[Mongoose]

So in lieu of more explosive topics, here's something I (somewhat disturbingly) only came across a day or two ago.  It seems as though our illustrious Congress has it in its head to enact a new law that would allow the Justice Department and/or Attorney General to essentially create a "blacklist" of websites that ISPs would be legally required to restrict.  Of course, the bill's ostensible (read: asinine) purpose is to fight copyright infringement, but it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see how that's just a first step.  Last time I checked, I never signed up for the Great Firewall of China.  So if you live in the US, sign this petition, contact your local representatives, and get the word out about this bull****.  It's beyond ridiculous.

[Quanto]

KILL IT !!!!
KILL IT NAO!!!!


RALLY TO THE BATTLE CRY!!!!!

[Mefustae]

We beat you to it.

[Mongoose]

Yeah, I'd heard about that.  That's exactly why I want to see a ton of people *****ing about this here, so that the same thing doesn't happen.  And they are, apparently: a group of over 90 software engineers, including most of the people who developed the protocols and technology to make the Internet possible, collectively signed a letter to Congress vehemently decrying the bill.

[ssmit132]

You guys too?

...Although the Australian filter proposal came about because of child pornography rather than copyright infringment, it still would have the same problems.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

We already have something like this in Singapore. The list is mostly made of porn sites, but the government's looking into other alternatives, such as an optional website filter.

[Nemesis6]

Denmark has it, too. Some German company did a study of our block filters -- Most of the sites on our list are gone or unavailable. The Germans managed to instantly get three of them shut down. So, instead of actually doing something about the child porn sites, we just prefer to block them. You can read the report here, in English: http://ak-zensur.de/2010/09/29/analysis-blacklists.pdf

[Shade]

Denmark has it, too.

If you can actually call something that any half-competent computer user can circumvent in less than two minutes simply by altering a few settings in windows, then yes, I suppose so. Personally I consider it little more than a very short-lived distraction as opposed to actual censorship

[Nemesis6]

Denmark has it, too.

If you can actually call something that any half-competent computer user can circumvent in less than two minutes simply by altering a few settings in windows, then yes, I suppose so. Personally I consider it little more than a very short-lived distraction as opposed to actual censorship

Oh yeah, about that -- The filtering is done through DNS servers. If a user here goes to the settings of his connection(or router) and use, say, google's free DNS instead of automatic settings, then the filtering will be gone.

[Snail]

Awesome.

[Mongoose]

I think the point here is that none of us should accept measures like this.  How can we propose to live in "free" societies if the government places restrictions on just how freely we can access information?  As the website notes, Obama has spoken out against Internet censorship in other countries, particularly China, yet many Western democracies practice the same thing, and certain members of Congress are trying to get it back-doored here.  It's about time to stand up and tell them to go **** themselves.

[Nemesis6]

I think the point here is that none of us should accept measures like this.  How can we propose to live in "free" societies if the government places restrictions on just how freely we can access information?  As the website notes, Obama has spoken out against Internet censorship in other countries, particularly China, yet many Western democracies practice the same thing, and certain members of Congress are trying to get it back-doored here.  It's about time to stand up and tell them to go **** themselves.

That's what a terrorist pirate would say! If you're not a pirate, you don't have anything to worry about, right? Just like if you have nothing to hide, talking to the police cannot possibly come get you in trouble, right!  

Anyway, censorship is bad.

[redsniper]

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

[Nuke]

as much as i dont want my internets to be firewalled so i cant pirate rare black metal that i cant find in any store, and movies that i cant afford to see or dont ever come to our theater, or download tv shows i missed, or bizzare porn. i dont like giving my email adress to anyone with a political agenda. i think id just let my self fall off the grid and work on assembling a large gun collection.

[Mongoose]

You can always unsubscribe from their mailing list after you sign up, or just use a spare GMail account or something.  They sent me one message about the campaign, but I get so little e-mail anyway that it wasn't exactly a big deal.

[noodle]

Internet censorship makes me laugh. Lawmakers fail to grasp that the internet is fundamentally different from radio or TV. You can't censor it, not really. Oh, sure you can have restrictions and blacklists and stuff, but anyone with a modicum of experience on the internet knows about proxies and how to change their IP. The internet is possibly the biggest can of worms in human history, now that its been opened it's never going to be closed again.

Put it this way: the idea of the internet can never be killed. It's like with Napster and its clones, they (eventually) killed it off, but that didn't stop file-sharing, people just moved on to torrents and file-storage websites like RapidShare. Some rebellious coder somewhere will just come up with a new form of networking if out of touch politicians seriously try to clamp down on the internet.

[General Battuta]

Internet censorship makes me laugh. Lawmakers fail to grasp that the internet is fundamentally different from radio or TV. You can't censor it, not really. Oh, sure you can have restrictions and blacklists and stuff, but anyone with a modicum of experience on the internet knows about proxies and how to change their IP. The internet is possibly the biggest can of worms in human history, now that its been opened it's never going to be closed again.

+1, unless you're China in which case you can be Chinese about it

Put it this way: the idea of the internet can never be killed. It's like with Napster and its clones, they (eventually) killed it off, but that didn't stop file-sharing, people just moved on to torrents and file-storage websites like RapidShare. Some rebellious coder somewhere will just come up with a new form of networking if out of touch politicians seriously try to clamp down on the internet.

I really like to think this but simultaneously I worry it's not as invincible as we hope.

[Flipside]

I don't think any kind of internal pressure could do it, possibly in some countries they would get away with 'turning the Internet off', but certainly in the Corporate countries, that would be very difficult to achieve. There was talk once of limiting the Internet to purely busniess interests, but that was struck down by the industries themselves, since it removed a massive advertising tool.

A greater risk is some kind of catacalysmic failure in the backbone, it wouldn't destroy it, but I have the suspicion that the 'net that returned when it is repaired wouldn't quite be the same Internet that fell, chances are the opportunity to twiddle would be taken. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not sure to be honest, sometimes the right to anonymity is a wonderful and useful tool, other times it is just taken as an excuse to display the worst aspects of human ignorance and intolerance.

[Kosh]

You've got nothing on these guys

[Mongoose]

You've got nothing on these guys

I feel like that's more along the lines of "lol, internets."