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PrECISE - It's the New SOPA/PIPA/ACTA
IainB:
Senator Orrin Hatch says the Government should blow up a few hundred thousands computers to help combat piracy on the Internet.
http://www.dethronehatch.com/orrin-hatch-is-no-friend-of-the-internet/
-antelopemeat (February 21, 2012, 03:22 PM)
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If this is serious, these guys have lost it. Without even addressing how right/wrong it is, to me it just demonstrates someone who is totally out of touch, especially given the authority that he is trusted with: an authority that directly affects the lives of a hell of a lot of people. Where are the intelligent people? Where are they? Where can I go to find them? Are they all running away and hiding?
-superboyac (February 21, 2012, 05:20 PM)
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Well, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but, just because I do not agree with an argument that seems stupid to me doesn't of itself necessarily make it an invalid argument.
What Senator Orrin Hatch says actually could makes sense if you look at it from a different viewpoint:
If the objectives are (say) "cyber-security on the Internet" and the combat of piracy on the Internet, then lock the internet away from all users so that the medium can no longer be used for breaching security or copyright piracy. Problem solved?
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Then let the users back on to the Intenet via a user-pays fully censored account only, and charge them a high rate for notional resource utilisation - including those resources used for the censors' logging/analysing your traffic data. For example, CPU-seconds, disk I/O operation counts, network data transfer throughput volumes and bandwidth utilisation. And don't forget to tax the net consumption. Cost recovery at the source and a potential gravy tax train. Redolent of the old mainframe time-sharing days. Let resource price and the propensity to buy be the controlling factors for demand, as they are in most well-organised capitalist markets.
Alternatively, ban the use of the Internet except for an elite. The latter would be those who were deemed "responsible" enough or have a proven critically important service that necessitates using the Internet.
On a project where we were planning to connect the Defence network to points in the Internet, a Defense network engineer said (thinking aloud) to me, something like:
We really need to expand the secure Defence CUG (Closed User Group) network so as to communicate with our own and other countries' Defense/Police agencies on a regular basis around the world, and controlled by us. Ideally, we would want to turn the Internet into our proprietary, enlarged Defence CUG, with no other (non-Defence) users connected to it without our authority and control.
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I guess the trouble with Open Systems is the fact of life that, by definition, they are likely to be less secure than closed ones.
This presumably won't stop some people - e.g., including Senator Orrin Hatch and others - who will persist in trying to implement an almost Fascist-like control over freedom of access and use of the Internet.
We have too much freedom and it has to stop?
40hz:
Fairly simple solution: Take a tip from Gandhi - declare a general I-Strike.
Stop using the web.
Send a clear message to business (don't bother with the government - go directly to those who really pull the strings) that they can force through whatever legislation they want - but you will refuse to use the net under those rules.
Imagine - iTunes, Amazon, and B&N revenues drop suddenly. Media purchases and rentals dry up. Banks suddenly get deluged with paper checks and requests for them to go back to sending you paper statements each month. No more online payments being made. No more tax filings done online. Paper, paper, paper everywhere! Everything goes back to 1988.
Imagine the cost of doing business if that suddenly happens...
Some years ago the State of California passed a proposition that attempted to control public medical costs by setting firm caps (and reductions) on what the medical profession and hospitals could charge. It was hailed as a major win for the consumer. It was gonna show those greedy doctors who was in charge.
Guess what? The doctors stopped reporting for work. Hospitals shut down everything except emergency services. Nurses didn't show up for the shifts.
Because what the politicians of California seemed to forget was that this is a capitalist economy. So while it's all well and good to say "Hell no! We won't pay those prices!" it overlooks the possibility that those on the receiving end might well say "Well I'm not willing to work for you under the terms you're offering."
And medical professionals said exactly that. And so much for that proposition as a result.
You can do the same. 8)
Tuxman:
Sounds like work for the Pirate Party.
TaoPhoenix:
Okay, let's get back on target.
You can't do an iStrike and ... expect it to work. All you get is 13 months without any fun content. You are outweighed here by a MINIMUM of 70-30. And those are "Pirates", so you're at 90-10 levels.
We need a USA-Wide National effort that can see Candidates past the speeches that the Authorized Media pronounces, we were too early in 2008, but no bad to avoid Sarah Palin ... But Not really great with Obama and 6 copyright czars....
(Open ended on purpose)
40hz:
Okay, let's get back on target.
You can't do an iStrike and ... expect it to work. -TaoPhoenix (February 23, 2012, 09:44 PM)
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Why not?
All you get is 13 months without any fun content.
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Small price to pay to put an end to the nonsense.
We need a USA-Wide National effort that can see Candidates past the speeches that the Authorized Media pronounces, we were too early in 2008, but no bad to avoid Sarah Palin ... But Not really great with Obama and 6 copyright czars....
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I think we'd collectively have a better chance at simultaneously hitting Powerball and getting a night with Angelina Jolie than we have with that. Our political institutions are morally bankrupt at this point: incapable of reforming from within - and utterly resistant to any efforts at reform from without.
If there is any morality left in Washington it doesn't amount to much more than the integrity of a sleazebag who stays bought.
I really don't think anything short of an economic general strike that disrupts "business as usual" (and has a measurable financial impact) has any hope of success in bringing about much needed reform.
And perhaps now is the time to do it while it's still legal to do so. Because given a few more years going down the road we're on, making suggestions such as this may be viewed as a threat to domestic security - with all that implies under our new post-constitutional legal framework.
This has already happened, or is happening, in other places. Some of which call and believe themselves to be "democracies." Watch the evening news for examples.
:huh:
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