Text 13091, 75 rader
Skriven 2010-12-10 17:19:28 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
  Kommentar till text 13056 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: DHS seizes somain names
===============================
Replying to a message of Michiel van der Vlist to Bob Ackley:

 MvdV> Hello Bob,

 MvdV> On Thursday December 09 2010 17:15, you wrote to Robert Bashe:

 BA>> It was designed to survive a nuclear war, thus no real centralized
 BA>> net control - but when the US government owns and controls most of
 BA>> the root servers, control becomes a LOT easier.

 MvdV> The US does not own and control most of the root servers. They may
 MvdV> have some control over what is in the US, but the root servers are
 MvdV> spread all over the globe. Most of it is not in the USA.

 MvdV> Even so.. control of the root servers is not equivalent to control
 MvdV> of the internet. The root servers are at the top of the hierarchy
 MvdV> of the DNS system. The DNS system is sort of the phone book for the
 MvdV> InterNet.

 MvdV> Burn all the phone books and it becomes harder to use the phone
 MvdV> system. But you can still make calls if you get to know the number.

 BA>> Note, incidentally, that many US ISPs do not make USENET available to
 BA>> customers, and of those that do many do not allow access to the
 BA>> alt.*.*.* newsgroups.  Censorship?

 MvdV> No, that is not censorship. Censorship is when the GOVERNMENT blocks
 MvdV> access to information. A provider not offering a certain service is
 MvdV> just a case of ... a provider not offering a certain service.

In the case of USENET, the various governments in this country discovered that
some newsgroups contain attachments that they consider to be <gasp>
pornographic.
Those governments threatened ISPs with prosecution and rather than fight the
ISPs
just dropped USENET.

Unfortunately in the US there is legal precedent.  Many years ago a computer
BBS
in CA had lots of feelthy pictures available for download.  A fellow in the US
Bible
Belt was incensed over it, so he downloaded some and then got the feds to
extradite
the BBS owners to Tennessee to stand trial there.  The case is somewhere on the

net, the BBS was called 'Amateur Action,' and was -IMO - a travesty.

 BA>>   Sure, and there's nothing that can be done about it.

 MvdV> Of course there is. All you have to do is obtain that service
 MvdV> elsewhere. There is nothing that compels you to only use your ISP's
 MvdV> news server. You can use any news server that its owner allows you
 MvdV> to use it.

 BA>>>> As a practical matter, the US government can take over or take
 BA>>>> down any web site it wants to, any time it wants to, and for any
 BA>>>> reason it wants.

 RB>>> No it can't. The US laws stop at the border, as has been pointed
 RB>>> out many times here.

 BA>> But its reach doesn't, witness Mr. Assange's travails - mostly
 BA>> sponsored by the US government.

 MvdV> If the US had the power to take down Wikileaks, it would be off-line
 MvdV> by now. It isn't and that shows it does not have that power.


 MvdV> Cheers, Michiel

 MvdV> -!- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20070503
 MvdV>  ! Origin: http://www.vlist.org (2:280/5555)

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)