

SOPA won't stop the internet, it will merely force it underground.  - squiggy22
http://blog.webdistortion.com/2011/11/24/sopa-wont-stop-the-internet-it-will-merely-force-it-further-underground/

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lhnz
This article seems to be just the kind of positive vibe that geeks love to
read: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Yeah,
right. I don't see any evidence that we will have a usable underground
internet soon, and in the meantime an ultra-censored, walled-garden internet
appears inevitable.

Technical efforts might eventually create a platform which cannot be
controlled by the government but it will be a very long time before this is
usable for all but the most technical people. By the time something is ready
for the the average public we will have had a censored internet and no viable
uncensored platform for many years. How will you convince average joe that
they should be interested in such a project? This will be a niche service used
by child pornographers, drug traffickers, file sharers and freedom geeks. Good
luck convincing anybody to identify with that group.

~~~
nupark2
I genuinely agree with you on all points.

However, I do have one small note; the early 90s internet was also unusable
for all but the most technical people. It was also fantastic, and I'd largely
be happy to have access to an internet community of that size and quality
today -- especially since I wouldn't have to also give up today's consumer
internet.

~~~
count
IRC and USENET never went away...

~~~
nupark2
USENET: The eternal September. IRC: mIRC

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babebridou
Recent (French) history tells us that this argument will probably not be taken
into account by the law makers, because they are in majority incompetent, and
more importantly this argument isn't backed with promises of positive income
nor better behaviour. They will blindly look at the exposed pros and cons, and
their limited expertise will merely say "so what" to these cons. The SOPA
project, much like all Internet regulation projects, are considered as short-
term "win-win" deals and long-term "win-don't care" deals with the
Entertainment Majors. Since they expect the masses to not understand the cons
either and keep voting the way they always did, they don't foresee any
negative mid-term consequences either.

Arguments against Internet Regulation laws have to include profits for the
government, otherwise I'm afraid the law makers will keep on not listening.

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andrewgodwin
I find the article a little overzealous; while I'm no staunch capitalist,
including sentences like "The web in its current, open state is a threat to
capitalist ideals" doesn't help convince me about your goals.

And yes, while this is partially true, a lot of legitimate businesses and
people who aren't motivated enough to "go dark" also drive the internet, and
they're not going to be so easily forced underground - any such internet would
be a shadow of its former self, and an easy thing for governments to demonise
with the usual examples (drug trafficking, child pornography, etc.)

~~~
icebraining
It's not even true: plenty of free market capitalists view copyright as a
monopolistic distortion caused by the state, not as a real mechanism of the
market.

 _Against Intellectual Property_ [1] is a good example.

[1]: <http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf>

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agentultra
The net _can_ route around censorship. People will just have to get used to
encrypting their stuff, using proxies, hiding their DNS requests, and support
ISPs that resist. Maybe it will spark the demand for more off-shore data
centers.

A "dark net" is highly unlikely given the geographic dispersion of our
populations and the high-cost of infrastructure for moving signals over those
kinds of distances.

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ghshephard
Some (unintended?) irony:

From a random Server Beach Unix host of mine:

    
    
       shephard@sbwc:~$ dig +short blog.webdistortion.com
       ghs.google.com.
       ghs.l.google.com.
       173.194.64.121
    

From my laptop at work using whatever DNS resolvers happen to be operational
here:

    
    
       ghshephardmb:~ shephard$ dig +short blog.webdistortion.com
       ghshephardmb:~ shephard$

------
Zirro
Wasn't the US once known as "the land of the free"? When did they lose it?

