The end of Internet FREEDOM

Miscellaneous Current Events
1

From the Mises Blog:

This pending PROTECT IP Act is very scary stuff. I am afraid it’s going to pass. It will result in a huge increase in governmental censorship of the Internet, requiring all American ISPs to block certain domains, thus depriving Americans of access to “censored” sites around the world–all in the name of copyright and the RIAA. IP is not a small issue any more. It is becoming a principal excuse for the state to regulate one of the most important weapons we have to fight against the state–the Internet and digital communications.

As the ThinkProgress post below notes, “in the name of policing copyright violations, Protect IP effectively makes it a felony to link to a website that is accused — that’s right, only accused — of being devoted to copyright infringement.”

Email your lawmakers and tell them to kill PROTECT IP — the Internet Censorship Bill — by clicking here.

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Actually, I kind of welcome it because it’s technically unsound. Legally, it will scare away any legitimate brick-and-mortar web hosts but I believe it would actually increase non-DNS based internet traffic, that is, peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent. I read somewhere that 27% of all internet traffic (low estimate) is currently travelling over peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent which are completely immune to these DNS seizures. Peer-to-peer networks have already responded to commercial attempts to throttle p2p traffic by using “protocol masking” and “protocol encryption” which essentially re-packages p2p traffic to look like regular web traffic so that ISPs can’t throttle it.

Usually, the government is pretty effective at getting its way but in the digital realm they still suck pretty bad. At some point, the government and media Establishment is going to have to come to grips with the fact that IP piracy is logistically unstoppable because any legal protocol can always be support a parasitic, encrypted protocol riding on top to permit the exchange of “prohibited” or “copyright” materials. The only effective way to stop it is to apply Chinese methods… if we catch you doing something that we don’t like (the old “use a random number, go to jail” routine), you go away for a long, long time with no explanation to you or your family or friends, case closed. Short of deploying such discretionary powers, the government is helpless to stem the tide.

Personally, I think these laws are just bones being tossed from DC to the MPAA/RIAA types. In reality, I don’t think Washington has the will to really stop copyright infringement and I think that the higher-ups know that it’s basically impossible from a technical standpoint. I think that Washington is much more interested in being able to track all internet traffic back to a driver’s license and fingerprint (IOW, to make you liable for all data you transmit or access over the Internet) even if the traffic itself is unreadable due to encryption. If you look at the structure of the DNS and particularly the SSL system, it tends to emphasizes real-world identities and I don’t think this is an accident.

Clayton -

3

That’s a pretty ignorant analysis. Of course p2p makes up a large section of Internet traffic…that’s where the largest bits of data are transmitted. (That’s a large part of the reason the bittorrent protocol was created…to transmit large files of data more efficiently and reduce the bandwidth strain on a single provider). That doesn’t mean it’s an alternative to the WWW. People aren’t going to get their news from torrents.

And I seriously fail to see how anyone in favor of liberty would “welcome” a statute that makes it a felony to simply link to a site that has been accused of anything…let alone copyright infringement. And why the hell is scaring away legitimate business and forcing more traffic into a specific form, a good thing? Why is it somehow better to have less DNS traffic due to government action?

I’m really getting tired of this “I’m cheering-on the statist march. The worse it gets, the faster the whole economy will come crashing down and the more of our liberties will be taken away. We’ll be much better off” nonsense. It’s great that people are innovative and dynamic enough to create ways to try and counteract statist infringements on freedom. But cheering-on more disease just so that people will be motivated to come up with new treatments is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. How much ingenuity and productivity is wasted just trying to get around the state? Oh but it makes us more innovative and industrious! You might as well cheer on more broken windows while you’re at it.

4

That is as wrong as 1+1=3. As I explained in a previous thread, all file sharing hinges entirely on a socialist internet service model, which we currently somewhat have and some countries extensively have. All the government needs to do is give the green light to upload bandwidth metering and its game over. How many people do you think will be leaving BT open all day for random people on the internet and then coming home and paying the bill? This is what net neutrality is really about and this is why its lobbyists, warez gurus, call it the “end of the internet”. No. Just the end of free filez 4 all.

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If you think people are opposed to Net Neutrality because they think it will mean an end to filesharing, then you’re posting just as ignorant as the person you’re “correcting”.

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It really doesn’t matter to the user how the data comes to them and you could absolutely build a web browser based on p2p networking alone, if there were sufficient demand for such a thing.

Not saying it’s better and not saying I would rather the law be passed than not passed … just saying it doesn’t scare me in the slightest. If the government were smart, they would not pass laws that scare away internet traffic from the DNS system. The more hierarchical the organization of the underlying networks over which Internet traffic travels, the more amenable the whole thing is to regulation and control. DNS is an inherently hierarchical system.

Furthermore, p2p systems are naturally consistent with private-property … it’s just a system for privately owned computers to seek each other out and transfer data between each other. The DNS system is based on the old ARPANet structure… it originated in public universities and military networks. While it has expanded into mostly “private sector” hands, the whole structure is maintained by the big-name corporations who have become the new “telecoms” of the Internet and the entire web-address-to-IP mapping system is rooted in ICANN, a corporation which all but a puppet of the US government. So, while peer-to-peer travels over subsidized and regulated telecom lines just like DNS-based traffic does, at least it has the virtue of having no other ties to public subsidy and regulation.

Well, I think you failed to understand the gist of my post. My point is that because this law is technically unsound, it’s basically un-enforceable but it will have (what I see to be positive) effect of increasing p2p traffic which reduces the reliance of the general public on the hierarchical and largely centralized DNS system. It will be used - like DMCA - to justify the punishment of innocents for non-crimes… but I don’t think the absolute level of punishment the government will deal out is affected by the existence of this law… just as many people are going to be victimized by the State’s prosecutors either way.

Clayton -

7

Well, upload bandwidth is already heavily metered, at least on any service I’ve used. You can usually buy more upload bandwidth if you need it, i.e. if you’re a big-time gamer, home server or p2p type.

I don’t think net neutrality proponents really have a well-defined goal. The purpose of net-neutrality - in my opinion - is to lay a foundation for regulating the Internet at the telecom level… if the government can tell your local telecom that it can’t differentiate between “streaming” and “packet” data, it can tell your local telecom that it must differentiate between “terrorist” and “non-terrorist” data where “terrorist” data is whatever the government decides it is. Of course, the obvious thing is to let ISPs decide for themselves what data to block/allow on the basis of their own choice. Determined users can always get around such blocks by encrypting their data, anyway.

Internet data rates are subsidized by our subsidized telecom infrastructure but it’s not clear how much this increases or decreases the costs of transmitting data… the fact is that transmitting data in the digital age is incredibly inexpensive. The signal lines are the most expensive part but DSL and cable internet both go to show just how easy and inexpensive it is to transmit digital data over existing infrastructure. For all we know, the internet might be even cheaper if there were a free market in physical ISP infrastructure (buried cables, phone lines, etc.)

Clayton -

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Please explain how arresting someone for the felony of having a link to a page accused of doing something is “unenforcable”.

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They don’t want it to appear well defined. The biggest explicit supporters of net neutrality are involved in warez and/or otherwise benefit somehow from a less tiered system, including Google and the BT search engines. Behind all the rhetoric on both sides, the ISPs basically want more granular tiering.

It has been gradually evolving in that direction over time. When I first got broadband 12 years ago there were no tiered packages as far as I know. When I was in a major warez distro group in the mIRC days, the most prized possessions were academic lines, topped by Swedish lines. People were stealing bandwidth from anywhere that had fat pipes, such as colleges, corporate offices and even ISP offices. Professors were running dumpsites. The introduction of BT shifted the distribution model further down the ladder to the home computer level.

10

Clayton is absolutely right.

The internet doesn’t fall under normal economic circumstances. Scarcity is a non-issue. Replication is free and instant. Think about that. The only thing left is development. I play games and i see game piracy in the future having a decline in the revenues of publishers and by extension developers. (this goes for music and movies and books as well). The Mises Institute has the right idea with books. Everything, as far as i know, that they publish themselves is on their site for free (I’ve downloaded hundreds of books from them for my Kindle and buy when i can. Yes i do do it) .

These laws are grasping at straws to prevent the big name music, movie, and game publishers from going bankrupt in the long run. All media should basically be free on the internet anyway. Freeware and Shareware (pay if you want) has been around ever since Windows 3.1 and that is the way the internet will equilibrate after the ENTIRE bubble has deflated. (assuming the government and our wise overlords let it/US)

Netflix has cut out blockbuster, yes? P2P will cut out stream. People are just ignorant, but when they wise up to the internet as a whole… Streaming things is a joke if you plan on “Owning” the material for use on your own terms. The only way this can be circumvented is if the EULA’s explicitly say “YOU DO NOT OWN THIS,” which some of them do. Others allow you to copy the disc or make image files for backup purposes. The only cost for anything on the internet (INFORMATION) is the infrastructure to bring the internet to your home. It has nothing to do with any centralization of any kind.

The way i see it is the corporations are TRYING to create situations of asymmetric information flows so that people will rely on them for things. And it really is as simple as that. Yes, we need to buy things in order for production of the software. music, movies to be continued, but the reality of it is that it will just be done for cheaper. What is referred to today as “user made” will soon just mean “made” because there are no centralized or dominant forces of development. (This all excludes the machines that the programs run on, obviously.)

The ‘cloud’ concept is also a desperate way to keep control over the internet. “Store your data with us on our servers that way if they go down or get hacked your PC or tablet or laptop is worthless!” Yea, good thinking Jobs… Sure thing, Google… Right on, amazon…

Think about what it takes to produce a DVD for sale at Best Buy. You need metals for the ink, wood for the paper, petroleum for the plastic, SHIPPING (FROM CHINA) (ON A BOAT) and you can’t count on all of the units produced being sold. That is why movies cost 20 or 30 bucks CD’s 15, Games 60! And to be fair, Games are sold on contract for the most part with Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony because they must purchase a development license for the consoles and the console manufacturers rely on third party sales to even make a profit on the gam hardware. Another checkmark in the positive for PC gaming (PRICES CAN FALL) with indie game development (like Super Meat Boy or Amnesia)

For instance, if you look at the company VaLVE, they make computer games (half-life, portal, counter-strike, team fortress), you’ll see that they used to make 5-7 dollars profit per unit at the brick and mortar. However when they began to sell games, still fully priced, on their online service, Steam, their profit margin moves up to 34-39 dollars per unit! (also Steve Forbes said that steam and VaLVE were worth more than Apple. They only employ something like 120 people and make around 4 billion in revenues! However, that is only an estimate as they don’t publish full numbers and aren’t publicly traded.)

The internet really is the epitome of anarchy. Free association with friendly cooperative development and distribution, all for very little resources.

The old market is useless and is only running up our trade deficit and sending our money overseas to the real production facilities and for some reason, our government wants to continue this. Piracy is healthy (at least for the U.S. consumer’s perception of economy or what is economic) because the internet means, not just freeDOM, but FREE. These RIAA types are making last ditch efforts to restructure the entire Internet to the cloud service to prevent my scenario from happening…my god…I think I know how Peter Schiff feels.

I’ll stick with bittorrent because:

there are no advertisements

There is only limit in quantity based on your bandwidth (buy more if you want more)

Boom.

I’d also like to thank the people in this thread for getting me to think about this. I’m gonna put this post on my blog http://eatingpropaganda.blogspot.com/ . If anyone wants to link =P

11

Provide me free and instant internet. Ready, set, go.

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“The only cost for anything on the internet (INFORMATION) is the infrastructure to bring the internet to your home.”

read my whole post… ready,set , go.

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It’s already in my home. Duh… Also in yours. So, you must have free access and be sending 10gb files instantly.

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As much as the big media corporations would really, really like to have anybody violating their IP arrested or at very least forced to pay five figures compensation it’s not going to happen. The reason is simple: even for Big Government it’s simply not worth the time and effort. While we are here debating technicalities how many millions of songs and movies are being downloaded from the Internet? Sure, your terrifying scenarioes about bandwidth restrictions and the like could well come into being but don’t you think somebody would find a way around it? Always remember it took a few teenagers and poindexters four hours to defeat the sophisticated software the Italian government introduced to block off Pirate Bay and P2P services. The BBC “wall” which prevents no-UK residents from viewing contents on their websites can be defeated with a simple (and free) application. Also remember that enforcing Big Media IP is pretty low on the government agenda. Dragging some nerd to court and force him cough up millions he will never have is very bad publicity. Politicans are dumb, yes, but they are not that dumb. After all con men need a mimum of intelligence to carry on their scams.

15

is this an implication that i can’t?

haahahahahahahahahahaahah

i donwnload tens of gigs of files every week. and i send them to others too!

and you are ignoraing my admittance that the INFRASTRUCTURE costs money or do you not know what that is? Hint: it’s the wire or cable that verizon grounded to a box that is wired to your wall socket. The infrastructure isn’t free it’s what is ON the internet that is free.

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@Jacob: You’re absolutely right about “the cloud”… anybody who asks you to store your personal data in the clear on a remote server is just gaming you. Google thinks they’re going to make gazillions of dollars poring over everybody’s personal data. Well, they’re making gazillions of dollars right now doing just this but the gig is going to be up, sooner or later. They’ve already over-stepped the line a couple times and one of these times they’re going to really blow it.

The reality is that the cloud will have to be built around encryption, plain and simple. You can’t store personal data in the clear on remote servers because remote servers are vulnerable to hacking, data-mining, government or competition sneak-and-peek, and so on. And it just doesn’t make sense to selectively encrypt… if you’re going to encrypt, just encrypt everything since data can always leak out of weird places you’d never think of. So, the future is going to be in some sort of local client (browser plugin?) that permits you to access a remote encrypted disk on a server in a seamless manner.

Clayton -

17

@ Jacob: I hope you were high/drunk when you posted this. You claimed that (1) internet service has zero operating costs, (2) bandwidth is infinite. If we wanted to read stupid posts like that we could just watch Zeitgeist instead.

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no, i didn’t man. you are a fucking retard that apparently has no level of reading comprehension.

i tried explaining to you what infrastructure is. Does it cost anything for me to send you information over p2p the answer is NO. P2P isn’t a service. You’re phone line or cable line is the service and the infrastructure.

Piracy is what i am promoting because it is FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE assuming you are paying for internet service.

“YOU KNOW THAT BILL YOU PAY TO COMCAST OR VERIZON”

bandwidth is basically unlimited too. you can pay up yo 150 bucks a month if you want top speed (maximum bandwidth) which most people would find a bitch to max out. We’re talking transfering terabytes of data per day. and unless you are researching cancer or something you will not be able to do that.

Just because you are poor and uneducated doesn’t mean the rest of us are held back…i think your mom is calling kid.

19

you also can’t distinguish between development and infrastructure. Development is on the SOFTware side. Infrastructure is on the HARDWARE side. Is internet hardware? no. Is a modem? yes? is P2P? no. Is the phone line? yes.

i hope you get drafted. seriously.

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From the guy who gets his panties in a twist about forum decorum. You stay classy, Caley McKibbin