Amen On Jul 11, 2014 12:36 AM, "Nicolas Bourbaki" <[email protected]> wrote:
> It seemed logical that old-world media companies would want to restrict > access to content on the Internet. GeoIP was then used to induce > distribution barriers analogous to those found offline so that existing > models of rent extraction could survive. And while this is something > most of us would be fine with leaving to the invisible hand of the > market we can not take the same stance when governments start to use > these measures to dictate who is a citizen, and who is not, and who is > provided civil liberties and who is not. This is what the XKeyscore > rules made clear was happening and will continue to happen in the future. > > The internet standards and governing bodies cannot relinquish themselves > of political responsibility any longer. The structure of a protocol will > dictate our behavior and in this world there is no such thing as an > agnostic protocol. The term "neutrality" is false. In the context of > service providers battling with media providers over who gets a larger > share of rent from consumers, "neutrality" may be the agreed upon term > but the policies that result from this debate will have real impact on > our behavior, the ethics of the protocol, and our liberties. > > Once a neutral protocol is understood as an oxymoron standards bodies > with charters claiming to serve the betterment of all nations, > corporations and consumers should be clearly seen for what they are: a > new Tower of Babel. Those of us still placing stones one on top of the > other within these institutions should take a moment to look at our work > and ask what are we actually doing. > > In 2010 the DHS went against their own charter and hijacked ICANN's to > take down hundreds of domains for unclear copyright claims. Why is ICANN > still relevant when decentralized models could easily replace them when > supported by either the EU, Google or Firefox? And when the NSA can with > absolutely no oversight claim that the location of an IP in some table > dictates who gets civil liberties, why have we not replaced BGP or at > least begun to build parallel models within universities or like minded > corporations that could support reverse tunnels through collision free > identities similar to Tor's onion service handles? > > The number of protocols that falsely advertised as agnostic are many. We > should be ashamed that it took such a scandal as pervasive western > surveillance to awaken us to this falsehood when so many, living under > more hostel regimes, have lived with the tools of oppression we built > into these protocols from the very start. > > If we cannot convince our institutions to take fixing these falsehoods > seriously by considering civil liberties within the protocol, and > overcome the obstacles of legacy systems, and work for support for > parallel models, than at least we can hasten the demise of this Babel to > start anew. Indeed this may sadden optimists such as Larry Page and > others that are waiting for technology to become our messiah. But as > Benjamin Franklin would say, those who would trade liberated networks > for efficient networks deserve neither. > > -- > Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations > of list guidelines will get you moderated: > https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. > Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at > [email protected]. > >
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