According to this article Canada is to be a test case for global privatisation of the internet - which would spell the death of this and thousands of other internet sites - and mark the end of a short-lived golden era of free information exchange. Observers say the plans will probably be preceded with dire warnings about the 'evil threat of the net' and cite security concerns as a pretext for this move.

Via Information Clearing House:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20330.htm

More analysis here of a BBC article on this

http://www.wanttoknow.info/060205usmilitarycontrolinternet

I was just off to bed with some happy thoughts in my head before I opened your post Aragon, now it's ruined.

There'll be room 101 for us now where they'll put a bag over my head with rats in it - eeeachghh.

Seriously that's a nightmarish scenario - I'll leave opening those links til the light of day.

There has to be a way around this if they ever wanted it done - Them. As long as we have phones then our computers can talk to each other. Installing ubuntu has something to do with saving the free world, I just know it. My new laptop could be a host site on an ad hoc intranet yet.

The next war could be fought over freedom of information - I'm just about to find out how to convert algae, which grows rapidly, into diesel. They can't take this away from me.

Nah Nah. Baloney.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Nah Nah. Baloney.

+1. The military plans for the Net don't include preventing a free Internet - and indeed, work better with a free Internet.

The first plan is nothing more or less than the 'walled garden' content model, which has been tried everywhere. It's what AOL did for years, and virtually every single service provider has tried it for a while. It doesn't work because as long as there's any available access to any free Internet content, people reject the walled garden approach - which means there's always room for someone to make money by providing that access. So far, every walled garden venture has been forced to demolish the walls or lose customers to an access provider without walls.

Nor do most websites get anything out of it - usually, you have to pay and/or sign contracts to be part of the walled garden, and the owner of the garden always takes a slice. Since initially they will almost certainly be offering lower traffic than an open service, you'd usually be taking a drop compared to advertising revenue in the open Internet. Plus, of course, a lot of what people want online is porn - which means you either provide porn in your walled garden (with all the legalities that entails), or you wave your best customers (young single males) goodbye.

That BBC article, which dates back to 2006, gives a good insight into the operations of the US Military propaganda machine. I have to say though that the propaganda element is entirely predictable.

The shocking part was their intention to destroy all communications systems. They are basically planning to do what they have been accusing the Chinese of for a long time- screw everybody else up. If the Chinese weren't at it before then they surely should be getting ready for communications warfare now!

Communications warfare, now there's a way to bring the world to its knees. It could be sticks and stones and quills and ink again at that rate...

Every business is supposed to have a disaster recovery plan. Should our country have a communications failure plan? The consequences of being without phone/internet/radio are hard to imagine.

Kate P wrote:

Communications warfare, now there's a way to bring the world to its knees. It could be sticks and stones and quills and ink again at that rate...

The pen is mightier than the sword, as they say. Unless you're in a swordfight. Then you're f*cked.

The pencil is mightier than the pen because you can erase your signature just in case

Information is essential for the optimum functioning of the emerging global economecology. Stiglitz mentions this as his thesis but doesn't give any details in the first book. The free market needs to keep the internet open as a potentially unlimited source and avenue of free and good information.

The next thing is televisual handsets along the species lines of the Apple iphone where information can both be uploaded to youtube or google instantly by reporters or details of anything from a local garage sale to "buyandsell" or ebay type sites to the details of your church fund. Our lives will revolve less around the little screen in the corner and more on the one in our pockets with its 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 icons which will be used regularly for shopping, entertainment, knowledge etc.

I'd wonder about the availability of serious information from science and technology arenas becoming less available as the demand grows. Maybe that won't happen though, such is the logic of the internet economics.

There has been a battle going on for some time in the US over the Open Net and one of Rivada's main men was previously the Bad Boy working for Bush accused of working to restrict the internet.

There are some contradictory factors at work: -

1. Commerce requires an unwalled open and global internet for doing business and advertising wares. It also wants to protect and make money from internet services and load-downs. There are signs like the ongoing youtube case of a clamp down on freely availing of what is on the net.

2. The internet is useful for the black art of psyops. An obvious example of current psyops is the blanket lie /propoganda that the Taliban trade heroin - the opposite of the truth as vouched by the UN. The mass of loopy conspiracy theory stories may also in part be psyops white noise.

3. The internet is very useful for surveillance and data gathering on citizens.

4. The internet allows rapid sharing of bona fide information and discussion that undermines psyops and potentially allows legitimate opposition movements to grow very rapidly - the funding of the Obama campaign and the use of the net by supporters must be unsettling for established politicians/parties. It can also be and has been used by terrorists.

5. Because of 4. State organisations must have contingency plans to close down Internet access. I would imagine there are many ways of trying to do that - the crudest, digging up a whole load of submarine cables, may have been done earlier this year in the Med. The verdict is out on that one and promised for reports on investigation have not been released as yet. The outages caused big losses to corporations selling services from the mid and far east.

There are signs of moving backwards technologically to protect communications - the fighting in the Lebanon recently broke out because Hammas had set up its own land line system for telecoms. The reason they had was that mobile phones are the best possible attractors for Israeli missiles (very ouch!)

Parnell's Mass Meetings were an interesting low tech precursor of net fora I think - hundreds of thousands of people would meet on a mountain somewhere and Parnel would speak at the centre, with individuals in the crowd shouting back his speech from the centre outwards.

Example of the Internet being used for and against psyops here - just Google Taliban heroin if you want to check them out.

The battle for belief over heroin in Afghanistan....

The Lies About Taliban HeroinThe Lies About Taliban Heroin. Russia and Oil the Real Objectives With Heroin As A Weapon of War. A Replay of CIA's Vietnam-era Drug Dealing ...
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/10_10_01_heroin.html - 57k - Cached - Similar pages

Heroin after the TalibanHowever, while poppy cultivation dropped, exports of refined opium and heroin from the Taliban-controlled areas remained unchanged because of stockpiles. ...
opioids.com/afghanistan/prediction.html - 5k - Cached - Similar pages

Heroin and the Afghanistan warBrown-haired, blue-eyed in a turban, pale pink tunic, and black trainers, Zafir sweats anxiously as he discloses the details of the Taliban's heroin ...
opioids.com/afghanistan/heroinwar.html - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
More results from opioids.com »

Drugs fuel terror campaign / Opium trade keeps Taliban in business ...However, even eliminating the Taliban may not be enough to stop the Afghan heroin trade. The largest group fighting the Taliban for control of Afghanistan ...
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN67246.DTL - 66k - Cached - Similar pages

The Lies About Taliban Heroin: Drugwar.comFirst, when the world sees an explosion of heroin from the region it won’t be the Taliban’s doing. Second, the cash flows from the smuggling will now be ...
www.drugwar.com/cv37.shtm - 75k - Cached - Similar pages

Taliban's heroin 'double-cross' - TelegraphTHE poppy fields of Afghanistan's Golden Crescent, normally the source of three-quarters of the world's heroin, have been transformed this year, ...
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1323147/Taliban's-heroin-'double-cross'.html - 38k - Cached - Similar pages

Afghanistan from Taliban to heroin | open Democracy News AnalysisAfghanistan from Taliban to heroin. Paul Rogers. There are echoes of Colombia in Afghanistan’s booming drug economy. Did the United States defeat the ...
www.opendemocracy.net/conflict/article_2376.jsp - 50k - Cached - Similar pages

Taliban destroys heroin labs

I'm not sure commercial interests actually require the net to be open to make a profit. If the internet 'commons' was constricted and then I could still see profits being made but the backlash would surely stop it.

Speaking of Ubuntu, and linux etc, we were fortunate that the internet's development meant it was not owned by a utility or collection of utilities and was non-profit, open and transparent, but unfortunate that similar large-scale non-profit ventures did not exist in the operating system side (cough Vista...). It would be easier to do simple things like install video and sound drivers if the entire (or majority) system was completely open-source.

I can't see commerce/capital -with TRIPs or not - winning on the torrent download side of things. It makes no logical sense when the product is not excludable. If you had a futuristic technology where you could copy your neighbour's car then they could still use their own car. You're not stealing the car merely copying it at little to no cost. Sure people should get paid for the work effort involved in the content but the technology makes the whole DRM nonsense look highly ideological.

Quote :

I can't see commerce/capital -with TRIPs or not - winning on the torrent download side of things.

A wonderful sentence, but written in a language I do no know.

cactus flower wrote:

Quote :

I can't see commerce/capital -with TRIPs or not - winning on the torrent download side of things.

A wonderful sentence, but written in a language I do no know.

TRIP- Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

translation- Despite legislation it is impossible to stop illegal downloads of films, music, software and so on.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Kate P wrote:

Communications warfare, now there's a way to bring the world to its knees. It could be sticks and stones and quills and ink again at that rate...

The pen is mightier than the sword, as they say. Unless you're in a swordfight. Then you're f*cked.

Unless it's one of those exploding pens like James Bond has.

Lestat wrote:

cactus flower wrote:

Quote :

I can't see commerce/capital -with TRIPs or not - winning on the torrent download side of things.

A wonderful sentence, but written in a language I do no know.

TRIP- Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

translation- Despite legislation it is impossible to stop illegal downloads of films, music, software and so on.

Nice one lads - TRIPS, very interesting.

The UK Indo has some story today that Downloaders will be taxed about £30 per year whereby they will be able to download as much illegal music as they want. Could this be the start of a new era of pricing of that sort of material?

Downloading of music and video in an illegal way is a conundrum for many - they often feel quite guilty about downloading illegally yet simply cannot afford to consume as much as they'd like to by legal avenues. There is every chance that those music nuts will be happy to pay this per year and so new industries should spring up from it.

I think there is merit in Stephen King's argument of a few years ago that illegal copying could endanger the sort of art that is easily convertible into electronic form - books, film and music thus killing the goose that lay the golden egg (that phrase was for arnaudherve) so some compromise might be healthy all round in this arena where technology has a huge impact on consumption and overlaps with Law, art, the consumer and producer so vividly.