US Internet Censorship Law got passed fully.

My hat goes off to this man.... I really hate politicians and I hate politics ( sorry I don't follow politics) . There are only a few good hardworking honest politicians out there and here is one of them. I drink today in honor for him.

I truly hope it does for more than one reason. If they start shutting/blacklisting websites, what's next? If you think on it, it's pretty scary as a whole.

Any new developments on this?

I do not think I saw anything any new news about this yet.

We Must save documents for the future.
or it will disappear from history.
history will be re written.
no one else will save the information we would.
DVD's are cheap now.
so I will start saving some things.
but this would be beter if some one
who can organise this better than I can.
so we can save as much as possible.
and not miss inportent stuff.
and not all save the same stuff.
there is a GREAT deal of old information on the Internet.
one day soon they will clear it all out.

like the Bill of rights & the constitution.

as for Ron Wyden.
by next year.
he will be out of a job or dead!

US Internet Censorship Law Passes
www.abovetopsecret.com...


I have really good news and I have really bad news.

The good news is that the best place to be in a case like this is some type of mountain of an Internet community like ATS, or GPL, or 4-chan. Taking down a site like these has a whole slew of other consequences than it does to take down a page hosted by joe-basement-dweller.

The bad news is that I've been waiting for this, and there is no point in resisting. I used to dwell on Slashdot back-in-the-day, my brother was one of the lead programers for the creation of Amazon dot com, and ever since AOL flooded the web with newbs and destroyed the existing usenet communities, I knew that mandatory government oversight would come.

Before I go any further, and just to clear the air of any political undertones one reader might try to paper over this individual post with let me state my own position. If a law gets passed, all I see is; a cost to the people, to cover a previous bad business practice, and allow some number of unnamed companies to only be held responsible for showing a profit. Hopefully now everyone with a political axe to grind can focus on that and leave the rest out of this one comment.

The bad news is that ever since the common carrier clause decision by the Supreme Court, which traditionally covers the last ten miles of a network, originally written to cover roads, our government has decided that they can legislate code, and use the same systems of permissions and payments as the highway construction method. Our seats, house, and office will proceed to hold every single individual provider not on a company basis, but on a local provider actual physical address method.

It all started by an offhand comment by the pres of Amazon dot com. Not his fault really, he is telling the truth. In an interview when asked if he thought an Internet tax was a good idea he said something to the effect of "I don't see why I should pay for the services of a local sheriff that I don't access to." Apparently all companies have major bill collection problems access to serving a summons is paramount in dealing with well lawyered state resellers.

But when the common carrier clause was reinterpreted by the supreme court, an instant and ancient, well layered, case history of highway law was grafted onto cyberspace. To my shock and silence the Slashdot community when whole hog for it. Not only was it considered smart, it was the right thing to do. I realized that the majority of the heavy experts of the old net community had all finally scored it big. Fiat currency had held off the dot com ip's just long enough to bankrupt everyone. Now that they were handing out fat contracts again, people were ready to take what ever they could get.

But not this. See, somebody out there still doesn't own the highways, my great grandfather was the french chef who made the pot liquor for hewy P. Long. The stuff he loved so much he would stop the chamber and bring everyone down into the kitchen of the capitol to have some. He started the highway as state project that solved the local poverty issues. The nation didn't have a highway system. He was happy to give it to the fed, let every state in on it, until he saw what they did with it.

What does this have to do with common carrier clause and the net? I wonder that myself. Just because some institution that is obviously not for the people thinks they have managed the roads well that they get the Internet as well. Excuse me if I disagree.

In the case of serving a summons the person held responsible is the local Internet provider. So now that they are legally liable for knowing what their users are sending, the band width has to be sniffed and some of it saved. This uses more resources, and forces the local provider to take up the cost of actually managing the storage of government court admissible statements.

This adds very little to the customers experience. It may even be detrimental in some cases. As questionable stuff is better just stopped in advance, where as an actual phile must be recorded so that the system can make it's move, thus allowing the bad one to continue.

It's all forked up and I don't feel like talking about roads, so what to do about it. Think of the wild west romantic cowboy days. Then came the invention of barbed wire. After that cowboys had to take jobs with the larger ranches and move massive almost unmanageable herds. All with fewer riders on the market in toto. This most recent move of the right to block sites, is actually a streamlining and less costly method of implementing law that is a) already in place, b) in the phase of letting the public 1. know lassos' exist, 2. understand how to feel about not liking lassos being used on them, 3. come to endorse _some_ applications of the lasso, say on philes. 4. profit,
and c) not as shocking to me as the fact that no one cares that the barb wire is already up.

The age if the Internet cowboy is over. If someone hasn't joined one of the larger cattle ranches (I mean Internet communities) they are going to be looking to parley their skills into something else, or whither away.

Why shouldn't I outcry about this?

Meh.
Go ahead.
Me I would have rathered an outcry about
the last ten miles of Internet being equal to a public road,
but those days are past, the barbed wire, or just wire, has been up for years.
I think Google is done driving down every single road there is, maybe not, but soon.
Unlike access providers the forums maintain their own moderator culture that's still intact.
Now that all the wire is up, the geeks who automated the cable companies, were downsized out.

After the rancher days the rail road will come. Right now all the big corps have light speed fiber world wide. Same dome predatory behavior as before. But that's a couple of generations off, so I'm not too worried about it yet.

So the bad news was there is no point resisting this, this deal was done years ago.

and

The good news is that the best place to be in a case like this is some type of mountain of an Internet community like ATS, or GPL, or 4-chan. Taking down a site like this has a whole slew of other consequences compared to blocking a page hosted by joe-basement-dweller.

Hell, look at it this way. The fed will be quietly taking the philes out of the webs.

It's been fun
my work here is done
David Grouchy out