FIGHT THE INTERNET CENSORSHIP ACT

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I expected something like this would happen sooner or later.

Writing a letter only stalls this offensive, though it's certainly worth trying.  I fear the backers are not merely the lobbyists from the music industry and Blizzard, but also the entire national security apparatus; the Pentagon, NSA, and Department of Homeland Security.  It allows them to destroy what is now the primary source of dissent to US police brutality and propaganda.

It's telling that this bill would shut down facebook, twitter, and other social networking sites, all of which played a part in the recent social uprisings around the world.

I'll quote myself from facebook:

What we need is the technology which will make it impossible for any business, anywhere, to fuck over anyone. Social networking is part of the equation, as is cloud computing and cheap tablets and other hardware, but the most important variable is free and open source artificial intelligence, running on the computers of volunteers, which can sort through pentabytes of data to unmask the fuckery our wonderful business community gets into. Specifically, a set of AIs to find and detect fraud and deceit in financial markets.

I realize now that I didn't go far enough.  What we need is something which will make it impossible for any gov't, anywhere, to keep any secrets from it's own people or anyone else.  It'll be pretty hard to fight a war when everyone knows where everyone's pieces are, and what moves they will make.  If we can make something that does that, then war, opression, copyright, and patents will become obsolete.

[Kuraudo Sutoraifu]

It'll be pretty hard to fight a war when everyone knows where everyone's pieces are, and what moves they will make.  If we can make something that does that, then war, opression... will become obsolete.

Unless an oppressive state has power, and the only thing that was keeping it from invading was proper intel on it's enemy.  If the oppressive state believed it's enemy to be stronger, it would not invade.  If you are the target nation, all the intel in the world will not guarantee safety from superior firepower.  Or in the case of terrorist organizations that do not use computer hardware to communicate or coordinate their attacks, but could utilize this publicized information to attack ungaurded or weaker installations to minimize their losses whilst still dealing damage.

Right here is the problem, I believe. The bill allows people to force ISPs to block websites, and rather arbitrarily.

I agree with that statement, aside from the 'rather arbitrarily' part.  One of the lines you quoted said "an intellectual property right holder harmed by a U.S.-directed site dedicated to infringement."  This states that the site would have to be dedicated to copyright infringement.  It also kind of implies that the copyright holder would need to be harmed by the infringement.  Now, I do believe this could be abused with false accusations of infringement, but like any false accusation regarding the law, a counter-suit could be filed to recover damages due to site down-time and defamation, and Gov't charge would be filed against them for making a fraudulent claim and waisting taxpayer money.

Either way, I don't think this legislation would affect FFH since I believe we are hosted in the good ole United States of Canada.  So wahoo for that if I'm right.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

If everyone's watching, then the most powerful nation in the world might not feel safe attacking whoever they want, but you have to apply the same standard to every nation, regardless of military or economic might.

[Kaijyuu]

I agree with that statement, aside from the 'rather arbitrarily' part.  One of the lines you quoted said "an intellectual property right holder harmed by a U.S.-directed site dedicated to infringement."  This states that the site would have to be dedicated to copyright infringement.  It also kind of implies that the copyright holder would need to be harmed by the infringement.  Now, I do believe this could be abused with false accusations of infringement, but like any false accusation regarding the law, a counter-suit could be filed to recover damages due to site down-time and defamation, and Gov't charge would be filed against them for making a fraudulent claim and waisting taxpayer money.

1) "A site dedicated to infringement." Translation: Any website we want.
2) "Copyright holder harmed by the infringement." Translation: Using copyrighted material in any way whatsoever.
3) Counter suits. Doesn't stop your website from being blacklisted in the first place, not to mention wastes YOUR time and YOUR money, because lawsuits are not free. The original copyright holder doesn't care about shutting you down permanently; temporarily is enough to kill most any website. That includes big things like Youtube and Facebook. If they're offline for 6 months or however long it takes to settle the suit (and believe me, it will take time) people will simply migrate elsewhere.


The problem very, very much is that websites are blacklisted BEFORE the lawsuit is settled. Hell, even if it was blacklisted after, we still have the problem of further destroying net neutrality by forcing ISPs to blacklist sites. That alone is enough to hate this.

[Kuraudo Sutoraifu]

To PGF, I understand that.  But if preventing war was as simple as making a nation feel self-conscious, war would have already been obliterated.  What I'm trying to point out is that wars aren't started because one nation looks at it's forces and looks at another nations forces and says "I think we can take'em."  More often than not, modern day wars are civil wars.  Libya's recent war would not have been prevented with publicized secret information.  

The way that I'm looking at it, superior intel would not have stopped WWI or WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or really any other major conflict.  Superior intel would have just exposed more people to harm.  Either way, if an internet AI existed, military communication would just move back to what it was before the interwebs, like in those wars I listed.

To Kaijyuu, you are placing your own translation upon the proposed law.  If the law said "any website appearing to infringe upon a copyright," would agree with you.  But the way you make it sound is that the law is being made so that a company can go above and beyond that law.  If that were the case, making the law would pointless, because they could just go beyond the law now.

BTW, I suppose I should point out again that I am not for this law.  I'm just not against it for what is being labeled as censorship.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Superior intel and technology is one reason why we won WW2.  We cracked German and Japanese codes and we kept this source of information secret from them.

What does the war in Libya have to do with this conversation?  Are you one of those liberals who belives that we should have just sent Gaddafi a sternly-worded letter, and then let him slaughter his people (like we did to Bahrain, and, to a lesser extent, Yemen)?  War, though usually bad, is sometimes necessary.

And you don't understand what the fuck I'm talking about - if you did, you wouldn't be throwing dirt on my argument.  What I want is what that Army PFC did with the diplomatic cables,  but to EVERY nation, EVERY corporation, and EVERY aspect of the previous two entities.  So, not only would you know the exact specifications and range of every nations conventional and unconventional (RNBC) armaments, but you'd know who is in charge of them at any given time.  I want an AI which can sort through pentabytes of financial data to uncover fraud and deception.  I want to make an unbeatable informational weapon and then I want to make sure every person on the planet has access to it.  Why, you ask?  Because the people in charge of the world will keep fucking with us until we fuck with them.

The second amendment is outdated, because it won't be a lack of guns that destroys our nation, but a lack of counter-informational weapons.  How do you fight a corporation with hundreds of billions of dollars at it's disposal, and fingers in every concievable pie?

How does a poor group of people defeat a wealthy group of people?  Do they do it by accumulating more precious metals and other symbols of money than the wealthy group?  Do they do it by accumulating more material resources which can be exploited to produce money?  No to both.  A poor group of people overcomes a wealthy group of people by changing the nature and definition of wealth.

So what should be considered wealth in this day and age?  Is it knowledge?  Is it intelligence?  Is it the means by which we accumulate greater knowledge, or how we use it?  Or is it the force multipliers we create which turn the effort and ingenuity of a few thousand people into a cohesive, interlocking whole, dedicated to accomplishing a certain task?

What do you think ffhacktics is?  It is a collection of software and hardware which enables everyday people to create a form of wealth in their shared knowledge.  Granted, we aren't making money off it, but as a community we are cross-pollinating each other, and what we do here will change each of us forever.  Some of the ideas posted on this forum will leave this place in the minds of men and women who will use these ideas to change things, and those changes will echo down the corridors of human history and evolution, forever.

But still, that is not wealth, you say.  And you're right, it's not.  But as we adapt and evolve, as we streamline and experiment, we will become better and better at what we do, until we can't help but become wealthy.  Information isn't wealth - it's the exchange of information that is wealth.  This social nature of ours is what made us the most sucessful animals on this planet, and it's this same impulse which will eventually grant each and every one of us the freedom to choose our own fate.

How does an AI work into this?  An AI is just a bot, it lacks the human ability to sense intent.  An AI is just a tool which can become any other tool.

[Kuraudo Sutoraifu]

What does the war in Libya have to do with this conversation?  Are you one of those liberals who belives that we should have just sent Gaddafi a sternly-worded letter, and then let him slaughter his people (like we did to Bahrain, and, to a lesser extent, Yemen)?  War, though usually bad, is sometimes necessary.

I'd answer that question about the war in Libya, but you already answered it.  War, though usually bad, is sometimes necessary.  Contrast that to what you stated earlier about war and being obsolete with an information AI.  That was the point I was speaking against.  I suppose I could have continued using hypotheticals, but I figured a real world example of how growth of information would not have prevented the war would work better.

And thank you for providing an example to help me: WWII.  If Japan had access to information that US bombers were heading their way with atomic weaponry, they would have used that information to gun down those planes, thus prolonging WWII in the Pacific.  In this case, a military secret helped end a war.  But if that secret had been exposed to everyone by the info-AI, the war would have trudged on.

Basically, the point I was trying to get across was that information is a tool, neither good nor evil inherently.  Some will use their information, this tool, to built, to create, and to foster a greater place (a la FFH, like you said), but there are those of mankind who would use their tool to destroy, to take, and to oppress.

I can't argue with the rest of your post because I agree.

How do you fight a corporation with hundreds of billions of dollars at it's disposal, and fingers in every concievable pie?

A solid question here.  My thoughts are to quit giving those companies money.  Which is most of the reason I am against this bill.  It's not that we deserve this pirated information (music/movies/tv shows/video games) for free, it's that some of those industries have been overcharging us for decades because they can (music and movies and to some extent tv shows).  Like you said, they "will keep fucking with us until we fuck with them."  However, their response in some departments has been backwards: we pirate movies because theatres are too expensive, so they raise prices to compensate for losses when they really should have lowered prices to attract more people (and perhaps stop paying movie stars kajillions of dollars to do less than one years work).

My response is similar for government.  If we want government to quit playing in our lives, we should quit giving them more power and more money.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

And thank you for providing an example to help me: WWII.  If Japan had access to information that US bombers were heading their way with atomic weaponry, they would have used that information to gun down those planes, thus prolonging WWII in the Pacific.  In this case, a military secret helped end a war.  But if that secret had been exposed to everyone by the info-AI, the war would have trudged on.

At that point in the war, Japan didn't have the capability to shoot down those bombers, and if they did, we'd have bombed their defenses before we sent our super weapon in there.  And if they knew just how effective and unstoppable an atomic bomb was, they would have surrendered before we used them the first time.  And if the world knew what the Japanese did to China/Korea/Vietnam/The Phillpines, and the Germans did to Jews/homosexuals/liberals/communists/dissidents, then everything would have happened differentally.

My point is that you can only reliably control a gov't if you have a gun just as big as the ones that gov't has, metaphorically speaking.  Otherwise, who's gonna stop a corporation or gov't or wealthy individual from taking your money, your power, your rights, and your life?

No one gave women the right to vote - they took it.  Similarly, if you want your rights (to marry the consenting adult you love, to control when and how you reproduce, what have you), then get out there and take them, because no one will ever give them to you.

[GeneralStrife]

November 17, 2011



James

78 Euharlee Road Southwest

Euharlee, Georgia 30120-6105



Dear Friend:



Thank you for contacting me to express your opinion regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act.  As your Congressman, I appreciate hearing your thoughts and welcome every opportunity to be of service.



As you may know,  S. 968, the  Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PROTECT IP), was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on May 12, 2011.  If enacted, it would  authorize the Attorney General (AG) or an intellectual property right owner harmed by an Internet site dedicated to infringing activities (ISDIA) to commence an action against a registrant of an ISDIA's domain name, or an owner or operator of an ISDIA.  Furthermore, S. 968 also allows the AG to seek legal recourse against such individuals associated with nondomestic domain names (NDN).



The consumer mandate in this industry is for Internet freedom, yet S. 968 hampers free speech in this country.  S. 968 has been placed on the Legislative Calendar in the Senate.  Should any companion legislation be introduced in the House, please be assured I will keep your thoughts in mind.



Again, thank you for sharing your concerns.  If you feel that I may be of additional assistance on this, or any other matter of importance to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.  I also invite you to sign up for my weekly email newsletter, or to share your ideas and opinions, by visiting my website at  http://gingrey.house.gov or emailing me at  gingrey.ga@mail.house.gov .



You may also follow me on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/RepPhilGingrey ), Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/RepPhilGingrey ), and Twitter, @repphilgingrey, ( http://www.twitter.com/RepPhilGingrey ) for live updates from Washington.



I'm so glad my State's rep is defending internet neutrality and free speech. Haha, what a coincidence! Georgia FTW! I wrote him. He wrote my county number and stuff back. conservative rep of georgia fighting censorship, liberal vermont rep proposed this bill. Wow.
 

[formerdeathcorps]

PGF, you trust technology too much to solve the problems of injustice.  Technology without justice would simply become a greater oppression than before.  The same social media sites that let us spread revolution and thoughts can be used by "them" to discriminate against "subversives", keep track of your habits to monitor "thoughtcrime", and locate such people.  In fact, this is what China does regularly (though only to those who have influence or those who translate words into action), and what US employers and government agencies are beginning to do.

PGF, the very fact they NEED to engage in deception means they know that their ideas, their positions, their goals are so unpopular that any open admission to a sufficiently large and attentive crowd of regular people would result in angry revolts.  Hence, they must degrade the average person with propaganda, compromises that preserve elite control, distractions, and deteriorating living conditions.  Thus is why they even feel the need to control EVERYTHING: the media, the political system, the banks, the factories, the schools, the development of technology (and the concomitant scientific research programs and ethos, as well as the religious backlash), and communications (including the Internet); their rule is so dependent on our submission that any challenge, from any sector, can risk a total loss of power.

Do you really need to know EXACTLY how bad Wall Street is screwing this country over?  Even someone who knows nothing of economics or mathematics can walk outside and observe how many of his friends can't find jobs.  It's that this person is told that:
1) Only the experts should deal with it.  You have no power because we don't need to take your opinion seriously.  Another variant is that those in charge either know what they are doing, or that might makes right (even if they are clueless, they rule, and it's not our place to question).
2) (Re-)elect Person X, he'll do it for you.  Never mind the fact he hasn't done anything about it in the previous Y years.  Another variant would be to trust some deity.
3) You already live a good life, or your life is better than Country Z.  There's also the flipside argument: if you don't, it's YOUR fault for not working hard enough/being smart enough; stop whining and join us (or die off).
4) Why bother?  It doesn't matter anyways because of...(insert some nihilistic reason here)

If this mentality can't be broken, especially among the people who enforce the orders (police, military [I'm including weapons scientists here as well]) and the people who produce the goods (people in Third World countries and the poorest people in the US), no revolution can succeed.  Since the rich monopolize finance to control industry and nations, we probably need to issue our own currency/forms of value.  Considering how our opponents split up the production of necessities to isolate resistance in any given sector/country, we need to link ourselves just as effectively as they do, even though this increases the effectiveness of spies, provocateurs, gatekeepers, and assassins (because it is easier to manipulate the group structure).  However, if a few people do something that the official press says is unpopular or impossible but most people see it and believe it, the officials soon lose their authority and unless they actively reverse it, their control.  Hence why our opponents control the press; hence why we need the Internet (or some equivalent communications device).

Once this is achieved, your software would easily be put to use, though it probably wouldn't even be needed; most people would probably willingly spend time to scrutinize financiers under a new system, assuming large trading bodies like Wall Street would even be allowed to continue existing.  If this has not been achieved yet, the problem does not lie in the people who didn't know and were misled by the noise around them into attacking our ideas, but by people like you and me in not being vigilant enough.

EDIT: If you think about it, the government too is just a tool...one that makes laws and maintains order.  The question is more of, on whose behalf?  If you have a specialized political class (rather than a truly representative system), then yes, it's very unlikely the people will control it unless the people wield the preponderance of political, economic, and social authority (so the politicians have no choice but to listen).  Right now, we hold none of these:
1) The people need to resort to protests to hopefully nudge the government; a lobbyist can simply have an expensive brunch with a politician.  
2) The people don't own the resources of this country; the speculators finance the magnates who own the companies that we work for, receiving mostly scraps while they take home the lion's share.
3) The people don't have social authority.  The media is the arbiter of social life, the "experts" the arbiter of the intelligentsia of various fields.
In a case like this, it may be easier to make our own laws and simply pass them in defiance of what they enact.

[GeneralStrife]

Think about it. Square tells ISPs FFHacktics.com is illegal. We are gone. Fuck.

[formerdeathcorps]

Think about it. Square tells ISPs FFHacktics.com is illegal. We are gone. Fuck.

That's why this bill needs to be defeated.  But we, collectively as users of the free Internet, are only staving off our eventual defeat unless we reduce the influence of the people behind this bill: Hollywood, the music industry, and the military.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

Every tool is suited to a specific task - a hammer for pounding nails, a saw for cutting wood.  As such, every form of technology is inherently good for some things, and bad for others.  Social media, closely bound to it's users real lives, and based on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) (so it can't be used to track people) is inherently biased against authority.

And what I propose is much more extreme than just saying we should only use non-authoritarian technology.  I say that, with non-authoritarian social technology, we are a new species, one in which individual intelligence is augmented by the intelligence of all other participating individuals.  We should merge ever more completely with our technology, until, as a whole, we are unstoppable.

The question now is, how can we sustain communication with each other when and if the currently existing internet is shut down?  Can we develop a parallel network, a shadow internet, which can grow to replace the existing one?  What hardware and software do we need to do this?

[Kaijyuu]

You'd basically need to create your own ISP that doesn't listen to the government when it tells you to block websites. Given that it's unlikely you'll be able to even create an ISP without somehow getting use of current infrastructure (satellites, land lines), that's somewhat improbable.

[Pickle Girl Fanboy]

I wonder if it's possible to piggyback on top of other ISPs networks, with your traffic dispersed over many networks and disguised as something innocuous?  And is it possible to set up your own roving wifi hotspots, using cheap and currently existing technology?  Could you set up queus of traffic which are dispersed to bounce along whichever hotspot is fastest/reliable/available?  Could you cut the data into parts and have it hold when one particular hotspot is unavailable (and restart transmission as soon as it's back online, or send out another rover to rendevous with the afflicted hotspot), and then send a flag out to other traffic that this hotspot is currently unavaible and that it should seek another path?

And, now that I think about it, I think the string of internet censorship acts are either a way for the media (film, TV, music, and publishing) industries to shut out online competitors (both actual competitors and meta-competitors - those activities that compete with them for our time, attention, and money), if it's a way to acquire them outright, if it's a way to pressure the new online media companies into giving the old school media companies part of their pie, or if it's part of an opportunistic strategy which seeks to accomplish any or all of the previous goals, one at a time, or all of them over a period of time.  

If this strategy works, expect everything to become myspace.

http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2192
^I made a topic at byuu's forum.

[RandMuadDib]

The question now is, how can we sustain communication with each other when and if the currently existing internet is shut down?  Can we develop a parallel network, a shadow internet, which can grow to replace the existing one?  What hardware and software do we need to do this?

The Unternet. And it would have to use all landlines. Anything that uses satellite can be traced.

[GeneralStrife]

right okay cool stories anyone heard anything on this?