There is nothing we can do politically about SOPA. If it gets blocked it will be back again in 6 months even worse (as has been happening for the last few years).
Even so, I’m not worried. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The hackers that built the internet and keep it running are much smarter and work much faster than the legislators. Short of becoming a china-level dictatorship, there is really nothing the mafiaa can do to stop it. The internet is here to stay.
The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
DNS is the deliberately centralized part of the Internet. Big sites that host user content (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger.com) are a very large and very centralized part of the Web. Both are located more or less entirely in the US, and both are the explicit targets of SOPA. Furthermore, existing laws like DMCA have caused a lot of damage but have not been effectively circumvented or routed around.
Edit (thanks Wedfrid): please provide stronger evidence to support your prediction that SOPA will be routed around. The best proof would of course be a description of how to do it, but that may not be conveniently available. However, merely pointing out that there are some very smart people opposed to it is very weak evidence.
There are possible technological solutions to the problem of decentralizing the Internet. None of them are immune to their authors and redistributors being arrested or C&Dd, both in the US and in allied countries, under laws that prohibit “tools that aid copyright violations”.
There aren’t any publicly known technological solutions to the problem of decentralizing the Web, because people who don’t understand or care about technology politics will not agree to leave Facebook et al.
Let me rephrase: the OP claims SOPA can and will be circumvented, but does not describe how, and in the absence of that (Edit: or any other strong argument/proof) I disagree with OP’s position and assign much lower probability to SOPA circumvention.
For ‘burden of proof’ read ‘evidence supporting your inference’.
You’re correct, and thanks for pointing it out. I shouldn’t ask for that proof in particular. I do however ask for some argument, other than “The hackers that built the internet and keep it running are much smarter and work much faster than the legislators.”
The reason I’m not satisfied by this argument is that these smart hackers have bosses and legal departments and the core Internet routers and DNS servers have legal owners (who are not hackers) and are installed in non-secret and very expensive server farms (mostly in the US). Even if all the techies in the system were to organize together they could not overthrow or replace the rest of these organizations.
I do not accept the argument that they’ll come up with something because they’re just that smart. If it were true, I would expect many more of the long-standing problems of the Internet and the Web to have been solved. I would expect previous disruptive laws like the DMCA to be more effectively circumvented.
My prediction that such crap will get routed around is more of a “water rolls down hill” sort of thing.
Even so, here is my take on how DNS blocking will go down: there are many, many, many projects and possibilities for decentralizing and fortifying the internet. Namecoin has been mentioned, I don’t know if .p2p is the same as namecoin, but it’s similar idea. .onion isn’t going anywhere, because civilian use of tor provides cover for military use of tor. I myself have dabbled in designing kademlia-like decentralized overlay networks that don’t rely on servers or DNS. i2p, freenet and so on also solve the censorship problem. There are at least three meshnet projects. There are many other projects I don’t know about. Oh and all the firefox addons: mafiaafire and so on. Oh and of course the simple alternative DNS solution. and /etc/hosts.
So those are the current level of activity and the seeds that anything will grow from. The way hackers and open source works is that the more important a project is, the more hackers will start working on it. As the mafiaa blocks more important stuff, pressure will build and start powering these other projects that route around it.
When there is enough demand, the market will supply a solution. We have no reason to believe it’s impossible, and much reason to believe it can be done.
Unfortunately this mechanism only works to supply things that people know they want, like free movies, videogames, music and communication. It will not protect the growth of startups that solve problems noone knew existed. Such startups are a huge creator of wealth right now, so SOPA and friends will probably do a lot of economic damage, which is why the internet engineers and startup founder-types are so concerned.
Namecoin or something similar is starting to sound attractive. I think the distribution of a decentralized domain name service software package would be difficult to prevent, particularly if there are monetary incentives in the form of a token currency.
Most of the censorship tools that China, Iran, and other such countries are using, are actually US-made. Deploying them here at home would be relatively easy, especially given the political climate and the legal opportunities created by the War on Terror.
There is nothing we can do politically about SOPA. If it gets blocked it will be back again in 6 months even worse (as has been happening for the last few years).
Even so, I’m not worried. The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. The hackers that built the internet and keep it running are much smarter and work much faster than the legislators. Short of becoming a china-level dictatorship, there is really nothing the mafiaa can do to stop it. The internet is here to stay.
DNS is the deliberately centralized part of the Internet. Big sites that host user content (Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger.com) are a very large and very centralized part of the Web. Both are located more or less entirely in the US, and both are the explicit targets of SOPA. Furthermore, existing laws like DMCA have caused a lot of damage but have not been effectively circumvented or routed around.
Edit (thanks Wedfrid): please provide stronger evidence to support your prediction that SOPA will be routed around. The best proof would of course be a description of how to do it, but that may not be conveniently available. However, merely pointing out that there are some very smart people opposed to it is very weak evidence.
There are possible technological solutions to the problem of decentralizing the Internet. None of them are immune to their authors and redistributors being arrested or C&Dd, both in the US and in allied countries, under laws that prohibit “tools that aid copyright violations”.
There aren’t any publicly known technological solutions to the problem of decentralizing the Web, because people who don’t understand or care about technology politics will not agree to leave Facebook et al.
Burden of proof is for the courtroom!
Let me rephrase: the OP claims SOPA can and will be circumvented, but does not describe how, and in the absence of that (Edit: or any other strong argument/proof) I disagree with OP’s position and assign much lower probability to SOPA circumvention.
For ‘burden of proof’ read ‘evidence supporting your inference’.
You’re Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof becomes relevant as a potential reply.
You’re correct, and thanks for pointing it out. I shouldn’t ask for that proof in particular. I do however ask for some argument, other than “The hackers that built the internet and keep it running are much smarter and work much faster than the legislators.”
The reason I’m not satisfied by this argument is that these smart hackers have bosses and legal departments and the core Internet routers and DNS servers have legal owners (who are not hackers) and are installed in non-secret and very expensive server farms (mostly in the US). Even if all the techies in the system were to organize together they could not overthrow or replace the rest of these organizations.
I do not accept the argument that they’ll come up with something because they’re just that smart. If it were true, I would expect many more of the long-standing problems of the Internet and the Web to have been solved. I would expect previous disruptive laws like the DMCA to be more effectively circumvented.
My prediction that such crap will get routed around is more of a “water rolls down hill” sort of thing.
Even so, here is my take on how DNS blocking will go down: there are many, many, many projects and possibilities for decentralizing and fortifying the internet. Namecoin has been mentioned, I don’t know if .p2p is the same as namecoin, but it’s similar idea. .onion isn’t going anywhere, because civilian use of tor provides cover for military use of tor. I myself have dabbled in designing kademlia-like decentralized overlay networks that don’t rely on servers or DNS. i2p, freenet and so on also solve the censorship problem. There are at least three meshnet projects. There are many other projects I don’t know about. Oh and all the firefox addons: mafiaafire and so on. Oh and of course the simple alternative DNS solution. and /etc/hosts.
So those are the current level of activity and the seeds that anything will grow from. The way hackers and open source works is that the more important a project is, the more hackers will start working on it. As the mafiaa blocks more important stuff, pressure will build and start powering these other projects that route around it.
When there is enough demand, the market will supply a solution. We have no reason to believe it’s impossible, and much reason to believe it can be done.
Unfortunately this mechanism only works to supply things that people know they want, like free movies, videogames, music and communication. It will not protect the growth of startups that solve problems noone knew existed. Such startups are a huge creator of wealth right now, so SOPA and friends will probably do a lot of economic damage, which is why the internet engineers and startup founder-types are so concerned.
Namecoin or something similar is starting to sound attractive. I think the distribution of a decentralized domain name service software package would be difficult to prevent, particularly if there are monetary incentives in the form of a token currency.
According to the MPAA-promoted paper, their goal is to do just that.
Most of the censorship tools that China, Iran, and other such countries are using, are actually US-made. Deploying them here at home would be relatively easy, especially given the political climate and the legal opportunities created by the War on Terror.
That’s an excellent description of a position I often want to refer to. Upvoted.
Had you actually never heard that phrase? It’s a cliche, to the point where people got sick of hearing it in the ’90s.
...how on Earth did I ever miss this… Saint Ignucius, please don’t smite me.
I was just assuming you were very young :-) I must admit, I haven’t seen the phrase lately nearly as much as I did ten to fifteen years ago.
Yeah, I’ve never heard it, but I was born in 1989.
I was familiar. 1983.
Same here, 1985.