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We're a bit late to the party, but for those who haven't seen on the Internet, today is a protest day for Net Neutrality, where sites across the internet are disrupting their normal operations to get the word out and get people to send a message. Ars Technica already has a fairly decent summary of who's doing what, and we stand with them and the rest of the Internet.
Due to real life issues, I was late on getting this together, but for the rest of the day, this article will remain on the top of the page and we will be blacking the theme of the site in protest [Technical issues among others precluded our doing so today --martyb].
If you're a US citizen, and want to get the word out, check Battle for the Net, and get the word out. In addition, there are long discussions going on reddit and other sites throughout the internet
Let's get the word out!
~ NCommander
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Wednesday July 12 2017, @07:55PM (7 children)
Just net neutrality.
Although attempting to preserve net neutrality would be action in a good direction. Why should ISPs get to "double dip" and charge their customers for access to their pipes and then charge those who are supplying data across those pipes. That's charging twice for the same data.
Since most of the big ISPs are also content providers, ending net neutrality would give them the opportunity to raise barriers to entry for competitive content providers. I would imagine that should piss off the free marketeers, no?
But net neutrality is just the tip of the iceberg. Corruption of and collusion with elected "representatives" at the state and local levels have entrenched these big ISPs and created huge barriers to entry for other ISPs.
Asymmetric download/upload speeds and abusive terms of service by those same ISPs also raise barriers to entry for individuals and small businesses to publish their content and compete with others. It also props up the criminal "social media" industry by keeping people from sharing directly with each other (e.g., with something like diaspora [diasporafoundation.org]) and maintaining the spying and abusive advertising of that industry.
There is much work to be done and every day we lose more freedom and competition on the 'net. The Internet has always had the promise of extreme decentralization and can unleash the innovation and creativity of a world full of people. But the moneyed interests are turning it into a cash cow, while limiting our ability to use it as a platform for liberty and distributed communications.
Snide comments and snarky remarks may make you chuckle and think you're so above it all. I, for one, prefer freedom and choice to smart-ass remarks (and I do love me some smart ass remarks!).
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:38AM (6 children)
Good post! In summary:
* ISPs get to charge content providers and customers for the same data.
* Opportunity to raise barriers to entry for future competitors.
* Corruption of and collusion with elected "representatives".
* Asymmetric download/upload speed.
* Abusive terms of service (no ssh to home?).
Self serving assholes will always turn everything into a cash cow. Internet will not be an exception unless its users fully deter such actors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @01:28AM (1 child)
They already where defeated once the last time NN won. This time though they've gone the let's-pay-off- the-politicians-to-get-our-way route and are, at least at present, apparently winning this fight this time around. We shall see if this recent attempt to recreate the 'STOP SOPA' size of response that will be needed to sway this administration's cadre of cowardly clowns.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:17AM
Sysadmins on strike? :p
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:14AM (3 children)
Thanks. Not sure why you felt the need to summarize, but you go!
It's more than just blocking stuff like ssh. The asymmetric (and vastly lower) upload speeds and the abusive terms of service restrict you from hosting your own content and, as such, it forces people to use things like facebook and other centralized services. Even if you avoid those traps, you're forced to use hosting providers to get decent throughput for services you wish to host.
This situation works to destroy the best things about what should be a decentralized network with the opportunities for innovation, liberty and the free exchange of ideas. It's disgusting.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:23AM (2 children)
Create great software that appeals to the part of the population sheep. Which will complain and nag the hell out of ISP until they bend to their will. Seems the evils tries to control the internet using laws and money. While netizen exercise control by disobedience and technology. And if enforcement and what can be bought are rendered hollow then you got one up on them.
The thing about centralized hosting is a good point. Though upload speeds are quite good these times compared to the past. And what the ISP can't see they can't complain about ;->
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:06AM (1 child)
How exactly do you propose to bypass ISP port filtering/blocking? Most residential ISPs (Verizon/Comcast/Charter/etc.) block incoming connections to their customers.
Apparently, you don't know how the IPv4 [ietf.org] and 6 [ietf.org] protocols as well as the TCP [ietf.org] and UDP [ietf.org] protocols work.
While you can encrypt data, unless you set up (in advance and distribute clients/connection info) VPN tunnels (and even then, incoming connections would likely be blocked anyway), the ISP will always know to which IP address/port combination to which a packet is addressed.
Unless you can get past that in a way that's easy to configure and deploy, you're not making much sense. If you can and can demonstrate it to me, I'll start a company with you and we'll make a mint. Please advise.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:15AM
You can create a protocol that can dynamically make use of different ports. If all incoming connections are blocked (ugly!) then one could send non-standard packets to confuse the firewall what is being sent. There's supposedly a technique for NAT bypass but I have not dug into the details. And then there's the VPN thing. And I do know how the protocol works. But the usual thing is that port 137 etc is blocked so the poor schmucks that can't and won't secure their Microsoft thing won't be hurt. And such blocks are usually easy to bypass.
Still another approach is streams over ICMP etc. Or even the internal google approach where every packet is encrypted such that even if someone succeeds with a physical connection they can't communicate with anything.
I think the killer advance is something that eliminates the ISPs out of the communication loop. And part of the answer there is likely radio.