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The Internet may allow the free exchange of information and ideas but every inch of the cable, routers, and other infrastructure that makes up the Internet is o

The Internet may allow the free exchange of information and ideas but every inch of the cable, routers, and other infrastructure that makes up the Internet is owned by either a government or by a telecoms corporation subject to government regulation, going all the way back to ARPAnet. There was never any chance of the internet remaining a free place, merely a brief moment between when the technology was invented and when entrepreneurs & lawmakers caught up. If anything, it's surprising that anyone ever believed otherwise.

daveloyall 10y ago
There were and are links owned and operated by universities and colleges. As in, the sysop at foo.edu called up the sysop at bar.edu (a mile down the road) and said: hey bill, 50% of all our napster traffic from the dorms is going to bar.edu, and it is going through my-isp.net and your-isp.net to get there. Why don't you mount a transceiver on a pole and I'll do the same and we'll establish this alternative route for those packets? It is unfortunate that it was also common to rent "alarm wire"[0] copper from the phone company for a point to point link over DSL... I don't think that product is available anymore, because VoIP vs POTS. 0: "Alarm wire" is the term I learned to use to describe an electrically connected circuit from point A to point B in a town, where neither A nor B is the telco. The copper might physically go through the telco's building, but there was no POTS on it and if you apply voltage on the point A end, it can be observed on the point B end... I think maybe the term "dumb circuit" could apply, too. Anyway, these were cool because you could upgrade the DSL modem on both ends to get a faster connection without paying more per month!
niftich 10y ago
This point is critical to understanding how we ended up here. The weakest points of the Internet or anything that runs on top of it, like the World Wide Web, are the parts that interact with meatspace, ie. once you dig far enough down, you're subject to the whims of a third-party who is either a government, or a private corporation that answers, through laws, to a government. The interests of these third-parties are different from ours, and they're subject to different pressures. We can talk about transparency and oversight all we want, but any positive progress for 'those of us in the middle' will just be populist concessions for our appeasement.
logfromblammo 10y ago
Namecoin and alt DNS roots like OpenNIC show that the Internet isn't entirely in Leviathan's back pocket--just 99% of it.

daveloyall 10y ago

There were and are links owned and operated by universities and colleges. As in, the sysop at foo.edu called up the sysop at bar.edu (a mile down the road) and said: hey bill, 50% of all our napster traffic from the dorms is going to bar.edu, and it is going through my-isp.net and your-isp.net to get there. Why don't you mount a transceiver on a pole and I'll do the same and we'll establish this alternative route for those packets? It is unfortunate that it was also common to rent "alarm wire"[0] copper from the phone company for a point to point link over DSL... I don't think that product is available anymore, because VoIP vs POTS. 0: "Alarm wire" is the term I learned to use to describe an electrically connected circuit from point A to point B in a town, where neither A nor B is the telco. The copper might physically go through the telco's building, but there was no POTS on it and if you apply voltage on the point A end, it can be observed on the point B end... I think maybe the term "dumb circuit" could apply, too. Anyway, these were cool because you could upgrade the DSL modem on both ends to get a faster connection without paying more per month!

niftich 10y ago

This point is critical to understanding how we ended up here. The weakest points of the Internet or anything that runs on top of it, like the World Wide Web, are the parts that interact with meatspace, ie. once you dig far enough down, you're subject to the whims of a third-party who is either a government, or a private corporation that answers, through laws, to a government. The interests of these third-parties are different from ours, and they're subject to different pressures. We can talk about transparency and oversight all we want, but any positive progress for 'those of us in the middle' will just be populist concessions for our appeasement.

logfromblammo 10y ago

Namecoin and alt DNS roots like OpenNIC show that the Internet isn't entirely in Leviathan's back pocket--just 99% of it.