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Namecheap doesn't sell whois protection for certain domains like .io anyway, so this is less of an issue than it might seem... However, it feels like the Inter

Namecheap doesn't sell whois protection for certain domains like .io anyway, so this is less of an issue than it might seem... However, it feels like the Internet is losing its way. It is impossible to point to what specifically is causing it, but I feel like people have gotten so used to ceding their identities, data, and privacy to massive organizations like Facebook (and those organizations engage in actions like tracking anyway) that culture in general just doesn't care. The Internet used to be and still is a decentralized system which can empower people, but as it continues to get more and more centralized and governments and organizations don't see broad resistance against invasions of privacy, the Internet becomes less and less something that empowers and more like something that can trap people. And that's not even considering the Idiocracy-style apps and games that are getting pumped out on a daily basis that people are literally wasting their lives away on. I imagine this comes off as a bit snobbish or melodramatic, but the very audience that uses this site are the people creating this future. You can't get too angry at ICANN killing WHOIS privacy if you work for a company that disregards privacy, too. note: I use all of these services. I just wish there was more I dunno....rage...from the technology creators about whatever it is that we are creating, which we all seem to know isn't okay but we do anyway. It just amazes me that posts like this or documentaries about Aaron Schwartz can coexist on the frontpage with stories about the latest derivative tech company. This is very much an inudstry with two minds.

nly 11y ago
The problem is the class of people who care about this stuff (like you and me) have largely lost control over shaping the future of the Internet, its protocols, and the things attached to it. When it comes to the web, it feels like Google are now doing more to shape things to their business model than anyone else. HTTP/2, WebAssembly... it's only a matter of time before Chrome becomes the Play Store. This is a completely different vision to the days of centralized but federated services like e-mail, newsgroups and IRC. The web still feels like a pool of ugly hacks, but now it's ripe. When you look outside of the web, there's little innovation on the open Internet. You can probably count the exciting non-proprietary stuff that has touched mainstream in the last 15 years on one hand (BitTorrent, Tor, Bitcoin). Most of what's 'hot' on the Internet isn't innovative at all, and it's all walled, proprietary, and monopolised (IM, social networking, VoIP)
- narrowrail 11y ago
  [nitpick: I don't think I would lump VOIP into that bunch because SIP is a pretty open standard that can work quite with some cheap hardware like an Obihai, and then a large wholesale VOIP provider like flowroute ($2/year for a DID and ~5 cents/min connectivity).] I think there are projects/people working on the things you are concerned about, but it will take time. I believe people are going to have to have some machine on their wired, home connection that is always-on doing background stuff that a SAAS server would be doing. The software business is closer to native applications in that case.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > WebAssembly Huh? That's not a Google-exclusive thing.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    It's not even something that originated with Google, it comes out of Mozilla's work on ASM.js. If Google had their way we'd have NaCl instead.
pyre 11y ago
> the latest derivative tech company If the Internet were more decentralized, wouldn't there be more 'derivative' companies just due to the fact that there would be many companies competing in the same space (e.g. many companies offering social networking via federated, but decentralized services)?
doctorshady 11y ago
I've been feeling this way more and more too. I dunno, one of the many odd signs is that if you look at the level of technology dependence developers, hackers and other heavy computers users have, it seems like that's started to be exceeded by the dependence of the average person. Backwards as it might seem, I would like to see more things pop up to help reduce peoples' internet dependence. If you look at all the sketchy legislation alone like the TPP and the Florida law requiring real whois info, things are definitely heading south.
lightbringer 11y ago
Seriously? Dude, look at yourself. The internet is progressive, and you really need to be too.
fweespeech 11y ago
> However, it feels like the Internet is losing its way. It is impossible to point to what specifically is causing it, but I feel like people have gotten so used to ceding their identities, data, and privacy to massive organizations like Facebook (and those organizations engage in actions like tracking anyway) that culture in general just doesn't care. The problem was, honestly, in the early days it was mostly early adopters and business users that used the internet. They cared about those things. Now, its everyone...and the vast majority of people simply don't think critically about how easy it is to for people in power to abuse the system or for others to harass people when they are exposed. :/
yuhong 11y ago
I think WHOIS privacy services was actually a relatively recent creation, in the early days of the Internet people didn't care either.
- acomjean 11y ago
  As someone who didn't use whois privacy initially, I can tell you at some point the span started coming, in paper and electronic form. since I changed to use it not so much spam. They shouldn't get rid of this.
tzs 11y ago
> Namecheap doesn't sell whois protection for certain domains like .io anyway, so this is less of an issue than it might seem... That's interesting. I know that some, like .us, do not support this because the managers of .us forbid it. But for .io, some registrars do support privacy protection (including GoDaddy), so I wonder what is keeping it unavailable for Namecheap? From a strictly "how it impacts me" point of view, I don't suppose I'd be overly pissed off if I cannot keep my domain registrations private. I just recently grabbed af7pl.us [1] for any future ham radio related stuff I might want to put on the net, and so had to put real contact information into WHOIS, so there is not all that much point of keeping the same information out of there for my other domains. When my current other domains are up for renewal I'll probably drop WHOIS privacy on them. [1] There is nothing there, so don't waste time visiting it unless you want to see Namecheap's default page for new domains that haven't set their DNS to point somewhere else yet.

nly 11y ago

The problem is the class of people who care about this stuff (like you and me) have largely lost control over shaping the future of the Internet, its protocols, and the things attached to it. When it comes to the web, it feels like Google are now doing more to shape things to their business model than anyone else. HTTP/2, WebAssembly... it's only a matter of time before Chrome becomes the Play Store. This is a completely different vision to the days of centralized but federated services like e-mail, newsgroups and IRC. The web still feels like a pool of ugly hacks, but now it's ripe. When you look outside of the web, there's little innovation on the open Internet. You can probably count the exciting non-proprietary stuff that has touched mainstream in the last 15 years on one hand (BitTorrent, Tor, Bitcoin). Most of what's 'hot' on the Internet isn't innovative at all, and it's all walled, proprietary, and monopolised (IM, social networking, VoIP)

narrowrail 11y ago
[nitpick: I don't think I would lump VOIP into that bunch because SIP is a pretty open standard that can work quite with some cheap hardware like an Obihai, and then a large wholesale VOIP provider like flowroute ($2/year for a DID and ~5 cents/min connectivity).] I think there are projects/people working on the things you are concerned about, but it will take time. I believe people are going to have to have some machine on their wired, home connection that is always-on doing background stuff that a SAAS server would be doing. The software business is closer to native applications in that case.
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
> WebAssembly Huh? That's not a Google-exclusive thing.
- cwyers 11y ago
  It's not even something that originated with Google, it comes out of Mozilla's work on ASM.js. If Google had their way we'd have NaCl instead.

pyre 11y ago

> the latest derivative tech company If the Internet were more decentralized, wouldn't there be more 'derivative' companies just due to the fact that there would be many companies competing in the same space (e.g. many companies offering social networking via federated, but decentralized services)?

doctorshady 11y ago

I've been feeling this way more and more too. I dunno, one of the many odd signs is that if you look at the level of technology dependence developers, hackers and other heavy computers users have, it seems like that's started to be exceeded by the dependence of the average person. Backwards as it might seem, I would like to see more things pop up to help reduce peoples' internet dependence. If you look at all the sketchy legislation alone like the TPP and the Florida law requiring real whois info, things are definitely heading south.

lightbringer 11y ago

Seriously? Dude, look at yourself. The internet is progressive, and you really need to be too.

fweespeech 11y ago

> However, it feels like the Internet is losing its way. It is impossible to point to what specifically is causing it, but I feel like people have gotten so used to ceding their identities, data, and privacy to massive organizations like Facebook (and those organizations engage in actions like tracking anyway) that culture in general just doesn't care. The problem was, honestly, in the early days it was mostly early adopters and business users that used the internet. They cared about those things. Now, its everyone...and the vast majority of people simply don't think critically about how easy it is to for people in power to abuse the system or for others to harass people when they are exposed. :/

yuhong 11y ago

I think WHOIS privacy services was actually a relatively recent creation, in the early days of the Internet people didn't care either.

acomjean 11y ago
As someone who didn't use whois privacy initially, I can tell you at some point the span started coming, in paper and electronic form. since I changed to use it not so much spam. They shouldn't get rid of this.

tzs 11y ago

> Namecheap doesn't sell whois protection for certain domains like .io anyway, so this is less of an issue than it might seem... That's interesting. I know that some, like .us, do not support this because the managers of .us forbid it. But for .io, some registrars do support privacy protection (including GoDaddy), so I wonder what is keeping it unavailable for Namecheap? From a strictly "how it impacts me" point of view, I don't suppose I'd be overly pissed off if I cannot keep my domain registrations private. I just recently grabbed af7pl.us [1] for any future ham radio related stuff I might want to put on the net, and so had to put real contact information into WHOIS, so there is not all that much point of keeping the same information out of there for my other domains. When my current other domains are up for renewal I'll probably drop WHOIS privacy on them. [1] There is nothing there, so don't waste time visiting it unless you want to see Namecheap's default page for new domains that haven't set their DNS to point somewhere else yet.