Internet Censorship

[richie]

Has anyone noticed the petition on the Google homepage asking people to sign it to voice their opinion. Apparently the governments of the world are having an undemocratic closed door meeting about the future of the internet this month Dec'2012. A lot of them want to censor the internet and make people pay to use it.

I think they don't like people being able to discuss things openly and freely. Perhaps the revolutions in the middle east have got them all scared. It reeks to me of thought control and arrogance. The internet doesn't belong to them or any corporation it belongs to us the people.

Anyway I signed the petition today asking governments to keep the internet free and open and for there to be no censorship. You can read all about it at the bottom of the Google homepage. Today was the first I heard of this and it upset me.

If they do go ahead and start censoring what people say and how they express themselves online that is very worrying & something we should put our foot down on. To me freedom of speech is a basic human right, if we don't fight for it now, what sort of crappy world will our children inherit

I hope that if they get away with this censorship, that we the people outsmart them. I have read about groups getting together to create a new internet built around a mesh idea which would make it nigh impossible for governments to suppress. Like anything they try to clamp down on and control it goes underground and in their obssessive need to control everything they end up shooting themselves in the foot, let's hope they do anyway & hope they don't get away with this. A world without free speech is a bleak world indeed.

 

[Balthazar]

20 years from now kids won't believe you when you tell them how free the internet was "back in the days".

 

[Realitybitez]

hmm, is that really possible?

I mean with all the hackers and crackers these days - theres no way the government could control the internet.. is there

 

[jetset]

20 years from now kids won't believe you when you tell them how free the internet was "back in the days".

I agree - the politicians will nibble away at Internet freedom over time and try and control as much of it as they can - it's in their nature, and the fact that they may at the same time be able to raise tax revenues will make it doubly enticing.

The process has already started in the US and China!

 

[colly]

I agree - the politicians will nibble away at Internet freedom over time and try and control as much of it as they can - it's in their nature, and the fact that they may at the same time be able to raise tax revenues will make it doubly enticing.

The process has already started in the US and China!

The land of the free and free speech???- surely not

While Australia usually slavishly follows the US it was refreshing that Stephen Conroy finally saw sense (or political opportunity for the cynical among us) and has scrapped his plans for censorship of the NBN

 

[P.V.]

I mean with all the hackers and crackers these days - theres no way the government could control the internet.. is there

If there's a will, there's a way!

 

[vinylweatherman]

Just as they have completely killed off filesharing, they will kill off the free internet

 

[Balthazar]

Just as they have completely killed off filesharing, they will kill off the free internet

I rather live free legally than illegally, if that makes any sense.

 

[Simmo!]

Just as they have completely killed off filesharing, they will kill off the free internet

I rather live free legally than illegally, if that makes any sense.

Agreed. I think it's good they killed filesharing - at least, filesharing other people's work without permission anyway. It is theft however you want to justify it but it is indicative of the current generation who really don't give a shit about anyone else as long as they get what they want.

On censorship, it's a tricky one. Taxes are fundamentally important to the society we live in, like it or not. However, I believe they should be applied, wherever possible, to non-essential items. The Internet is both essential to some and non-essential to others but invariably, as soon as someone takes control it simply becomes an easy option to raise capital without thought for who it affects, in the way that home-owners and car-owners are now expected to fund everything that can't be fobbed onto someone else. So I'll be signing this petition.

Another problem of course is how legislation, once it's passed, gets abused. Censorship on some things is probably justified (child pron, terrorism etc) however look at the extradition treaty between the US and UK. That was supposed to be for terrorism, now they use it for just about anything. The Safe Ports act was to protect the ports but oh look, it had the UIGEA tacked on. You simply can't trust politicians to do the right thing with something as fundamentally future-defining as the Internet unfortunately because there are too many other agendas in play.

Anyway, as Jetset said, the US already censor the web. Look at how they simply closed down all those websites when the Kentucky governor said he didn't want people in Kentucky to gamble online.

 

[IanO]

I dont think it will ever happen, and here's why: <EDIT: Comment removed by admin>

 

[chayton]

I dont think it will ever happen, and here's why: <EDIT: Comment removed by admin>

 

[vinylweatherman]

Agreed. I think it's good they killed filesharing - at least, filesharing other people's work without permission anyway. It is theft however you want to justify it but it is indicative of the current generation who really don't give a shit about anyone else as long as they get what they want.

On censorship, it's a tricky one. Taxes are fundamentally important to the society we live in, like it or not. However, I believe they should be applied, wherever possible, to non-essential items. The Internet is both essential to some and non-essential to others but invariably, as soon as someone takes control it simply becomes an easy option to raise capital without thought for who it affects, in the way that home-owners and car-owners are now expected to fund everything that can't be fobbed onto someone else. So I'll be signing this petition.

Another problem of course is how legislation, once it's passed, gets abused. Censorship on some things is probably justified (child pron, terrorism etc) however look at the extradition treaty between the US and UK. That was supposed to be for terrorism, now they use it for just about anything. The Safe Ports act was to protect the ports but oh look, it had the UIGEA tacked on. You simply can't trust politicians to do the right thing with something as fundamentally future-defining as the Internet unfortunately because there are too many other agendas in play.

Anyway, as Jetset said, the US already censor the web. Look at how they simply closed down all those websites when the Kentucky governor said he didn't want people in Kentucky to gamble online.

They have made quite a dent, but have not killed it. The main problem is there are still no legitimate means to get quite a bit of content, so when users search for it on the internet, all the search results are for dubious sources. There are now many sources that pretend to be legal and licensed by charging a fee, but are just as illegal as the original free networks. Users are conned into paying because they believe that the service is legal because they are paying. Unfortunately, the payments are never forwarded on to the owners as claimed, but pocketed by the site owners.

To kill it stone dead, the legal means have to be more attractive than the others, and there must be a clear means of identifying which sites that charge are legit. It is like trying to determine whether a casino is rogue from the website.

Card processors should do more by NOT allowing any Tom, Dick, or Harry to take payments as they do now. If an illegal content provider can't make money because they can't get a processor, they have to be free, and that makes them look illegal.

The authorities are shutting down domains that are considered illegal, however such domains simply switch to countries less likely to act. We also have governments that want to suppress their own abuses so that they can carry on doing them. This is censorship for the wrong reason, but they can simply pass a law making such comment illegal in order to shut down a site for "illegal activities".

The danger is that it will spawn a "deep internet" expansion, which would be harder to monitor than the current model. This is where much of the illegal filesharing has gone, it is by no means dead. Recently, the UK started shutting down USENET sites, the first level of "deep internet" hosting illegal files. Netflix and others have recently launched in the UK to provide a legal service that pretty much does what the old illegal file sharing networks did. Unfortunately, their reliance on streaming has let them down, the UK internet infrastructure just can't cope yet, and off peak downloading is still the only viable solution for many, which is only on offer from the unlicenced services.

I have 20Mbit fibre broadband, yet streaming stuff is a nightmare, riddled with buffering and disconnects. This would not affect a download service, as it could take as long as it needs, and download after midnight for the next day. The only service offering this is the BBC iPlayer, and this is the only service that I can actually get a decent viewing experience from. 4OD used to offer a download option, but they pulled it on the erroneous grounds that the UK infrastructure is good enough for streaming to work seamlessly.

The "deep internet" is also likely to house the really nasty stuff that we might think has been purged for good.

If governments are going to charge for the internet, they might find the inventor changes his mind about licensing the WWW protocols for free and unrestricted use, although he might use the money for charity in accord with his original philosophy of not pricing poorer people off the WWW.

 

[Simmo!]

More on this:

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[dionysus]

I dont think it will ever happen, and here's why: <EDIT: Comment removed by admin>

 

[cdomi66]

Has anyone noticed the petition on the Google homepage asking people to sign it to voice their opinion. Apparently the governments of the world are having an undemocratic closed door meeting about the future of the internet this month Dec'2012. A lot of them want to censor the internet and make people pay to use it.

I think they don't like people being able to discuss things openly and freely. Perhaps the revolutions in the middle east have got them all scared. It reeks to me of thought control and arrogance. The internet doesn't belong to them or any corporation it belongs to us the people.

Anyway I signed the petition today asking governments to keep the internet free and open and for there to be no censorship. You can read all about it at the bottom of the Google homepage. Today was the first I heard of this and it upset me.

If they do go ahead and start censoring what people say and how they express themselves online that is very worrying & something we should put our foot down on. To me freedom of speech is a basic human right, if we don't fight for it now, what sort of crappy world will our children inherit

I hope that if they get away with this censorship, that we the people outsmart them. I have read about groups getting together to create a new internet built around a mesh idea which would make it nigh impossible for governments to suppress. Like anything they try to clamp down on and control it goes underground and in their obsessive need to control everything they end up shooting themselves in the foot, let's hope they do anyway & hope they don't get away with this. A world without free speech is a bleak world indeed.

Agree...people need to speak up or we will be quieted before we know it. I'm thankful there's people keeping an eye on just this thing.

 

[Simmo!]

Having just read

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about hackers disrupting the meeting itself, I've slightly re-thunk my position on this. It does need some sort of control, just not by a Government.

 

[LaHutti]

Us old farts, who's been on the "internet" from before it was the internet as we know it today, know very well, that if commercial interests (read microsoft) can change the internet from what it was, to what it is today, then controlling people, and the way we use the internet, in any way "they" want can, and will, be done eventually. Turning the internet into a commercial nightmare only took 5-10 years, and that's about the time I'll give the "free" internet from today. The US wants to be in full control of absolutely everything, while claiming that they're figthing for peoples right to freely do and say what they want...that may be true, as long as what you want to say and do, is the same as USA says and wants.

 

[Seventh777]

They have been trying for ages, the internet is the last true way of expressing your freedom of speech without being arrested for being a terrorist , I would like to find out just who is behind the purchasing of two huge internet social networks - Facebook, Youtube, I know google paid $1.65 billion for Youtube, but who are the real men behind it?.

 

[Seventh777]

Having just read

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about hackers disrupting the meeting itself, I've slightly re-thunk my position on this. It does need some sort of control, just not by a Government.

Come on Simmo, what better way of putting your point forward than creating an incident akin to what you're striving to prevent, notice it's been reported by a government puppet MSM broadcaster also .

 

[swampwitch]

The US didn't sign on.
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