Jailbreaking the Internet

January 31st, 2012

Via: Infoworld:

If the baboons [6] succeed in constraining speech and information flow on the broader Internet, the new Internet will emerge quickly. For an analogy, consider the iPhone and the efforts of a few smart hackers who have allowed anyone to jailbreak an iPhone with only a small downloaded app and a few minutes. Though these apps couldn’t be simpler to use, their easy and colorful UIs mask a massive quantity of research and reverse-engineering by a group of determined software and hardware geeks. It’s all wrapped up in a nice, accessible package, but the underlying concepts are well beyond what 99 percent of those who jailbreak their phones can truly understand.

So it will be with the jailbroken Internet. In a world where corporations can force just about anyone “off” the Internet by leveraging proposed laws like SOPA and causing ISPs to break DNS, there needs to be a way to maintain connectivity to those sites and that information. If Large Corporation A doesn’t like what Average Guy B is saying about it in his blog, it could effectively muzzle that voice with a takedown notice that adheres to the letter of the law, yet crushes our concepts of free speech and the open Internet. While protecting copyright is clearly an important endeavor, these proposed methods are execrable. However, if a significant number of people aren’t using those DNS servers, if they aren’t using the standard Internet pathways, that voice will still be heard, those sites will still be available.

All that scenario would require would be a way to wrap up existing technologies into a nice, easily-installed package available through any number of methods. Picture the harrowing future described above, and then picture a single installer that runs under Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that installs tor [7], tools to leverage alternative DNS servers, anonymizing proxies, and even private VPN services. A few clicks of the mouse, and suddenly that machine would be able to access sites “banned” through general means.

This is precisely what technophobic and myopic legislators simply do not understand: You cannot censor the Internet. As John Gilmore famously said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” So it has been and so it will be.

This workaround solution will be technically deficient, but it will be functional. A technically valid solution already exists –the Internet in its current form — but if that gets mangled, plan B may be one of the only ways through those troubled times.

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