Watch out for ACTA

I think everyone needs to see the video from Russia Today, interviewing Shelly Roche from bytestyle.tv. (Along with the original video report), along with the interview on Fox News, with Judge Andrew Napolitano:

http://bytestyle.tv/content/acta-internet-users-guilty-until-proven-innocent

From Canada on this new, leaked ACTA information (Michael Geist):
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4575/125/

Existing intellectual property protection - WIPO and the DMCA and for when people violate existing, implemented copyright protections. Now, they want ISPs to be intellectual property cops, which is a huge infrastructural and technological woe. Where the agency is smaller, and fits in the 'safe harbor' clause, they will come after you directly, and ban you from the internet for 3 strikes on intellectual property protection violations, whether proven or not. This is government oversight on all internet traffic, and I find the technology very costly and circumvent to the real task at hand.

There are existing technologies, such as eCX and eCP from IBM's Tivoli and from the University of Hong Kong. These are schemes for protecting intellectual property distributed to client machines, not what this crazy government has in mind. Look at the protections currently implemented by google and YouTube, and the current ability of providers to require secured access to specific content, and liking it, at the present time.

I also have needs for intellectual property protection, in the design of a file system for an internet-based org-type which provides dynamic protection for files distributed to client machines, and at various security levels (SiteFS for the CNA). The only difference with what this design includes over the above mentioned is a dynamic aspect that enhances its security.

Platform vendors can participate in 'footprint protocol', where a trusted viewer security authority (file system vendor) can download a program dynamically at the time that a client wishes to decrypt a protected file (for viewing). The dynamic program can inspect the client's footprint, for the file system itself, and the platform vendor can join the protocol 'ring'. This is far superior to the government alternatives, and provides intellectual property protection for everyone.

Asimov's Mule

Has the world changed? In 1941, FDR and top military brass knew weeks in advance of an impending Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, but commanders at Pearl were not informed. In the 1960s, there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, where by way of US propaganda, it was said that the North Vietnamese bombed a US ship, which as we came to find did not really happen. In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany following those who died in the Reichstag fire, and in 1939, led in staging a Polish attack against Germany, launching the Germans into their first aggression, later to be collectively known as World War II. In 2001, inside elements of the US, Israel and Great Britain created a false flag attack against the United States, as conducted by modern-day “sand Poles”. Through all of this, the one major distinction that appears to me is that of the emerging network of networks; the decentralized and uncontrolled internet.

I believe the role of the Internet altogether to be directly analogous to a character from a series of books know as "Foundation" (1950), by Isaac Asimov. In his story, Asimov paints the picture of an established society where science has developed the ability to calculate any and all of the variables, and to then be able to definitively say where one would be, for example, next Wednesday at 8 AM. It gives them total control.

One central character in the Foundation series is "the Mule". As a human with the head of a mule, he is an incalculable mutation. Society's scientists experience problems with their ability to determine, at any time, his causal chains. The Mule includes variables within himself that defy the scientist’s capacity to calculate his next move. He relishes in his ability to go where he pleases, when he pleases, and without detection.

Where established powers are incapable of predicting what it will produce next, I find the Internet itself to be perfectly analogous to Asimov's Mule. I find contemporary developments in population statistics, such as; over half the US knowing that something is wrong with the 911 Commission, with this administration’s failure – led by Cheney – to gain entry into Iran in spite of such extensive efforts to achieve that end, or by way of something as simple as the new political model created by the Howard Dean campaign of 2004, to only be possible by way of an uncontrolled information agency. Meanwhile, in China, where by way of total internet control, the students of Beijing University don’t even know what happened in their own Tiananmen Square. The internet is a new infrastructure for the people, and it has been serving the people’s needs in ways that no traditional channels of information have even dared. God bless the internet; may it forever be free!

And congratulations to: http://savetheinternet.com

Cheers -

Mark

Copyrighting and Getting Started

This is as much a test of the blog as anything else. Hellooooo. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3... Hee hee. Blogging is so much fun.

The document, "Cooperative Internet Assembly" will be posted just as soon as I have received confirmations from the parties that have received copies. Without those confirmations, I can't release the document. If you have a copy, that means YOU.

Thanks so much in advance just for being you! I'm obviously very excited about getting this show on the road. :-)