[danilocampos]

Look.

I know it's HN and we're all very serious business here.

And I'm not trying to be age-ist – my condemnation is strictly confined to mental state.

But what. the fuck. do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway? What do we do? The strategy of waiting for them to retire or whatever doesn't seem to be paying off.

[JonnieCache]

We need to invent the following things so we can be forever truly free:

1) A secure, peer to peer DNS system with no registrars and a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust.

2) An encrypted version of TCP that we can drop in without anyone noticing.

3) A way of distributing keys for our encrypted transport layer without certificate authorities and again with a dynamic, heterarchical network of trust.

4) A secure, peer to peer, federated social network with all the features that we and the rest of the world want and need.

Then we will at least have some breathing space while we work on that whole planetwide wifi mesh thing.

[angersock]

I wouldn't suggest that we need a social network, but your first suggestion isn't too far from the truth.

The exact thing needed is very boring, very low-level, and very unsexy, and I believe can be summarized thusly:

We need a method for locating hosts on a network graph which does not have a central point of failure and which cannot be easily disabled.

We then need a method for authentically routing messages back and forth between these hosts without fear of man-in-the-middle attacks that can change the contents of the messages.

This is pure transport-layer engineering.

As long as we can locate anyone connected to our network, and communicate with them without interference, we can build whatever else we need to on top of that.

We shouldn't confuse our efforts by trying to make a social network, or new hashcoin lottery, or advanced supergovernment, or whatever else. We shouldn't worry about interception of message contents--that way lies madness; as long as I know my message reached somebody in one piece, and as long as they know that a message signed by me is from me, we can fix the rest later.

This is a pure, straightforward, fucking hard engineering problem.

[lkrubner]

Why wouldn't government simply ban the whole thing? Consider ham radio: my dad used to be really into it, and it doesn't cost much to get into it. But the government can scare away a lot of people from it, simply with the distant threat of some kind of punishment. So most people do it the legal way, at which point it becomes a big hassle - tests and certificates. And as soon as tests and certificates are needed, most people lose interest.

You can set up an illegal radio station for less than $1,000. My friends and I did so in Virginia, in the USA, back in 2002. We were out in a rural area of Virginia. We had great fun playing our favorite music to whoever would get the signal. The FEC is slow to crack down on stuff like that when you are out in the middle of nowhere. The radio station lasted 2 years, and it only got shut down when we moved on to other things. I have fond memories of it.

Running a radio show is great fun and, if you are an extrovert, it can be addicting. So why don't more people do it? Because it is illegal.

Likewise, if you created a protocol so free that government regulation was impossible, then the government could simply make it illegal. You would be "free" to use it, just like I was "free" to setup an illegal radio station, but most people won't go near it if it is illegal.

There are many things that go through our society, and which flow so freely that the government doesn't have the power to stop it, so instead it increases the penalties. Drugs would be an example. In that case, a lot of people get scared away from drugs simply because the government policies are draconian -- small amounts of drugs, found on your person, can lead to years of pain and legal trouble.

I agree with the other comment where someone says that you can not come up with a technology that will solve a policy problem. The ultimate power of the government is that, in the end, to uphold the legitimacy of the law it has the power to kill people. You can't come up with some cool technology that lets you get around the reality of a punishing government, if the government decides that some technology is too dangerous. All you can do is what the people of Syria are doing now -- organize, resist, protest, possibly even fight. There are only political solutions to political problems.

[JonnieCache]

>Running a radio show is great fun and, if you are an extrovert, it can be addicting. So why don't more people do it? Because it is illegal.

Here in the UK, we don't give a fuck. For half a century, not a fuck has been given. All those pulsing repetitive beats you've heard in your pop music for the last 30 years, that stuff that's made people untold billions of dollars? That's largely a result of us over in the UK not giving a fuck about getting in trouble for pirate radio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio_in_the_United_King...

http://www.londonpirates.co.uk/stations.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/08/pirate-radio-rav...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpS0jR6FG1o (this last link says it all)

Just sayin'.

[noonespecial]

The catch here is what you're talking about is the ultimate power of a government.

The system described wouldn't stop a government from censoring the internet for its own people. No technology can stop that. It would however prevent a government from becoming the government, which the Americans seem to try endlessly to do.

Once the technology was "in the wild" the US could simply "ban the whole thing"... and join North Korea in the nuthouse of closed internet while the rest of the world passed them by with a curious shrug.

[steve-howard]

Or, more accurately, which the minimally-accountable American government seems to try endlessly to do.

[marshray]

I used to have an Amateur Radio license. I didn't mind the tests, I enjoyed learning the theory, and I even learned Morse code. I went to hamfests, bought a radio, then suddenly realized "I have nothing I wish to say to these people". It was almost entirely old men telling each other the details of their medical conditions.

I was glad when it lapsed. The penalties for emitting RF that falls outside of the rules somehow tended to be significantly higher if you actually had a some kind of a license than if you had none.

[superuser2]

RF is a shared resource. So are roads. Requiring proof of competency to operate nontrivial equipment that uses and can cause DoS or physical harm to people on shared resources is perfectly reasonable.

My dad and several of my friends have HAM licenses. It's not inordinately difficult; it's kind of like getting a driver's license. The structure is not designed to prevent ordinary people from using it, just to keep it usable and reasonably civil.

[danssig]

>Why wouldn't government simply ban the whole thing?

If they ban it but it lets people do something they want to do and can't otherwise as conveniently then they will ignore the ban.

>but most people won't go near it if it is illegal.

Really? I think the media industry would beg to differ. Normal, everyday people have stolen more songs than they have time left in their lives to listen to.

You're taking an obscure example that many people don't even know about, much less want to do and using that to say people won't touch it if it's illegal while missing media piracy; something most people do want and most have had no issue just taking it, laws or no laws.

[dedward]

Jurisdiction. The useable rf spectrum is public and limited by physics, so we need regulation.

Private networks hooked to other private networks are not similar. The internet is not a thing.

They can go after parts they have power over, like .com, but the core concept of simply communicating...... O so easy.

[libraryatnight]

It's funny you mention the illegal radio. All of this end of the internet reading I've been doing had me wondering the other night, if things get really bad, will those savvy enough build their own underground network? Pirate Internet could breed some interesting communities.

[SquareWheel]

How far off is that from the deep net? It's all based on tor (and as such is slow as molasses), but it's navigated by passing links to community members - not searching Google.

That's pretty darn underground.

[archgoon]

Coding is a lot of fun. Not many people do it. I think you have mistaken lack of interest with government threats.

However, let's suppose that tons of people wanted to set up their own radio station. What would the result be exactly?

[JonnieCache]

Yeah, I edited my list to include a CA-free encrypted replacement for TCP, just before I saw your comment.

To all the super-geniuses reading this: burn your socialmobilelocal startup to the ground tomorrow and do this instead.

Start by watching this Blackhat talk I linked elsewhere in the thread, the guy has the right kind of ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Wl2FW2TcA

[dasil003]

ie. if you really want to change the world instead of paying lip service to it and going for the money grab, here's one opportunity.

[JonnieCache]

Indeed. Listen up all you MIT kids: do you want to be cooler than Mark Zuckerberg, or do you want to be cooler than John McCarthy, Tim Berners-Lee and Captain Crunch all rolled into one?

[nupark2]

How do you pay for it?

I have a team of capable engineers, and relationships with network/wifi hardware/firmware developers. What I don't have is $2-10M to spend designing open protocols (and building the software), especially with no obvious commercial upside.

[dasil003]

No idea, but that doesn't mean it can't be done either non-profit-wise or even with significant upside, it's just your chances of VC-money and selling to a major corporation for fuck-you money are diminished relative to TechCrunch friendly buzzword related startups.

[marquis]

Kick-starter? I'll pitch in just to see a decent (and open) white paper come out of it.

[marshray]

Last I heard, Mr "future of authenticity" was just acquired by Twitter. :-)

[JonnieCache]

As I understand it, typing in all-caps or just bashing your face into the keyboard is considered poor form around here, so instead I'll just calmly state that this information displeases me immensely, and evokes a not inconsiderably bitter sense of irony.

[marshray]

:-)

I trust Moxie to be doing the right thing.

[fl3tch]

Twitter didn't buy Moxie Marlinspike. They bought one of his companies, which makes a variety of encrypted solutions for mobile phones. The Convergence project (which is an alternative to certificate authorities) remains independent of Whisper Systems.

[caf]

This is a pure, straightforward, fucking hard engineering problem.

Yes, in fact it's one of the famous "only two hard problems in Computer Science": locating hosts on a network graph is just a restatement of "naming things".

[ComputerGuru]

If only. Unfortunately, it's not like that. With how well the "internet" is established, this is one case of NOT build it and they will come.

You can build it, but it'll never gain the authority to make everyone use it.

You'll need to be a Google or Microsoft to pull this one off.

[dekz]

Just like bittorrent required Microsoft and Google to become popular? I think you're underestimating the value younger generations hold to free as in speech.

[BerislavLopac]

TBH I think it's more like free as in beer. Torrent hasn't become popular by passing censored information, it became popular by passing pirated entertainment. Movies, music and software, especially games. And pr0n, of course -- the best way for a service to become popular is to provide free and easy access to it.

[1010100101]

There are some people who consider low-level to be sexy.

[jakeonthemove]

But then you'd still be subject to existing laws - it's not like they're going away. With the same amount of effort, you could get the governments to stop making stupid decisions/laws or at least consult someone before they do.

But then again, they have tech consultants who never get a say because ruling in favor of those with money is better for the lawmakers' careers or pockets.

I do believe that most people are pretty comfortable with the current situation... when it'll start affecting more individuals, then the "anti-" movements will ramp up - it's always been that way...

[pavel_lishin]

> you could get the governments to stop making stupid decisions/laws

I know we live in an age of hitherto unimagined prosperity and wealth and miracles, but you may be reaching a little too far.

[gnaritas]

It's not governments that make stupid decisions, it's people; take the decision away from government, and someone else will make those stupid decisions, but stupid they will be.

[JoshTriplett]

> It's not governments that make stupid decisions, it's people; take the decision away from government, and someone else will make those stupid decisions, but stupid they will be.

Except that only a government can make me care what they decide.

[gnaritas]

> Except that only a government can make me care what they decide.

Simply not true; it's just that only they can do it legally, but to even say legally, you need a government to enforce legality.

[lancewiggs]

Or just use a registrar and top level domain that won't respond to the take-down requests. .nz domains, for example, are protected by a rigorous process in a domain (New Zealand) that prevents this sort of thing.

[archangel_one]

Do you know how far that goes? No doubt it works against any schlub who comes along asking for a domain to be shut down, but would they really stand against it if the US put serious pressure on them for hosting thepiratebay.org.nz?

[charliesome]

We've already got Namecoin and Diaspora, but neither appear to be catching on.

[JonnieCache]

Namecoin is pretty great, but as with all these things, there's the problem of the network effect.

Diaspora has all sorts of problems.

With the SSL certificate thing, there's Convergence, which basically solves the whole lot at a stroke. See http://convergence.io/ and the guy's Blackhat talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Wl2FW2TcA

[phodo]

"problem of network effect" if you accept the premises that: a) the diaspora's of the world are the solution (or at least a step in the right direction) b) the problem is that of a network effect (translation: the cold start problem)

... then one solution is for a well known, highly trafficked brand, that has nothing to lose, to implement "a".

... a.k.a.... what if someone like yahoo which still has vast reach, but is not a player in social, took something like diaspora and promoted heavily. That would solve the cold start problem.

[viraptor]

I was thinking about 1) and it seems like a really cool idea. If you could also query the sites trusted by some person, that would be like a HN with domains only to some extent (and if you can have any domain you want, you'd probably use one per site, rather than making a hierarchy again). Realistically I probably need only 20 or so domains on a typical day anyways, so that would only require trusting 5 or so other developers.

[nextparadigms]

The P2P Yacy search engine seems to have been announced very timely.

[RobertKohr]

1) Namecoin - http://dot-bit.org/

2) Tor

3) I think 1 & 2 should solve this.

4) This probably isn't that difficult to implement on top of Tor.

[spoiledtechie]

Sounds like you know exactly what is needed. Why not start the process of making this happen?

Where would one need to begin to have a secure peer to peer DNS system?

[granitepail]

If it were more usable, I'd point towards Freenet. They've been at building a system like this since 2000 -- it's just a shame it runs so slowly.

[jamesgeck0]

Sounds like a great project for Mozilla to jump on. I'm slightly surprised they don't appear to have worked on this problem before. Or have they?

[joejohnson]

I think that 1-3 are necessities now. I don't know if 4 is.

[naner]

You can't invent around policy problems.

[angersock]

Sir or madam, with that attitude, I'm surprised you are here, in a place called Hacker News.

A great many of us make good money working around broken systems and architectures. We live for this shit!

[potatolicious]

And yet when it comes to government enforcement, there seem to be an awful lot of problems we haven't been able to hack around:

- Brokenness of patents causing anti-competitive behavior

- Absurd copyright laws preventing the building of an untold number of innovative products

- The emergence of true competition in the wireless space.

I could go on. We're very good at making end runs around corporations, big and small, but mostly because they can't kick your door down in the middle of the night.

[gnaritas]

Yes you can, if you make the invention critical before they realize the consequences.

[ecdavis]

The Internet has become critical and "they" are beginning to realise the consequences, which is leading to increasingly invasive and ill-informed policy.

[vidarh]

Yet they're still nowhere near putting the genie back in the bottle, and the internet is so embedded in the economy that they can't, they can only try to minimize the impact.

It's time for the next leap - making the internet properly fault tolerant.

[gnaritas]

Exactly.

[billswift]

At least not when the policy is enforced by the people with a willingness to use lethal force, ie government. People invent around policy problems, when the policies are business related all the time.

But I wonder how many of the people complaining about this and SOPA were in favor of Obamacare?

[lhnn]

http://tcpcrypt.org/

Passive encryption... not the best, it prevents lazy MITM.

[1010100101]

Could it be that some or all of these things either already exist or are possible using existing "tools", but are simply not widely known nor in widespread use?

However statements like "all the features that we need or want" are troublesome. How can we possibly agree on those?

What if someone built the low-level, _boring_ "platform", and offered a _simple_ (as little code as possible), _old_, boring but workable conceptual vision, then let all the high-level enthusiasts address (argue about) usability and features?

[JonnieCache]

>However statements like "all the features that we need or want" are troublesome. How can we possibly agree on those?

That last one was the least important and the most flippantly stated (apart from the global mesh network.)

>What if someone built the low-level, _boring_ "platform", and offered a _simple_, _old_, boring but workable conceptual vision, then let all the high-level ethusiasts address usability and features?

That's exactly what's going (think positive!) to happen, having a p2p facebook is just the last piece of the puzzle, the cherry on the cake.

[1010100101]

Ah, that's good to know.

Now, sadly, I must ask, is someone going to try to make this proprietary and embedded, contained within hermetically sealed hardware enclosures, complete with convoluted bootloader and behavioural studies rootkit, to try to make billions from it?

To my knowledge the low-level part can happen right now using freely available code. Is it naive to think we could keep this simple and open?

Even the p2p FB piece is possible, assuming you do not need to have 1000's of friends on each of your separate social networks.

[bobwaycott]

  Now, sadly, I must ask, is someone going to try to
  make this proprietary and embedded, contained within
  hermetically sealed hardware enclosures, complete with 
  convoluted bootloader and behavioural studies rootkit,
  to try to make billions from it?

If the problem is submitted to the market, then yes. That's what the market and capital does. So sad.

It'd be great if the world's geeks would stop laboring for the fucking market, increasing the surplus value exacted from their labor, and winding up fucked by their own creations.

EDIT: formatting

[1010100101]

"winding up fscked by their own creations"

This would be easier to understand if you could provide an example.

Do you think this is a problem that should be submitted to the market?

[angersock]

As long as we're busy chatting about pet languages, comparing work/life balances, and generally masturbating about startup culture, we (as a collective) aren't going to do a damned thing.

It's time to acknowledge that this behavior of our governments is beginning to violate a reasonable social contract, and if not that, certainly at least realize that our livelihoods are coming under attack.

It may well be time to start getting radical in our evaluation of our culture's place in modern politics--they are clearly not serving our interests (much less those of their own citizens!), and yet equally clearly are dependent on us for a great deal of their soft power.

Folks with more weight and pull in this area: start paying attention.

[angrycoder]

Agreed. This isn't a tech problem, this is a social problem. There is nothing wrong with the current technology, we don't need more code to solve this.

[billpatrianakos]

You're very right but I believe there's an even deeper problem here. There will always be people trying to manipulate the system to serve their needs but I think we can start winning some of these cases by educating the public. A lot of the people deciding on these issues have no clue how the things they're ruling on works. This judge most likely doesn't know that he just opened the floodgates for abuse.

This judge was a guy most likely like my mother who uses google as her browser address bar. First navigate to goof,e type the web address in search then click the first result. He seems to have been thinking about the issue in terms of the physical world. If someone was using the Chanel name and logo to sell fake goods then an order along these lines in the physical world makes some sense.

A lot of people who don't quote get the web think of these issues with physical analogies in mind. The problem is that these physical world analogies just don't apply. They only sound good to the uninformed. So yeah, we need to be protesting but more importantly we need to be educating. There are far more people who make bad judgements based on ignorance of the web than there are that make bad judgements because they need to please their pay masters.

[freehunter]

I had a professor last year who used our school's homepage's Yahoo search bar to search for Google, then searched Google for Youtube. And he has two doctorate degrees.

[maratd]

I have an idea. Ignore them. Let them enforce their own edicts, rulings, and laws. If enough people disobey, it becomes impossible to enforce. That's why civil disobedience works. Now, if Google grew a pair and told the judge to get lost ... well ... I'll be mighty impressed and they would earn my respect.

[lukesandberg]

I don't think it is cowardly for Google to obey the law and court orders. At least they publish information about this kind of activity http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/governmentrequests/...

[maratd]

> I don't think it is cowardly for Google to obey the law and court orders.

I do. I would never comply with any government request unless it was preceded by a court order. And if a court order had been obtained, I would use common sense to determine if the request should be granted. Anything less IS cowardly.

If you don't stand up to abuse, the abuse will simply continue.

[gwright]

While I realize that there are defensible reasons to actively reject some government directives the benefits of a lawful society should not be underestimated. Bad laws should be fixed via legislative action. Sometimes this means complying with the bad law in the interim.

Selective enforcement and/or selective non-compliance may be justifiable as a tactical response but if taken too far then we no longer have the rule of law.

[gnaritas]

Bad laws should be rejected via jury nullification; you can't count on legislators who were the ones to enact the bad law in the first place.

[lukesandberg]

The other clear distinction to make here is that it isn't exactly Google's fight since the content that is being targeted is merely being indexed by Google not created by Google. So logically it is the content owners/creator (website owners) who should be standing up to this kind of action. Unfortunately such fights are often extremely lopsided (small publisher vs. huge corporation), so people expect Google to step in to help because it is tangentially involved, but most of the time it is simply not practical.

[buff-a]

Its absolutely Google's fight. Google does nothing but publish links. Linking is absolutely protected speech. Google's entire business is being threatened by a judge ignorant of the law.

[dedward]

You would a good lawyer too.

[adgar]

> I do. I would never comply with any government request unless it was preceded by a court order.

... isn't the article in question about a court order?

[rbanffy]

The larger you are, the harder it gets to disobey their rulings. Google can fight if the ruling is illegal or obviously unfair, but they can't hide and pretend it's not with them after being mentioned.

[maratd]

> The larger you are, the harder it gets to disobey their rulings.

Imagine Google replacing google.com with a clear statement denouncing a particular government action and naming names? Imagine Google de-indexing the government instead? They have so many more options available quite simply because they have such massive exposure.

[talmand]

Imagine the U.S. government taking google.com from the DNS list and making it a felony to link to not only the domain but the IP addresses that belong to Google as well.

[andrewflnr]

I don't think they can do that just for putting up a message yet. At least I hope to God they can't. For de-listing government sites, they would probably suffer consequences.

[gte910h]

Instead? No. Also? Sure!

[rbanffy]

Voluntarily delisting something is unthinkable. It would violate the most basic principle for a search engine - to present the information without distortion.

Voluntary censorship is a step too far.

[gte910h]

A court order is not voluntary. A court order is the step before a judge tells cops to break down your door to do what the order says.

[ajross]

You appeal to a higher court. Courts make mistakes. The system is designed to handle that. Let it work.

Relax, basically. This won't stand. That's not to say you're going to agree with everything the higher courts do (c.f. the Citizens United ruling, yada yada). But you can be sure that smart people will look at the problem. Silliness like this won't stand.

[jcr]

I totally agree with you on letting the courts work, but you're missing an important point; who will pay to fight it through the higher courts?

We already know the court proceedings were "one-sided" so it's safe to assume no one showed up to defend themselves. For the sake of argument, let's assume the seized domains were actually selling copied goods. Whether one considers copied goods to be good or bad is irrelevant; the most we can say is there are laws forbidding the sale of copied goods. Given such laws, the "defendants" are best off hiding rather than coming forward to defend themselves in court and potentially facing further losses.

With this said, why should the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other other for-profit entities bear the costs of a protracted legal battle through the higher courts? Additionally, why should they bear the costs of compliance with the court orders?

It's not that the courts can't work, instead, it's whether or not making the courts work is worth the expense.

[marshray]

With this said, why should the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other other for-profit entities bear the costs of a protracted legal battle through the higher courts?

1. Because they pull down boatloads of money doing business on the internet and it's the right thing to do for them to help defend it.

2. Because they depend on the stable operation of the Internet for their business, in particular: A. the stability of names and URLs, and B. a censorship-free legal envrionment where they don't have to process regular expressions or O(M*N) algorithms serving every page.

[jcr]

I pretty much agree with you on both counts, but as a for-profit entity, it's a matter of financial math rather than "doing the right thing." If it costs "X" to fight it through the courts, and costs "Y" to implement and maintain the censorship/court-orders, then "Y" has to be greater than "X" (plus long term consequences) for the math to work. If "Y" is substantial, the legal fight can be re-framed as an unfair burden, so there is now no need to fight the initial issue through the courts or endure cost "X".

[marshray]

but as a for-profit entity, it's a matter of financial math rather than "doing the right thing."

Yes and No, I think.

Yes, a for-profit company is generally required to act in the service of their "financial math". But nothing says they can only consider the immediate short-term (i.e. next quarter) for this math. That short-term-thinking-only is a relatively new concept and the smarter companies don't buy into it.

Consider all the money companies spend on political contributions, appointing former politicians to their board, and paid lobbying in Washington DC. There's usually not an immediate payoff expected for that. They just know it pays well in the long term to fertilize the field, so to speak.

[ajross]

The costs of a "protracted legal battle" are quite small when viewed from the perspective of Google, Facebook or Twitter. There's an argument there about small entities (which is why SLAPP statutes exist), but not here.

I mean, check revenue numbers on Chanel (Chanel!) vs. any of those giants. I don't think they're worried about being unfairly punished with legal fees.

[jcr]

In practice, you're right, but in theory, the law is supposed to be "fair" rather than based on your net-worth.

[anigbrowl]

With this said, why should the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and other other for-profit entities bear the costs of a protracted legal battle through the higher courts? Additionally, why should they bear the costs of compliance with the court orders?

They don't. That task falls upon the new administrators (ICE), just as it would fall upon you if you bought a competitor and wanted to power down their brand. Chanel's obligation to post a $20k bond is to cover the risk of an accidental infringement upon legitimate operations, a possible reversal if any defendants come forward and make a credible case (unlikely, but possible), or expenses incurred by the government in course of administering the shutdown of those internet entities that are infringing upon Chanel's brand.

[zeteo]

What is the base for your unsupported assertion that the judge is a "dinosaur who know[s] nothing of technology policy"? If you had read the ruling, you'd have seen there's a lot of technical detail in it.

Plus, the article is probably also incorrect, see my comment below.

[joe_the_user]

There's nothing about a person's willingness to take a meat-clever to the tech industry that inherently indicates he doesn't understand the tech industry. All he's saying is "my marshals can beat your technological imperative". That might be true, especially in the short run.

And talking about these types as ignorant is reassuring. But we shouldn't be reassured. There is no a-prior reason to expect we'll win here.

[jeroen]

Your comment below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3292687

It looks like you're wrong, though. See my response there.

[zeteo]

I don't think it's wrong, or at least not for the reason you've mentioned.

[yolesaber]

What can be done is encouraging more engineers and scientists to run for offices in the United States Government.

[rhizome]

The US electoral process is prejudiced against any candidate with skills other than "people skills." Anybody who campaigns on a platform even implying the advantage of intelligence will be cast as an elitist. Boom, campaign-headshot.

[gujk]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Biss

[rhizome]

Sure, there are exceptions, and that guy is pretty low-level. My point is on the level of Mitt Romney's Mormonism: certain traits do not appear to be compatible with higher office (these days). Look at John Kerry's 2004 campaign for some examples of what I'm talking about.

[dpatru]

China's leaders are engineers. It just helps them be more repressive. Rather than engineers, we need leaders who value liberty and want to reduce the size and scope of government.

The problem we have isn't that people in government aren't bright. They are. It's that they want government to solve too many problems.

When you have power, it's tempting to try to solve problems through imposition (by passing laws, e.g., network neutrality) rather than allow people to work out their differences peacefully (through the marketplace).

[maercsrats]

I like child labor laws. I like food safety laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle). I like my bank being separate from investment institutions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act). I also like education programs, fire departments, police, roads, etc. I pay a lot in taxes and want to keep all of these things (and really have stricter regulations in the banking system).

Our market isn't free enough, that's true, but having a totally free market tends to crush the lower class. A completely free market, after all, is like a force of nature and nature doesn't give a shit about people. I do give a shit about people and am happy to pay taxes to help those people.

Our system isn't perfect and there are a lot of problems with it, but I don't want it to go away completely.

[bobwaycott]

I'm not sure if this was genuine, joking, or accidentally the result of a lack of study in political science and social relations, but let's be clear on this point:

People do not work out their differences through the marketplace.

The market is a social relation in which people are put to the task of serving the interest of capital—and capital alone.

What Americans call a democratic government is a minority ruling class serving the interests and goals of capital and the market, regardless what it costs the majority. The ruling class doesn't want government to solve too many problems—they want it to solve the problems of capital, allowing brief pauses only where the majority threatens capital's current relations as to necessitate throwing the majority a bone of reform to quiet things back down.

All that to say let's be careful thinking, much less suggesting, people work out differences in the marketplace. It's the wrong forum. Submitting our needs to the market is nothing more than offering those needs up for exploitation in the interest of financial returns.

The market will not solve this problem unless, and only if, it is found to threaten the interests of capital, diminishes surplus value, and then the government will back off. People need to stop believing that a government who exists to protect capital is going to defend the people against the loss of unprofitable or dangerous freedoms.

Want to get the government to make a change? Convince them this harms the market (well, that's the most cynical suggestion given the current state of things). Better yet? Subvert and support eliminating the power of the market itself to control government.

You're right "we need leaders who value liberty and want to reduce the size and scope of government." You're wrong suggesting this has anything at all to do with the marketplace. The market created the enormous edifice of governmental machinery we have today to protect itself. Government isn't the source of the problem. It's the servant, the tool, and the scapegoat.

[VladRussian]

>we need leaders

it is hardly possible to describe the root cause of the problem in less words than that.

[dantheman]

What can be done is to educate people and engage in a discussion on what the proper role of the state should be. For many, the government should have little to no involvement in technological and economic matters and focus merely on the preservation of individual liberties - if this view continues to gain momentum issues such as these will become nonissues.

[gospelwut]

As somebody who works as an expert (I hate that word by the way, so I apologize) in the legal field, I can say this sentiment is pretty accurate. People think the that evil cabal of lawyers et al conspire against the little man to crush, oppress, and otherwise harm them through litigious means.

This is not the case per se.

There are lawyers filled with the utmost dickery, but that is not all of them. The fact of the matter is aformentioned dickerous individuals can take advantage of a system largely ill equipped to handle technology cases. Whether it be a jury that barely knows the difference between a hard drive to a floppy drive or a doddering, self-indulgent, and masturbatory judge--it's over their heads.

I do my "due diligence" to not contort facts and try to explain things as best as I can. But, despite my best efforts I always know that there will be some basic technical misunderstandings in the judges' opinion/ruling.

People keep trying to shoe-horn computer concepts into ancient, arcane notions they have about law and life in general. When nobody in the court room except the experts know what is going on technically--and admittedly are influenced by those that hire them (despite professional conduct), this essentially means whoever has the best narrative wins. Though, that fact might not be exclusive to computer-based cases.

People expect magic. Either you're talking them down about how these artifacts of X could mean Y but just because Z file i sin /home/bob doesn't necessarily mean it was Bob sitting at the terminal. Or, you get the other extreme, where you're defending yourself from an ignorant, nearly exceptional cavalcade of "How you can really know for sure?" type questions. And, of course, any expert if hired to do so can easily be that dick-for-hire.

I've had cases where I suspected the judge prolonged the costly trial simply to indulgent their whimsy. Oh, how fancy! You can pull up their deleted files and internet records? ENTERTAIN ME MORE!

[anigbrowl]

I've had cases where I suspected the judge prolonged the costly trial simply to indulgent their whimsy. Oh, how fancy! You can pull up their deleted files and internet records? ENTERTAIN ME MORE!

Tee-hee.

[anigbrowl]

But what. the fuck. do we do with these dinosaurs who know nothing of technology policy but have decided to go and make it anyway?

The same thing as all the folks who know nothing of legal procedure but have decided to go ahead and condemn it anyway? Sorry to be blunt, but I'm with zeteo in thinking that both Ars and the blogger they cite have misinterpreted this ruling, and in being disappointed at the lack of contextual information on how the law works in this area. This is no more an attack on the internet than impounding a criminal's car is an attack on the motor industry.

[MetallicCloud]

I disagree. To extend your analogy, it's like taking a sample of 300 cars, finding that 3 of them need impounding and then locking them all up, leaving the onus on the owner to go through the hassle of getting their car out if they weren't infringing.

[anigbrowl]

And where are you getting this 1% number from? Why are you assuming a 99% false positive rate? It's not hard to identify bogus retailers in this case because luxury brands usually have direct contractual relations with retail partners rather than selling though wholesale channels. So if you see cheap stuff.com selling 'Chanel' merchandise and they're not on the list of authorized distributors, then by definition they're selling knockoffs.

[Natsu]

> And where are you getting this 1% number from?

I would assume it's from this part of the article:

"How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit."

It was closer to 1.3% if that makes you feel any better.

[anigbrowl]

That doesn't speak to the point I made about distributor relationships. There's a reasonable presumption here that anyone selling such merchandise actually offering counterfeit goods because Chanel does not sell into the wholesale market.

[Natsu]

It's also possible to sell second-hand goods.

That said, as I wrote elsewhere, the contention is not that they were wrong, only that they did not, in fact, check.

[bobwaycott]

Faulty logic.

I'm not on the list of authorized distributors.

I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise.

There is no definition of anything at all here that means I am selling knockoffs.

[anigbrowl]

I'm not on the list of authorized distributors. I can sell a shit ton of Chanel merchandise.

How? According to Chanel's corporate website, they only sell through their own boutiques and authorized retail partners. This is known as a selective distribution agreement, and here is a 2008 report on internet sales models (prepared for Chanel) which articulates the differences from normal wholesale-retail models: http://www.crai.com/ecp/assets/Selective_distribution_Caffar...

My whole point is that no, you can't just go into business as a Chanel retailer, and you'll find the same is true for Hermes, LV, and a variety of other luxury brands. A great many high-value manufacturers make use of selective or exclusive distribution agreements to maintain price discrimination and market positioning for their brand across a global market.

[bobwaycott]

Oh, I'm quite familiar with sales models, and they don't really matter much here. Authorized distribution is a glorified honor system.

I can buy Chanel, Hermes, LV, or other luxury products and resell them at any super-low, cheap-as-dirt price I wish. There is no arrangement in which you can determine "by definition" that the products I'm selling at a ridiculously low rate are knockoffs.

I could be a moron business person and lose my ass. I could have decided to violate my retail agreement and do what I wish. I could have received a box of the stuff from a friend & resell it for $20 a pop. I could have stolen a shipment of goods or procured them in some other non-authorized fashion and yet still be selling, by definition, the genuine article.

I was taking issue with the erroneous assertion one could tell, by definition, that a cheap luxury product was a knockoff. There is no way to reliably determine by price alone. A dirt-cheap luxury good can certainly heighten one's suspicions of its authenticity, but the price alone is no defining factor in judging a knockoff from the real thing.

[pasbesoin]

We make clear and take advantage of their position that there is no "right to access" nor "property" as traditionally defined, on the net. We do this by "disconnecting" them. No technical support. Their ISP's free to discontinue service to / their business relationship with them.

Cut them off.

Practically, this probably won't happen -- and there would always be sell-outs raising the question of additional actions/escalation against them. But, fundamentally, this is how I see it. Their own arguments admit our ability to exclude them. And we should -- "route around the damage", and all that.

Mind you, in the above, I'm not advocating anything patently illegal. I'm not talking about "hacking (cracking)" their systems, nor DoS-ing them, etc. Just, don't do business with them, and don't support them. Shun them.

[cwe]

Start over on Mars

[Tossrock]

Kim Stanley Robinson fan?

[marshallp]

the tech/science community is the most able body of people in the country. I'm sure if there coordinated effort was made, it could put technologists in every office in the country.

[tokenadult]

the most able body of people in the country

Most able at what? Most people who are in elected office, or who have been in elected office, have a certain repertoire of skills in getting along with other people and in keeping track of mutual obligations that helps make the political process work. Some scientists or engineers who become politicians

http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/jimmycarter

http://mcnerney.house.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vern_Ehlers

http://holt.house.gov/

http://olver.house.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Foster_(Illinois_politicia...

http://sharp.sefora.org/issues/111th-congress-degrees-by-typ...

have had some degree of those skills, and some people with other academic degrees have gained understanding of how science relates to public policy.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9226.html

But scientists and engineers are still fallible human beings,

http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300123852

and the political process will still come under influence of concentrated interest groups

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html

regardless of which people fill the offices.

[marshallp]

Of course, if a technologist tries to get elected on his own, he won't win because he isn't a natural politician. What I'm saying, with all the talent that exists in this the sceience/engineering/programming community, if they organized, built software systems and mathematical models etc, I believe they could get "their man/woman" in every office in the country.

[gujk]

Did you miss tokenadult's list of many technologist politicians? Also, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Biss

[rorrr]

Vote them out.

[wavephorm]

You would need to vote out the system of government that is implemented in the US. But the US political bureaucracy is itself reinforced by its deep rooted opposition to all other forms of government. Most US political leaders would rather see the US government collapse completely than fall to socialsim.

[throwaway81]

What we need is competition. There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government. Small policy changes or people changes or party changes will not be sufficient. Big changes will not happen without outside competition.

Someday, some country is going to recognize that supporting free culture can be a huge competitive advantage. I would like to live in that country. I'd take a pay cut to move there. I think many would found businesses there. This will pressure the US (and others) to adopt changes.

However, if I am honest with myself, I don't think reactionary changes - the only improvements that will be made - will satisfy. I think we're all waiting for someone to step up and provide a viable alternative - a place more friendly to the 21st century. I'd love to help, but I'm not certain where to start. Many software companies might thrive in less copyright and patent friendly territories. Perhaps, at some point, one will step up and launch a government competitor. But that's probably not going to happen.

Seems more likely that some countries will recognize this opportunity and there will be a slow immigration of us Internet folks to this new promised land. Anyone else have a vision for how this will end?

[rmc]

There needs to be a viable alternative to the US government

You mean other countries? Yes there is a world outside the USA.

I'm not certain where to start

Move to a country which you like?

[botker]

http://seasteading.org/

[VladRussian]

somebody smart said that it isn't that new ideas win, it is a new generation accepting the new ideas replaces the old generation. Couple generations later (i'll be in my 70-80ies :) when current teenagers will be the judges, DAs, ... the issue of IP just willn't be an issue anymore.