per server
than current high language implementations (back to CGIs/Fast-CGIs on native
code, instead of PHP/.NET/Java/NodeJS/Python/Perl).

\- Filesystem-less storage (start server, load filesystem to optimized in-
process RAM DB), so following steps can be avoided: disk cache, filesystem
tree search, multiple memory copies, etc.

\- Separate persistent and non-persistent data, so most operations don't need
to hit the disk.

\- Abstraction over those low-level systems so people with high-level
capacitation can build a massive-scale web application.

~~~
nl
Attempting sorely technical fixes to political problems is a delaying tactic,
nothing more.

Imagine a law like this: "You must be able to positively identify any person
creating content on a service you control".

 _Nothing_ you have suggested does anything at all to address that in anyway
other than to try to make it harder to enforce. That method has been tried for
20 years, and is quickly becoming harder and harder.

It's already extremely hard to buy a VPS with even pseudo-anonymity - most
require credit cards, which means a law enforcement agency can retrieve your
details trivially.

~~~
anonbanker
i know of two iclandic outfits that accept bitcoin and anonymous registration.
Nobody can trace my VPS to me.

~~~
nl
If you think Bitcoin keeps you anonymous in an age of ubiquitous network
monitoring and growing work on Blockchain analysis then you have missed the
point completely.

~~~
anonbanker
someone's never heard of a bitcoin laundry and mail2tor.

~~~
nl
Don't you see? This is _exactly_ the point I'm making.

I agree 100% that there will continue to be ways for _extremely_ careful
people to do this kind of thing. But the counter-measures and counter-counter-
measures continue to ratchet up and at each step it more and more people are
left behind.

That's why I said _Attempting sorely technical fixes to political problems is
a delaying tactic, nothing more._

~~~
anonbanker
somebody's never heard that security is a moving target.

------
zkhalique
Publishing has been decentralized by the web.

Communication has been decentralized by email.

Money and contracts has been decentralized with bitcoin.

Social hasn't yet been effectively decentralized, but it will be.

Decentralized is better when it comes to individual choice, curbing abuse of
power, and resilience (no single points of failure).

But it's way worse when it comes to security. And no one's been able to
decentralize security effectively yet, because a single top-down entity with
an economy of scale has more resources to secure itself than expecting EVERY
little host and their dog to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress.

~~~
adventured
Social has been decentralized. I socialize with friends across a dozen digital
platforms now.

Email, phone calls, SMS, WhatsApp/Viber/Kik/Snapchat, Facebook, Skype,
Twitter. Then throw in a dozen other communities, ranging from Hacker News, to
Stack Overflow, to Reddit or Imgur, and so on.

Social has been substantially decentralized. The only way it can be argued
that it hasn't, is if you consider any corporate ownership of a platform to be
by default non-decentralization (as opposed to having numerous available
platforms being the decentralizing aspect).

~~~
knieveltech
Email - logged and retained by service provider.

Phone calls - tappable, metadata logged and retained by service provider.

SMS - logged and retained by service provider.

Skype - activity logged and retained by service provider.

Twitter - activity logged and retained by service provider.

You were saying something about decentralization?

~~~
pekk
It's not all that easy or cheap to decentralize the last mile. Things were not
any more decentralized when most people used dialup, and they were definitely
more centralized when the main users of the internet were on a few campuses.

~~~
knieveltech
Absolutely true. Getting a phone tap and the equipment required to monitor an
active modem connection was sufficiently onerous for local and federal law
enforcement that it was reserved for active investigations of high value
targets. Hell, they couldn't even be arsed to track Mitnick down when he was
on the Most Wanted list, it took a phone company tech and a pissed off
security analyst from California to finally bring him down.

------
jokoon
I don't have the energy nor the motivation, but I would really love to make a
p2p internet which could be as easy to use as bittorrent.

Of course security is a problem, but I'm sure that making things public by
default would make it easier, and security is not always mandatory, you can
always use something which isnt entirely secure and use it well within its
limits.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://ipfs.io/](http://ipfs.io/)

------
eevilspock
Wu users need to also accept responsibility. We handed over control to
"Facebook, Twitter, GMail, Amazon, etc" as part of our Faustian bargain to get
everything for free and put advertisers in the drivers seat. The invisible
hand works for the customers, not the products.

~~~
beeforpork
Dvorak keyboard?

------
floopidydoopidy
I think it's a side effect of the eternal September. There was a time in my
life when I had to convince people that email was important. Now, it's old
news and even the slowest adopters have seen the light provided by the
internet.

One day, someone will invent something cooler than the internet, and no one
but the super technically minded will use it, and it will be a new spring. But
September will still be a few months away.

------
jackgavigan
It's ironic to read about Granick advocating a free, open and decentralised
Internet the same day we've been discussing how we're heading Straight for AOL
2.0:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10008769)

The writing's on the wall.

~~~
NovaS1X
The writing has been there for a while but many are too distracted to stop and
read.

------
rconti
Apparently the Black Hat audience is very conservative and pro-government. And
likes Keith Alexander.

I guess the author has been attending a different conference than me.

~~~
sandworm101
Perhaps attendees there as spies now outnumber actual enthusiasts. Perhaps
they can now spy on each other and leave the rest of us alone.

------
bitL
I've just had a simple idea while thinking about the conflict between privacy,
freedom, law and democracy and its effect on the Internet. How about designing
a new set of protocols that would be using the highest degree of available
cryptography and obfuscation, minimizing leaking of traceable information, but
having a democratic voting mechanism in its core (Paxos-style?) for "de-
privacing" sources of information/traffic shall the majority of users decide
(in cases clearly violating laws in grave matters etc.)? Direct democracy-
style. How much of a pipe-dream would that be? What would be deficiencies of
this approach and how could they be addressed? Is this even technically doable
in a de-centralized fashion? Would apathy or malice of general population be
the main risk?

The motivation is that nobody would like to have all their private matters out
in the open (which is a fact nowadays), but we need an efficient way to
enforce reasonable laws (like preventing child abuse, selling hard drugs,
illegal arms etc).

~~~
Zigurd
> but we need an efficient way to enforce reasonable laws (like preventing
> child abuse, selling hard drugs, illegal arms etc).

We have that. All those crimes take place in meatspace. Which is where the
police exist, too. Tell the police to do their jobs and detect actual crime,
not thought-crime.

------
skylan_q
We've been helping to kill that dream when we pushed for net neutrality. We
played right into it. Getting to the circus on time (i.e. watching king of
thrones after torrenting it) was so important we had to hand over the Internet
to the FCC.

We no longer route around the damage. We intend damage.

------
unicornporn
Has anybody found the speech?

~~~
hyperion_
Probably won't be out until whenever they decide to release this years talks
on YouTube.

