US is set to censor internet

[unity100]

u100, I think this is a valuable topic. Thanks for introducing it.

Based on my research about software and network engineering, I am more optimistic than you. You may already be familiar with all these engineering points - if so, let's discuss them - but I'm including them for full context. This is directly at the heart of my professional expertise.

In my career developing and supporting online systems, I have read many of the fundamental technical papers about Internet technologies from the 60's to the present day, along with memoirs by those involved and reports by analysts and journalists who have studied the history.

The original design goals for what became the Internet were well defined in a research paper from the RAND Institute. As with all that I mention here, I can look up the original reference if you're not able to find it for yourself.

im well aware what was internet designed for. routing around nuclear war damage and all that.

however :

technologies exist to thwart proxy usage to access prohibited sites, it can be done by deep packet inspection.

Deep packet inspection is extremely expensive to be applied on a large scale and it is unable to deal with encryption or polymorphism. In effect it's absolutely pointless as long as encryption exists... Which is why in some countries encryption is illegal.. But that would mean everyone could sniff company secrets which might cut into the countries income. Also there are methods to embed information into for example a family photo, you simply can't detect if there is embedded and encrypted information in regular media files.

I agree, they'll try and just like in Iran and China people will get in trouble for it. But it's the attempt to control with heavy handed techniques more than actually being able to do it that causes the problem. You'll get idiotic responses like as soon as they figure out youtube had a video with embedded messages they'll block the whole of youtube which of course is completely pointless and extremely annoying to everyone else.

We already see those responses.

numerous countries are implementing these, even though they are expensive. there is private interest money behind it after all. for example in turkey, the filter has been working for a long while. if the site ip is banned, the only way for people to reach them becomes proxies. and, majority of population do not have the technical aptitude to do that. they can learn from each other.

however, the other end is covered too :

they are wanting to implement 3 strikes laws like the hadopi in france. kicking people off the internet for copyright infringement. moreover, they are trying to hold service providers liable for any websites and content on their network.

even with that, the websites still can move to a country which do not employ these practices, and have sufficient freedom of expression, and users may use proxies and still continue.

but,

there is acta now. they are trying to push usa's dmca and various other copyright/patent practices to all the world except russia and china. if acta is ratified, even if a website is operating in a country with freedom of expression after escaping usa censorship, can still be pressurized legally and easily by usa private interests to shut down, through acta treaty.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/11/16/2132214

usa had trouble trying to get wikileaks, which escaped to sweden, to shut down. it wasnt able to succeed, and resorted to assaulting the character of its founder probably through their proxies in sweden, in order to discredit it and to prosecute it.

if acta comes up, they will be much more at ease to do that. actually, it goes for any private interest, in any country.

this is generally being veiled behind copyright and counterfeiting excuses. but, if you look at what can be claimed an infringement in usa, judging from the court cases, copyright is already being used as an excuse to shut down competitors, whistleblowers, dissent, opposition, any source undesirable.

basically, they are trying to control the internet. this is what's happening here. 'being expensive' is not a problem - despite defense was the most expensive spending on the face of the planet, private interests had no problem having governments spend whopping budgets on defense, to maintain world dominance for their profits.