Great Firewall for make glorious U.S. internets!

[Doktor Howl]

thewhitehouse.com is doomed.   

[Requia ☣]

Something to consider, other nations have been really pissy about the US controlling the master DNS servers up to now, the US has always made the excuse that the US doesn't censor the internet.  If they start doing this it'll renew the debate on who should control those.

I think Cram, when we discussed this before, it was decided the main barrier to a parallel internet would be the cost of the physical infrastructure, which would be necessary to ensure a free internet.

I can see many, many groups being interested in such a project, however they'd have to devote years of their full operating budgets to such a project.  It might be possible to get some philantrophists behind the project as well, but it'd be a hard slog.

If the best they can come up with is censoring the DNS servers, a darknet should be pretty easy, you just need some kind of peer to peer DNS service that gets triggered whenever a DNS query comes up blank, or possibly with its own extension (.darknet or the like) no new wires are necessary, and there are no servers to shut down.

[Golden Applesauce]

Anyone know if using a proxy outside of the US would get around this?

If the site is hosted within the US, then the site owner is going to be forced to relocate or shut down, and no amount of proxying will save you.  If you're physically within the US, an encrypted proxy will theoretically make it impossible to block your requests specifically, but there's a bunch of really cool research coming out on how to get information about net traffic without actually reading the packets.  For example, there's a new routing program out that can tell the difference between "good" high bandwith use (like streaming video) and "bad" network use (like p2p services) based on things like whether you're uploading and downloading at the same time, or talking to an unusual number of computers at once.

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

Just....before we all get our panties in a knot....

Are there ANY Democrats anywhere supporting this? Is there even a majority of ANYONE supporting this?

Cuz, remember, we have a Democrat President, a Democratic Congress, and roughly 3 Million AMURRIKANZ who just LOVE their interwebz. All of which _should_ be voting personal freedom over The Abominable Patriot Act.

Call me crazy but I think this is one conspiracy that won't pan out any time soon.

[Remington]

Just....before we all get our panties in a knot....

Are there ANY Democrats anywhere supporting this? Is there even a majority of ANYONE supporting this?

Cuz, remember, we have a Democrat President, a Democratic Congress, and roughly 3 Million AMURRIKANZ who just LOVE their interwebz. All of which _should_ be voting personal freedom over The Abominable Patriot Act.

Call me crazy but I think this is one conspiracy that won't pan out any time soon.

They're so cute when they're naive.

Protip: Over half of the bill's sponsors are Democrats. And the Democratic President you mentioned is too busy ordering the unilateral assassination of his own citizens to worry about little details like this bill.

[Kurt Christ]

Just....before we all get our panties in a knot....

Are there ANY Democrats anywhere supporting this? Is there even a majority of ANYONE supporting this?

Cuz, remember, we have a Democrat President, a Democratic Congress, and roughly 3 Million AMURRIKANZ who just LOVE their interwebz. All of which _should_ be voting personal freedom over The Abominable Patriot Act.

Call me crazy but I think this is one conspiracy that won't pan out any time soon.

Introduced by:
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-VT]
Cosponsors:
Evan Bayh [D-IN]
Benjamin Cardin [D-MD]
Thomas Coburn [R-OK]
Richard Durbin [D-IL]
Dianne Feinstein [D-CA]
Lindsey Graham [R-SC]
Charles Grassley [R-IA]
Orrin Hatch [R-UT]
Amy Klobuchar [D-MN]
Herbert Kohl [D-WI]
Charles Schumer [D-NY]
Arlen Specter [D-PA]
George Voinovich [R-OH]
Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI]

Crazy.

[Requia ☣]

Gotta love it when both parties work together.   

So very not surprised to see Hatch on that list.

[Cain]

BIPARTISANSHIP PRODUCES THE BEST RESULTS FOR OUR COUNTRY
\

[Kai]

Well well well.

It was bound to happen eventually. 

[the last yatto]

Wonder if google will pull out of the american market too

[Doktor Howl]

Just....before we all get our panties in a knot....

Are there ANY Democrats anywhere supporting this? Is there even a majority of ANYONE supporting this?

Cuz, remember, we have a Democrat President, a Democratic Congress, and roughly 3 Million AMURRIKANZ who just LOVE their interwebz. All of which _should_ be voting personal freedom over The Abominable Patriot Act.

Call me crazy but I think this is one conspiracy that won't pan out any time soon.

Introduced by:
Sen. Patrick Leahy [D-VT]
Cosponsors:
Evan Bayh [D-IN]
Benjamin Cardin [D-MD]
Thomas Coburn [R-OK]
Richard Durbin [D-IL]
Dianne Feinstein [D-CA]
Lindsey Graham [R-SC]
Charles Grassley [R-IA]
Orrin Hatch [R-UT]
Amy Klobuchar [D-MN]
Herbert Kohl [D-WI]
Charles Schumer [D-NY]
Arlen Specter [D-PA]
George Voinovich [R-OH]
Sheldon Whitehouse [D-RI]

Crazy.

YOU MAY BEGIN KNOTTING PANTIES NOW.

[Triple Zero]

I think Cram, when we discussed this before, it was decided the main barrier to a parallel internet would be the cost of the physical infrastructure, which would be necessary to ensure a free internet.

I can see many, many groups being interested in such a project, however they'd have to devote years of their full operating budgets to such a project.  It might be possible to get some philantrophists behind the project as well, but it'd be a hard slog.

I don't entirely agree with the outcome of the discussion before, though

First, in this particular case, it's the government that wants to limit the Internet, but the ISPs own the infrastructure.

Second, it's entirely possible to run this parallel Internet on the existing infrastructure, even inside the current Internet. And that's what many projects already are doing (such as Freenet, and in some sense, even Tor).

Third, but this is more like a pipe-dream, with all the ubiquitous wireless these days, consumer appliances (wireless routers, mobile devices, even laptops) can become the infrastructure itself, in a peer-to-peer manner. Of course you won't have the performance of glass-fibre, but it is my opinion that you can get by with much less bandwidth than we generally have available anyway (in the sense that we didn't use to have this kind of bandwidth, and IMO the success of the Internet comes from everybody using it, not the fact that bandwidth has been steadily increasing over the years).
Also, this censorship can't possibly block everything (email, encryption, etc) so if necessary you can use the "real" Internet to get data across to places that aren't in direct wireless connection.

[Requia ☣]

The bigger danger is that even with a darknet, only people on the darknet will have access.  That limits the reach of a place like wikileaks.

Of course, the Streisand effect make also prove dominant, and every time they try to shut something down it'll be duplicated and redistributed with a vengeance.

[The Great Pope of OUTSIDE]

Another thing about the darknet is that it would really only appeal to the worst scum of the internet now, trolls, hijackers, and the worst sort of perverts.

Free information like what we have here would be nigh non-existent.

And don't even get me started on revisionist history.... :/

Damn.

[Salty]

Another thing about the darknet is that it would really only appeal to the worst scum of the internet now, trolls, hijackers, and the worst sort of perverts.

Free information like what we have here would be nigh non-existent.

And don't even get me started on revisionist history.... :/

Damn.

Uh...