Beautiful Anarchy

Permabear

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Valmont

I've wanted to read Bourbon for Breakfast a while back but without an e-reader, the cost was too prohibitive. This one sounds like it has a more serious tone, however, and is about something I haven't heard of before.

As for the third reality you speak of, it's already in place I believe. We have various government-imposed rules on internet usage (Orange has denied me access to various file-sharing website recently, for example) but people carve their way around them however they can. For example, when I lived in Ireland I re-routed my IP address through a British server so I could view content on the BBC website. And now, in the UK too, we have annoying pop-ups on various websites speaking of their legal obligation to tell me about their cookies -- seems like more pointless meddling to me.

Now that I think of it, I'm sure someone must have written a book about various tricks to get around government imposed internet controls. It may be a more pressing matter for those in China though!

Valmont

Valmont wrote: »

Now that I think of it, I'm sure someone must have written a book about various tricks to get around government imposed internet controls. It may be a more pressing matter for those in China though!

Even the censors are being watched...
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/10/2139216/chinese-censors-are-being-watched
I found it interesting as well that the criticism of govt ones weren't removed - only calls to action.

It's a very interesting idea in the OP. I wonder how possible it is with the govts trying to get their paws all over everything on the internet though. Locked up for telling jokes on twitter (though that finally got overturned), or attempts at all these blacklists...

Permabear

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KyussBishop

One interesting thing to note about the Internet, is that its backbone as a free medium of communication is net neutrality; without that, the internet would balkanize and would split into tiers, with some services/websites getting higher priority over others, some not being accessible at all depending upon your ISP.

Essentially, adherence to net neutrality determines whether or not ISP's are just a service provider delivering an unfettered service to your house, sourced from anywhere (analogous to the postal service), or whether they are free to meddle with what they provide you, or completely block some content (like refusing to deliver letters from a particular source, or perhaps open up and modify the content you receive).

Currently, the principal of net neutrality is the only thing stopping ISP's from striking deals with other companies, to give them preferential bandwidth access over other websites, or to stop ISP's entirely blocking websites, e.g. NetFlix, in favour of their own home-built websites (or e.g. cable services) providing the same services.

The next couple of decades are going to be real interesting, in seeing whether or not the Internet stays 'free' and whether or not it gets affected by growing censorship and/or corporate interference if net neutrality is eroded.


Enforcing net neutrality by law would need to be a government regulation though (it's already on borrowed time, particularly with ISP's in the US looking to encroach it; we're almost on that slippery slope), so what kind of freedom do we want from the Internet?
Do we want to have freedom from regulation, and have a potentially censored, balkanized and corporate-controlled Internet in the future?
Or do we want to have freedom of speech and unfettered communication (communication unfettered by both government and corporations), such that we have government regulation which enforces net neutrality?


I've been keeping a very close eye on things like ACTA, and other potential government-instigated laws which may censor the Internet (and occasionally volunteer with some groups who research, try to spread awareness of and combat these), but I also very closely have an eye on the potential threat from corporate encroachment on net neutrality.

As big as the current threat from government is regarding censorship, it's good to remember that it's massive corporate groups like the MPAA/RIAA that, hand in hand with the governments they lobby, who are directly responsible for the international efforts to censor the internet.

Dirk Gently

what would be the libertarian view on non state censorship of the net. i.e. private corporations filtering results, blocking content etc. Do you respect their "freedom" to censor as a private company. I remember reading a post before where you argued that a private hospital would have every right not to treat a black man if it was against their private ethos to treat black people, even if it was a mater of life and death. I assume from that extreme line of thought that you champion private corporations to more or less do as they please without state interference, for example not forcing the hospital to save the life of the black man.

Would you favour "regulation" to prevent censorship or is that the state interfering in private business? For me the biggest threat is from corporate sources lobbying government. I'm opposed to state and corporate censorship. Would you champion corporate censorship while condemning state censorship? Is one about liberty and the other not?

Permabear

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Blowfish

I'm another who has Jeffrey Tuckers other books in my 'to do' list. I've seen a good few lectures of his, he definitely has an interesting take on things. I'll add this one to the list too, though will probably prioritise this over the others as I'm an IT nerd.

Dirk Gently wrote: »

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The difference between state and corporate censorship is that when a corporation censors something, you have the option to go elsewhere. For an obvious example of this, just read up on the numerous threads here on Boards of people leaving Eircom back when they decided to start blocking The Piratebay.

Permabear wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

www.magicscroll.net is a handy little free browser based epub reader. It stores your books and progress for free too.

KyussBishop

Blowfish wrote: »

The difference between state and corporate censorship is that when a corporation censors something, you have the option to go elsewhere. For an obvious example of this, just read up on the numerous threads here on Boards of people leaving Eircom back when they decided to start blocking The Piratebay.

The whole mantra of 'choice' in a free market is always asserted, but never qualified i.e. its limits are never pointed out.

The way it is always preached is as if you always have a choice, which is never constrained by practical or market considerations; in effect, the meaning of the word choice is never really defined, it is used in the most loose way possible to fit any argument, much like the word 'freedom' gets warped to fit whatever argument it's being used to support.


If we switched to a system which was deregulated in a Libertarian fashion tomorrow, Eircom could pretty easily remove a lot of 'choice' by kicking all other ISPs off their infrastructure, and whoever owns the national fiber interconnect would have control over everyone, able to implement whatever censorship they like.

The 'choice' then, would be to wait for someone else to bring in a fiber interconnect and to then implement an entirely new, duplicate network infrastructure; they could do this under the promise of bringing in an uncensored Internet, and then could do a complete 180 when it's in and enforce censorship (then you'd have to start waiting again for the next fiber interconnect).


The most logical choice for maximizing monetary income, is definitely to breach net neutrality, and force websites to make deals for preferential treatment (to get higher priority bandwidth over other sites etc.).
Eroding net neutrality will start small first (in many cases it already has started, with the throttling of torrents), but it's no less of a slippery slope than that of government imposed censorship.

A completely unregulated telecoms market like that is easily monopolized by early comers and established players, and if they decide to lock other people out, it creates an enormously high cost of entry into the market which would severely limit what choices you have.

Blowfish

KyussBishop wrote: »

If we switched to a system which was deregulated in a Libertarian fashion tomorrow, Eircom could pretty easily remove a lot of 'choice' by kicking all other ISPs off their infrastructure, and whoever owns the national fiber interconnect would have control over everyone, able to implement whatever censorship they like.

Indeed. The government decided to hand an 80 year old state owned monopoly to Eircom when it privatised it. Not exactly what you'd call 'free market' in any sense of the word. Unfortunately it's going to take a while to undo the result of this, though thankfully it's already well underway as UPC are likely to break the 1million subscribers in the next 6 months or so.

KyussBishop

UPC are doing well alright, and it's good to see them putting out modernized infrastructure and taking market share from Eircom; they don't own any international fiber connections though, so in a deregulated market that would be an issue for them.

They also (their Dutch counterpart anyway) have looked at doing away with net neutrality:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1951975/dutch-isp-heralds-net-neutrality

It's not just a matter of getting in your own international fiber connection either, if you do want to support net neutrality, since the infrastructure you're connecting to also has to adhere to it; that's where the 'balkanization' comes in, where some regions adhere to net neutrality, and others not, and so you get a fracturing of the network.


So, if you want proper freedom of speech on the Internet, and for ISP's to just act as 'mere conduits' (not altering or giving preference to specific data), it looking increasingly likely that internationally regulating net neutrality will become important, as ISP's start to edge out voluntary adherence to it, in favour of tapping their influence on traffic for profit.

Memnoch

Permabear wrote: »

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More importantly... there would be no need to lobby a libertarian government since the purpose of lobbying by and large is to stop a democratic government from doing it's job and protect its citizens from exploitation, by deregulating and or creating loop holes for special interest groups to exploit.

A libertarian 'state,' achieves all of these goals and hands over all of the things that corporations must currently lobby to achieve.

Belfast

Permabear wrote: »

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Do not think the special interest groups are going to just give up. They will put there efforts in to replacing the government with on they like and can control.

Belfast

for some reason I can only access this web site using a web proxy.
http://dixienet.org/

is it blocked in Ireland?

Blowfish

Belfast wrote: »

for some reason I can only access this web site using a web proxy.
http://dixienet.org/

is it blocked in Ireland?

Which site? They all seem to be working here.

Belfast

Blowfish wrote: »

Which site? They all seem to be working here.

I only put in a link to one site.

oscarBravo

It's a DNS problem; there's no such thing as a site that's "blocked in Ireland".

paul@vila:~$ dig +trace +time=10 dixienet.org

; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> +trace +time=10 dixienet.org
;; global options: +cmd
.			319462	IN	NS	g.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	k.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	h.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	f.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	j.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	l.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	c.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	e.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	d.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	i.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	b.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	a.root-servers.net.
.			319462	IN	NS	m.root-servers.net.
;; Received 332 bytes from 192.168.100.10#53(192.168.100.10) in 4 ms

org.			172800	IN	NS	c0.org.afilias-nst.info.
org.			172800	IN	NS	b2.org.afilias-nst.org.
org.			172800	IN	NS	a2.org.afilias-nst.info.
org.			172800	IN	NS	d0.org.afilias-nst.org.
org.			172800	IN	NS	a0.org.afilias-nst.info.
org.			172800	IN	NS	b0.org.afilias-nst.org.
;; Received 432 bytes from 192.203.230.10#53(e.root-servers.net) in 181 ms

dixienet.org.		86400	IN	NS	ns.targetedonlinesolutions.com.
dixienet.org.		86400	IN	NS	ns2.targetedonlinesolutions.com.
;; Received 92 bytes from 2001:500:b::1#53(c0.org.afilias-nst.info) in 445 ms

The trace stops there, because the addresses of the nameservers can't be resolved.

What's it got to do with the topic?

Belfast

oscarBravo wrote: »

The trace stops there, because the addresses of the nameservers can't be resolved.

What's it got to do with the topic?

censorship was mentioned in the original post.

oscarBravo

Belfast wrote: »

censorship was mentioned in the original post.

So it was. What led you to believe that that website was censored, as opposed to the altogether more likely explanation that it was broken?

Belfast

oscarBravo wrote: »

So it was. What led you to believe that that website was censored, as opposed to the altogether more likely explanation that it was broken?

Because I can access the web site via a web proxy.
so I know the web site works.

oscarBravo

I get the same DNS failure from machines I have access to in Austria, France, Denmark and the Netherlands. It works from servers in Texas, Vancouver, Singapore, New Caledonia and Japan.

Looks like a broken DNS setup to me.

Belfast

oscarBravo wrote: »

I get the same DNS failure from machines I have access to in Austria, France, Denmark and the Netherlands. It works from servers in Texas, Vancouver, Singapore, New Caledonia and Japan.

Looks like a broken DNS setup to me.

Thanks for the information.

I have not seen this before with any other web site.

Eliot Rosewater

oscarBravo wrote: »

I get the same DNS failure from machines I have access to in Austria, France, Denmark and the Netherlands. It works from servers in Texas, Vancouver, Singapore, New Caledonia and Japan.

Looks like a broken DNS setup to me.

Wrong. This is obviously a calculated decision by the elite to restrict website access only to other elites, like yourself, with privileged access to umpteen webservers around the world. Someday the people will rise up and take back all the webservers that are rightly theirs - watch out oscarBravo, the revolution will not treat you or other webserver horders lightly.

(For more information consult my forthcoming book, Das Webserver.)

Valmont

Are torrent sites blocked in Ireland? I know some of the more popular ones are in the U.K. at any rate.

Valmont

Valmont wrote: »

Are torrent sites blocked in Ireland? I know some of the more popular ones are in the U.K. at any rate.

eircom has blocked The Pirate Bay since 2009. As far as I'm aware it's the only large ISP (in Ireland) that censors a torrent site, though I could be wrong.