26 ms·

Well you can always hack on decentralised, encrypted, hidden peer to peer chat, or other open software alternatives of high quality for all the services we use

by scrrr 12y ago

Well you can always hack on decentralised, encrypted, hidden peer to peer chat, or other open software alternatives of high quality for all the services we use every day and so forth. If media is a problem, work on solutions for anonymous publishing etc.. if the software is good enough (including having a good ui and whatnot), it's less geeky. After all, people adopted BitTorrent, which is quite geeky!

the8472 12y ago
Providing technical workarounds for broken policy can only do so much. It doesn't fix policy. It can only help avoiding enforcement. Which might lead to court cases where they try to make an example of a poor sap they have caught. This has already happened to some extent with peer to peer file sharing. a) only few individual users get caught and dragged through the courts, but they get slapped with damages in the hundred-thousands[1]. b) there is no big mafia boss responsible for everything they could hold accountable. So now they go after companies making software[2] or after sites such as TPB. Not on the premises that they did anything illegal themselves but that they enabled others to do so. So who says that the net of what's illegal won't get cast even wider in the future if someone were to develop something that's even harder for them to prosecute? Or one could even argue that evasion through technology leads to policy becoming even more restrictive, even if that restrictive policy remains largely ineffective except for those few that actually get hit by it. I'm not saying that the technology shouldn't be developed, I'm just saying that it doesn't automatically make society more free by itself. It just provides an underground in which one may move. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas-Rasset http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_....
- verroq 12y ago
  Non technical users also don't care about encryption/security and what not.
  - EStudley 12y ago
    I wouldn't say that. I'd say they care about encryption/their personal security, but they don't care in the slightest what the implementation is.

by scrrr 12y ago

the8472 12y ago

Providing technical workarounds for broken policy can only do so much. It doesn't fix policy. It can only help avoiding enforcement. Which might lead to court cases where they try to make an example of a poor sap they have caught. This has already happened to some extent with peer to peer file sharing. a) only few individual users get caught and dragged through the courts, but they get slapped with damages in the hundred-thousands[1]. b) there is no big mafia boss responsible for everything they could hold accountable. So now they go after companies making software[2] or after sites such as TPB. Not on the premises that they did anything illegal themselves but that they enabled others to do so. So who says that the net of what's illegal won't get cast even wider in the future if someone were to develop something that's even harder for them to prosecute? Or one could even argue that evasion through technology leads to policy becoming even more restrictive, even if that restrictive policy remains largely ineffective except for those few that actually get hit by it. I'm not saying that the technology shouldn't be developed, I'm just saying that it doesn't automatically make society more free by itself. It just provides an underground in which one may move. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas-Rasset http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thomas... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_....

verroq 12y ago
Non technical users also don't care about encryption/security and what not.
- EStudley 12y ago
  I wouldn't say that. I'd say they care about encryption/their personal security, but they don't care in the slightest what the implementation is.