Could This Be The End Of The Internet? 309
ll0yD asks: "There is an article at Security Focus blowing the horn on network security companies working to stop file sharing over the Internet and private networks. The main reason they are working on this is to combat Napster and other related "evil" network programs. I understand the need to protect copyrighted material, but this looks like it is going a little too far. If someone can stop MP3's from moving around the net what stops someone from stopping your electronically filed taxes or the bills you pay online? Besides isn't file sharing what the Internet is about? What are your views?" This disturbs me. The Internet is all about sharing, but not just files, but ideas, be it via Napster, or a browser. Now I'm worried that some fool will start making noises about banning FTP.
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:1)
Ignorance like this really salts my pork. Have you even been to a dick measuring contest?
Better ban TCP/IP, ftp, even text file xfer... (Score:1)
Shaping is the wave of the future (Score:1)
Personally, I think that this is a sweet idea whose time has come. If used correctly this could solve a good portion of the QoS problems that plague bandwidth-limited organizations.
I mean really, why should students be able to slurp up all of the bandwidth at a university at the expense of legitimate services like the campus web server? Sure students (or whoever) should be allowed to use Napster (or whatever), just not at the expense of the legitimate functions of the network.
The beauty of shaping is that you can do this without having to descriminate between multiple network segments (i.e. the student dorms are universally bandwidth controlled for every protocol). So you don't have to screw over certain people entirely (just screw everybody partially) in order to achieve the desired result.
Cha-ching!
Re:Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:1)
I hate you dsl users so much :)
Re:Cut the wire? (Score:1)
That ought to do wonders for enrollment. I seem to remember a slashdot article where it was said that fast access was touted as an important benefit of living on campus. If they ration or cut the wire, I will be very interested in seeing the effect this has on either enrollments or housing trends.
Possible solutions (Score:1)
The problem lies in mechanism used by Gnutella and Napster - they return remote users' IP address instead of routing pieces of information thru network, i.e. if user alpha@fsb.ru sends request to it's closest Gnutella node, russia-relay@eff.org, node returns IP of the machine that has data requested. FreeNet [sourceforge.net], on the other hand, relays data thru network. For example alpha@fsb.ru requests file elections.html from russia-relay@eff.org, who requests file from vpupkin@cityline.ru and passes it to alpha@fsb.ru. That way every user is not aware about any node other his/her neghbors, and could not determine from which node material originated. That seems to be a comparably good solution, given that encryption is strong enough and protocol does not record any extra information.
Re:Not enough bandwith for 3,600 students. (Score:2)
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Pattern-detection won't work. (Score:2)
But these manufacturers of bogus net filters will probably get some fools to invest in them. Maybe that's what the publicity is for.
Bruce
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:2)
wow.
mangled quote... (Score:2)
"never attribute to malice what can be accounted for with stupidity"
(or something to that effect.)
yeah, I mangled it, but you get the gist...
Re:Try reading the article a little further (Score:2)
Alternatively you could tunnel gnutella through ssh, which was designed for this sort of thing. But https might be more fun - can you imagine the headlines if 'ISP accidentally blocks e-commerce'?
Not possible. (Score:2)
A file is no more than data stored on a computer. There is no way to totally block file transfers. it would undermine the very principle of free speech.
We need to keep an eye on this, though. I am positive it will not be the end of the Internet because of the huge negative feedback and resistance - but that's why we need to keep an eye on it: we *are* the Internet. Not those silly computers that are connected. No, us, who have been around here a while and share ideals and principles. It is our job to make sure we protect those interests.. and because we will, this will not be the end of the Internet.
I wouldn't allow it to be. Would you?
Re:Not enough bandwith for 3,600 students. (Score:2)
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Re:Not enough bandwith for 3,600 students. (Score:2)
Interested parties can see connection information here: http://netview.cc.iastate.edu/cgi- bin/selectline [iastate.edu]
As I am not really experienced in large network design, how many users per T1 should a person expect typically?
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Bah! Make GNUTELLA transfer files via SMTP... (Score:2)
- sigh -
The article talks about packet-sniffers who basically delay packets based ont the nature of the protocol (say, like port number used, or maybe even what is within that packet - "Hmmm, looks like a Napster packet, so, I'm gonna put it on the back-burner for a little while...").
So, the next logical step with Gnutella is to use an innocuous protocol, say, like SMTP, where two Gnutella-NG server/clients transfer the warez using SMTP... The program could even break the big file in several manageable chunks, and re-assemble them. It could also "encrypt" the packets with a simple randomly-generated packet at the start of the transmission (sent by another method) to fool packet sniffers/delayers...
Imagination will route through the most stringent censorship methods...
--
Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Electronically filed taxes != MP3 sharing (Score:2)
You're comparing apples and oranges here. I know; let's play a game. I want you to pick out which one of the following doesn't belong, and explain why not:
The answer is the fourth one, because it's illegal to pirate music. Sending email and conducting ecommerce are perfectly legal (right now), as are downloading MP3s that the artist is specifically giving away.
Hey, I love free music as much as the next guy, but don't kid yourselves. The situation of pirated MP3s is similar to that of child pornography on the Internet; it's just milder and more widely accepted. People have been cracking down on net kiddie porn and has that killed the Internet? Hardly.
So no, this is yet another false prediction of the Imminent Death Of The Net [tuxedo.org] (as another ./er posted).
Re: (Score:2)
people will just move to UDP (Score:2)
Besides, people will want to do video conferencing and other data intensive services. If the current crop of ISPs don't provide those services, others will. After all, we went from no commercial ISPs to a thriving Internet economy: widespread demand will be satisfied.
Re:Think of the big picture! (Score:2)
Re:Oh good GOD, RELAX already (Score:2)
And you must have missed the part in my original post where blocking access to napster and napster-like services we're trying to keep our company's relationship with the recording industry as favorable as possible; our business DEPENDS on the ability to license for exclusive use all kinds of intellectual property (film, video, music, photos, likenesses) as well as create our own.
Compromising our legal obligations and the requirements of our licensors is cutting off our nose to spite our face.
Re:Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:2)
Bandwidth management (Score:2)
Second, this is not a bad thing. The clients demanding these are primarily bandwidth-strapped small universities, companies, etc., who have the complete right and often responsibility to make sure that the bandwidth is not saturated by mp3 downloads, but rather more useful pursuits. Y'know, thesis and dissertation research. Not to say that there aren't theses that use napster for real and valid research, but these will not be the norm.
Now, this is a slippery slope and some ISPs will use it to slam their users. Users will move to less restrictive ISPs and the market will continue.
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:2)
Re:Try reading the article a little further (Score:2)
Not the end... (Score:2)
And.. (Score:2)
Fundamentally, Internet can happen with or without current protocols..
Slashdot takes kickbacks to hype articles (Score:2)
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:2)
Wrong link? (Score:2)
--
What Are You Bitching About??? (Score:2)
If you take your dog into the woods and it attacks the cute fury little rodents and eats the birds and chases the deer so that nobody else can see nature in all of its glory, you shouldn't be surprised when somebody tells you you can't take your dog into the woods anymore.
If you utilize Napster to download a huge hoard of music onto a machine you probably don't own, on a network you are basically borrowing, at a University where they have better things to do than stand idly buy why you use the available bandwidth of the school to download music you shouldn't have anyway, then you shouldn't be surprised when they put blocks on how much bandwidth you are allowed to use.
If you work for a company and behaved this way most companies would just fire your Lilly White B---.
Another example would be people who smoke cigarettes. You sit at a table smoking a cigarette and then you blow smoke into the face of the person sitting next to you who still might be eating. If he/she asks you to quit you whine "you're infinging on my right to smoke." This person should not be surpised when somebody finally says, "Fine, but I'll make it against the law for you to smoke where I eat. That'll solve my problem."
My point is: Behave responsibly and people around you won't have a problem. Behave irresponsibly and people around you will find a means of forcing responsible behaviour.
By the way, the Internet isn't about free speach, its about communication. If you are alway shouting then you should be surprised when somebody muzzles you.
It's not about sharing anymore (Score:2)
In the early days yes, the Internet was about sharing files, ideas, etc.
I have no opinion on the banning of file sharing (although I do have my opinion about Napster [dabuzz.net]) but to assume that today's internet is the same internet of last year is just naive.
The internet is no longer about the free flow of ideas en masse, it is about the profitability of the product of content which is comprised of files, ideas, and other media. I don't see this as 'sharing', it is simply providing access at a fee (banner ads cost me bandwidth, screen real estate, and my eyeballs).
While many of us would like to go back to the days of old where only "geeks" knew how to maneuver around gopher, do we also want to go back to the days of 14.4 modems and T1 lines being the end-all be-all in bandwidth? I mean come on guys, someone has to pay for the OC-468 line across the Atlantic!
Re:Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! (Score:2)
But the blocking being talked about isn't arbitrary. Aside from Media Enforcer, the products discussed are being used to attempt to ensure that there is enough signal (the protocols the people funding the bandwidth are expecting to be able to use) amidst the noise (additional protocols used by those who aren't footing the bill). This isn't any more ominous than news servers refusing to carry binaries groups, or postmasters fighting spam, because of the bandwidth consumed by those practices.
If this turns into ISPs blocking Napster, or backbones fighting Gnutella, then we have a major problem, but students and employees don't have unfettered rights to the bandwidth of their educational institutions or employers.
Re:Calm down (Score:2)
An old lawyer joke:
Q: What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 80?
A: Your honor.
Re:Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:2)
They would be relying on 1/3600th of the bandwidth only if all 3600 students were sending/receiving data continuously. In reality, not everyone is using the network all the time, and when they are, much of the traffic consists mostly of bursts, rather than sustained data transfers... So it's actually quite feasible for 3600 people to share 2 T1s, and much of the time the troughput is very good...
Re:Legitimate use in controlling private networks (Score:2)
All the article talks about is bandwidth shaping by products like Packeteer [packeteer.com], who make a cool little box. I regularly put in packeteer boxes to shape bandwidth so legitimate customers get what they pay for, and the bandwidth hogs are throttled back to reasonable rates. Although the box can be configured as a firewall, it really shines in packet shaping. I can easily configure it to choke every flow from every user, then open up bigger pipes for legitimate applications. The whingey napster users still can DL their metallica, but it takes them longer than going out to buy the CD
The university mentioned in the article is doing just that, limiting napster without breaking it, which would have the students screaming at them for censorship.
The tricks swb mentioned, like domainjacking, makes it tough for the (l)users to break your network, and gives the appearance of complying with corporate legal contracts. But the open nature of the internet still allows determined intelligent users to continue using the internet. Domainjacking is easily defeated by users who either stuff their own hosts file with the address of napster, or run yet another DNS server which ignores the 'jacked one, or tunnel around the firewall block.
the AC
Re:Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:2)
It would actually be interesting to see how much external bandwidth an average person uses during a working day. Does anyone have any info on this?
Of course, I'm excluding people like myself who like to run X from home, or run any sort of trafic analysis countermeasures (cryptonuts, mostly) or who routinely suck in the whole kernel instead of the diffs... So I guess that's pretty much everyone but my mom.
Re:Legitimate use in controlling private networks (Score:2)
//rdj
Re:Legitimate use in controlling private networks (Score:2)
//rdj
Well... (Score:2)
>audio files, listening to streaming audio and
>downloading a video file, and websurfing, all at
>the same time.
>Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...
Well, subtract the big honkin ISO download...
(but then who knows, I might change my mind about Mandrake and go go back to Red Hat. I only have CDs up to 6.1, and RH's @ 6.2 now, so...)
... and you *DO* get my typical computer useage; that's when I'm physically at the terminal, at least.
Now, that's obviouslly gonna change over time. Once my server is up, so will be the bandwidth useage, especially when I'm logged in via X remotely. But once I'm done building my MP3 library...
(I'm in the process of "converting" my entire CD collection (400+ discs) to MP3 format. Even with a (nearly) saturated connection, a 640Kbps connection and Napster/Gnutella is faster, easier, and more convinent than dragging the discs out and ripping them myself)
... that useage is gonna go down.
But you see my point... yes? I'm ONE user on 640Kb dedicated to MYSELF, and it becomes inadaquate with annoying regularity, even with typical useage. In fact, a number of my friends and co-workers have mentioned similar situations to my own.
>3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if
>those 3600 users are doing what a typical student
>would need to do for their schoolwork. It only
>starts becoming inadequate if those students
>start doing stuff that has nothing to do with
>education, like downloading lots of music files,
>or pron.
Which would be all well and good, if the schools were providing that bandwidth FREE of any additional cost. But at my school at least, we had to pay something called a "technology fee" which was supposed to PAY FOR our bandwidth. Oh, and that's not even mentioning that you have to PAY *EXTRA* to live in the "wired" dorm...
... And now, even living in San Francisco, home of some of the most ridiculously high rents you've ever seen, when you add up my rent, utilities, AND my DSL connection; I am, in fact, paying *LESS* per month than I was the year I lived in the dorm.
And in return for LESS money, I get MORE privacy, NO stupid rules, NO intrusive RAs and *MUCH* MORE bandwidth.
So, ultimately, especially given the money that colleges charge for it, 3Mbps *IS* absurdly insufficent for 3600 students.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Oh good GOD!!! (Score:2)
Really! Please tell us. I know sure as HELL that I'd never want to work for, or even grace with a resume, such a putridly dictatorial, big-brother-esque orginisation as you've described in your last couple of posts.
>but all of these methods, even if they work, are
>well beyond the skill level of the lusers here,
>and even if it wasn't we're a lean enough
>organization that everyone *should* have enough
>work to do that by the time they got done beating
>me at the job I get paid to do they'd get canned
>for screwing off..
Two points on this one...
1)
When you put in 10-12 (or more) hours a day, as mant geeks are wont to do, I certianly don't think it's out of line to take the occasional break to check personal email, read slashdot, listen to some music, etc... My employer agrees; and we have pretty much free reign so long as we get our work done. Sad that employers like yours exist who are not so enlightened. Who was it again that you work for, so I can avoid ever sending a resume?
2)
Now this is the odd bit...
A) you expect that your geeks are smart enough to turn out quality code in a timely manner (despite what must be horrible morale, given your oppressive practices), yet you expect them to..
B) be "lusers" who are too dumb to know how to do IP tunneling, use anon proxies, forge IP headers, etc...
???
Who do you work for again. I hope I NEVER have to have ANY dealings with a company such as the one you've described.
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:2)
Yeah, that sounds what the typical user does...
Hell, I rarely saturate the 384 kbps line I use, and I download quite a bit myself.
The trouble is that you are confusing your maximum use with your average use. I'd be willing to bet your average use is <50kbps.
When you add more people to the pipe, how adequate it is depends on what the average person does. If the average person only downloads large files 1% of the time, then 640 Kbps will only seem marginally slower with fifty people than with one. And in fact, a 1 Mbps line with fifty people may well seem faster than a 640 Kbps line, depending on what those users are doing.
3 Mbps is perfectly adequate for 3600 users if those 3600 users are doing what a typical student would need to do for their schoolwork. It only starts becoming inadequate if those students start doing stuff that has nothing to do with education, like downloading lots of music files, or pron.
Yes, I know that some of those students will need to download Linux distributions. However, the number of those students that need to will be low. The number of students out of 3600 trying to download a distribution at any one time will likely be on the order of 1 or 2. That's fine for a 3600 Mbps line, as long as 800 other students aren't trying to simulataneously download the latest Metallica album.
Re:Calm down (Score:2)
This sounds great now, but I worry about down the road. What happens when the RIAA gets some tech ignorant judge to rule that major ISP's have to use this kind of thing, in order to protect the recording industries intellectual property. It may sound far-fetched, but so does patenting hyper-links and being held liable for linking to a site with DeCSS, and those things happened.
Still, the internet is all about file sharing. Hell, a web-page is a file. And it seems that it wouldn't take to much to hack something up that would confuse the filtering software. But for the average user, getting around this might be more difficult. Thankfully, that scenario is all hypothetical now.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
This is the mispelling thread, right? Non sequitur, dude.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:pure stupidity. (Score:2)
where did you people get all these wierd ideas? (Score:2)
when I sell you software, I dont have to give you the source. I can, but I dont have to. and I can give you interface documentation or an API and documentation for that, but I dont have to.
when I sell you a steak, you dont get the entrails of the cow.
if I sell you bandwidth, I can set the terms of this sale to be ANYTHIGN I WANT. I dont want to serve you porn? fine. I want to limit the speed that your napster goes over the line? fine.
there are limitations put on things that you purchase, whether they are built in limitations or limitations imposed after the fact. deal with it. if you dont like the limitations, buy another fuckign product. welcome to real life.
pure stupidity. (Score:2)
I really dont understand why so many people here find it surprising that the real world works this way.
Thank you, Weekly World News (Score:2)
"Could this be the end of the internet?" Bah.
How about, "Companies improving methods to limit bandwidth" or something.
Slashdot: save that headline for a relavant story, guys. You're sounding too much like the mass-media built-to-sell-more-copies drivel that abounds today. Write about stuff that might be interesting to geeks, and be accurate. That's all I want. I'll turn your pages and click your banners for that. Please don't try to play the creative-headline game. Or the tease-buzzword game.
yeah, yeah, moderate me down. But you know you feel the same way.
Open source project: ITEOTIAWKI... and I feel fine (Score:2)
It's the end of the Internet as we know it!
9 o'clock surfing hour,
Doubleclick -- hide and cower,
hosts file, junkbust, cookiekill and hide!
Microsft and antitrust,
dot com's turn to rust,
Lars' Urlich really sucks,
look at our Dew-swilling, Pizza-eating, programmers' guts!
---
Let's Not Forget Altavista's 31337 Warez Search (Score:2)
Interestingly, most of the hot software found in such boolean searches as:
is on public webpages like freeyellow and geocities, and most of the sites are shut down before you get there. But for any shrink-wrap commercial software product you can name, it doesn't take more than an hour or two of searching to find a good download for it.
It happens that Microsoft has a full-time staff doing searches such as these with their own spider to find stashes of Windows 2000; I understand they find and shut down something like 100 sites a day. (Sorry, I tried to find a news report about this to link to and couldn't.)
Maybe Microsoft is able to minimize the impact of piracy this way, but I don't think they can completely eliminate it. Any normal software company simply doesn't have the resources to search out and elimate the warez like Microsoft tries to.
How could anyone hope to control something as popularly appealing and easy to obtain and use as music files?
Re:Fight illiteracy in America! (Score:2)
First I had a key & could let myself into the palce early (otherwise my boss might have had to get up 4 hours earlier than normal & come in at 5:30 am like me which had a snowballs chance in hell of happening). So I used to have a T1 to myself until students would arrive (& after I unlocked the doors for them) & man was that sweet... I used to do ~100 Mb downlaods & store them on zip at work before people would come in because they would take a couple minutes or so...
Now students could not chat (ate to much bandwith), play games (was considered to eat to much bandwith), & could not download any real files (they were not given zip drives). & the network staff was required to enforce these rules, so very little of it happened. Oh btw we also couldn't let students view porn (to many female staff complaints & upset parents), so none of that either.
On the other hand the staff refused to cooperate & would force the dean to allow them to do whatever they wanted as logn as they didn't damage the network (that we could prove). I watched a couple of teachers play Quake (none of our machiens had 3d graphics cards, so anything to much better was out), search for porn (god we did *.gif/*.jpg/*.mpg searches over network file storage every so often & teachers have some sick ass fetishes... yuck...), download huge files (saw a teacher dl all of a redhat install & copy it on to a CD from the staff CD-R), & chat with anyone (you don't want to even hear some of those stories) all at prime hours (bewteen 10 am & 2 pm when the most people are at the campus using the labs). Heck 120 virii infections happened that had nothing to do with stuff the students were doing, but still the dean refused to restrict them.
In the case of a network like ours was I can see very good reasons for using this software & in fact it would be a legal way to enforce these things on those damn staff members to.
Btw if I sound slightly hostile to the general staff it's because I am. They used to put us down as 'just students' when they couldn't do half of what we were doing & gave us no respect while we had to play nice. They didn't ever earn my respect as no one should be treated like we were in a professional enviroment (btw I worked their longer than some teachers who were normally the owrst offenders).
Reality Check (Score:2)
Re:A famous quote... (Score:2)
Communication necessarily involves two parties, so claiming traffic is "yours" is a mistake. I might agree with a revision to your idea which says that communication cannot be "censored" between two, er, consensting adults.
ICMP Spoof (Score:2)
This sounds like those DoS attacks where you can send a forged ICMP "host unreachable" packet to disconnect someone from, say, IRC. Last time I checked, though, this didn't work with the linux TCP/IP stack. Anybody know more about this?
Oh, Packeteer again (Score:2)
This is an old controversy. I was the first to work seriously on Internet congestion and originated packer re-ordering in routers. [fh-koeln.de] There was a worry at the time, mostly from some BBN people, that being able to do this was in a sense, evil. Their concern was that as long as nobody could regulate traffic flows, charging for bandwidth wasn't possible. Cheaper bandwidth made most traffic shaping unnecessary, but now and then, when some new application causes a traffic spike, the issue comes back. Over the last 15 years, cheap bandwidth has always won. This will probably continue until everybody has enough for a few channels of streaming HDTV.
Still, Gnutilla is a bandwidth hog. It looks to me like its directory system is an O(N^2) traffic generator, because it uses a flooding algorithm. Somebody needs to fix that. Soon. Directory traffic should be minimal, and content traffic should mostly be local. Most of the traffic is probably on a small fraction of the content, and that can be handled very efficiently if done right. Gnutilla should be using less bandwidth than MP3.com.
Wow dude (Score:2)
Remember the BBS days? (Score:2)
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
One can always encapsulate a banned protocol in an allowed protocol. FTP could be encapsulated in SMTP if it came to that. Inefficiently, etc, yes, but possible. I have successfully run SLIP and PPP over telnet connections before. Also one can "hide" an MP3 in what appears to be C source code. There is almost always a way around restrictions. Ever wonder why B-level security systems (mandatory access control and multi-level security) are so complex? It is hard to stop people from sending information. And then there are covert channels and all sorts of hard to detect and hard to stop methods of sending info that someone wants to suppress.
Re:Calm down (Score:2)
That's the whole point, isn't it? Why is it that these things always get the whole community all fired up and worried? We can fight it, we know this. Yes, it's a bad thing that we HAVE to fight it, but at least we CAN. Finkployd got it right: we have the best and brightest (if not the most, then at least the most dedicated) people on our side. Even IF the big shots decided to go with packet blocking, there will be ways around it. If not, we'll find ways around it. Nothing like this ever lasts. It's almost foolish of us to get worried over nothing.
--Forager.
Re:pure stupidity. (Score:2)
"...I should have the right to determine what kinds of traffic I will deliver to my users..."
Isn't that called Facism?
Umm, no, that's called ownership. If it's his company, and his T1 transmission equipment, he has the right to set usage terms, including terms covering the types of data services that will be delivered to the customer. As long as the customer has an alternative (another provider), there's no fascism involved. BTW, this is why monopolies are considered a bad thing (even when their products don't crash five times a day :)
In practice, of course, no ISP that restricted access in this way would last very long, unless they were doing it "for the children." I can see this sort of thing fitting in nicely with other schemes to restrict "harmful" or inappropriate content for kids ("If we can't weed out that 'sinful' music, we'll block out all music downloads!"). So eventually people may be asking for this kind of service.
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:2)
Lars would.
Regardless of who would care, its irritating that anyone would try to say that my data is less important than their's is, and thus should be sent to Japan before I get the packets. I would think that it is in everyone's best interest, in a technical sense, for all data to spend as little time in transit as possible, thus freeing bandwidth for more data.
Re:Open source project: ITEOTIAWKI... and I feel f (Score:2)
That's vile, it starts with a monopoly trial,
Rights to free thought, and public files.
Eye of a mastermind, listen to his work burn.
World serves its own needs.
Dummy, don't you know what the web breeds?
Fear, fight, downright hype.
It's a conspiracy undercutting all that the world holds dear -
No fear. We'll stop 'em yet.
See how far they get.
"You vitriolic, unpatriotic, think-you-know-it-all kids!"
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it, and I feel fine...
The other night I dreamt of wires,
Cut apart and lit afire,
Microsoft again conspires against Linus T's desires.
LinuxFest blown amess, MacOS and the rest.
Lines stripped, bandwidth crippled, kill slashdot, battle, uh oh...
This means no surf, off my turf, Bill Gates is nothing worth.
Community, community, community of lies.
Offer me websolutions, offer me software alternatives, and I decline!
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it...
It's the end of the internet as we know it, and I feel fine...
I admit, it's pretty weak and lame (and perhaps uninformed), but I gave it a shot! ;)
-heidiporn
Re:disturbing (Score:2)
Now, having said that, I will don my asbestos suit. With each passing post of this nature, the doomsayers and rebels and freedom fighters jump out with "How can anyone POSSIBLY regulate ME?" It can be done and will be done. Court decisions are overturned. Laws are changed (that's why we in the US still have a Congress). And it is damn hard to lobby successfully for something that has obvious legal problems. Just as getting rid of scheduling of narcotics will solve the drug problem (trivial solution), making illicit material legal on the internet will cause the problem to go away. That won't happen. Come out of fantasy land. The honeymoon will be over iff we don't do something to police the problem from within. Only then can we get laws in our favor. We are not in a vacuum. Our actions have reprocusions. Take responsibility people!
After reading the article, I have no qualms with some of the "solutions" (read adhesive bandage) that mete out bandwidth by application. I have no problem with people policing their private networks. I have always believed that if we as an online community do not start policing our actions from within, someone else will do it for us--and none of us will like it. I mean, there is no inalienable right in the US to Internet (just as there is no right to a television, camcorder, computer, etc) (contrast with the ideas of the new President/King of Syria).
In short, so that everyone is minimally satisfied, the ridiculous concept of "Blue Laws" should be instituted. Some of the products mentioned in the article are a start in that direction. It only takes several idiots to commit some ridiculous crime that pisses off the wrong person then hide behind the first amendment to really screw up a good thing.
The Free Kevin movement is a good example. Whether or not he should have been freed, he managed to piss off the wrong people. Those that disclaimed "Free Kevin" were merely exercising their first amendment rights. However, like it or not, Mr. Mitnik's antics managed to make people aware the subterfuge possible by an interconnected world. This is what landed him his sentence. These antics, while (arguably) harmless (like the DDoS debacle earlier this year), affected pocketbooks--Da Benjis if you will.
Before I ramble too much more, let me state, for the record:
Napster does traffic in (currently) illegal material as well as legal material.
Squatter's rights as a means of enforcement will never be tolerated by the government.
If something illegal is currently occurring somewhere, it is only a matter of time before the government does something (either regulate by denying service or by taking a substantial take on the profits).
Therefore, if we would like to keep our perceived internet rights, we better clean the place up. And soon.
The Internet no longer exists in a vacuum (for better or worse). What transpires here (cyberspace) affects everyone, whether or not they even know what the internet is. We as a community are on borrowed time. And if you don't think so, ask yourself what keeps the Internet going? Government regulated industries throughout the world. What would it take for these governments to start regulating the service, say, to the OFF position rather than trying to foil the unfoilable trafficker in illicit material?
Re:disturbing (Score:2)
My father ran an 31337 board in the early to mid eighties on a wonderful Commode (sic) 64 and 128. I thought that was well and good and the thought never occurred to me to police my actions online since I grew up in an 31337 household. We always had the latest updates to Fast Hack 'em (Let's see how many people know what I'm talking about), monster Warez lists, 20 Meg hard drive, and close to 1500 flippies (homemade with a hole puncher). I didn't see the full ramifications of what I had been doing for close to 20 years until recently. I am trying to stay neutral and understand the vacuum that existed those many years ago is vanishing and the sound of lawyers rushing in is deafening.
Let's take the Warez, pr0n, mp3s, and everything else back underground. Make it extremely difficult to traffic in illicit materials. The only way to do that is for the 31337 of the world to go back to the way it was done before. Go into hiding. Don't advertise. Restrict the 31337 areas. Just as dope smuggling rings that get large are busted, don't let your 31337 circle get too large.
Drug dealers (outside of inner cities) generally don't hang out a shingle. Neither should Warez sites. I don't think the problem can be solved and by forcing a showdown, everyone loses. Instead of priding yourself on your collection of broken links, pride yourself on how many links work. To do that, you have to keep a very low profile. You want votes on t50? Why? The mob figured out a long time ago that you can thrive by keeping a very low profile (unless they have purchased the local gov't). I don't think any w4r3z d00d own any government officals.
Please, let's stop flaunting these (arguably) minor tortes before those with the power (and that is definitely not those who are 31337) make those tortes felonies--like what our good friend Mitnik did for us.
Re:Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:2)
The internet is too important to businesses to simply go away. Commerce seems to dictate the way that laws go nowadays, unfortunately. I will be interested to see how businesses try to stop information sharing among private users while still keeping the connections open between themselves and their credit-card using buyers.
Banning FTP? Ridiculous. If any governmental entity attempted to ban FTP, people would simply develop a new standard which operated on a different port.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Incidentally, do you know where "malapropism" (to correct YOUR typo
Re:Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:2)
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End of Internet Predicted! (Score:2)
I am *so* sick of "End of Internet" postings, I have been seeing them for fifteen years now.
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Non sequitur, dude.
"I said quod erat demonstrandum, baby
Ooh, you speak French!" - "Airhead," Thomas Dolby
This proves my law about spelling flames, which is that all spelling flames have to include a spelling error, and at least half of all grammar flames have to spell it "grammer."
Already Happening With SPAM (Score:2)
Lenny
Steganography (sp?) (Score:2)
My spelling may be way off here, because I don't really follow it, but I have a program that will automatically split a file into specified file types of specified sizes, and build HTML indexes for them so they can be easily downloaded. For example, a 600k bitmap, that appears to be a single black pixel, but contains 1/6th of an MP3.
Perhaps if a packet filter identified the file by taking samples of the content, it would allow a file like this to be sent?
Re:Better ban TCP/IP, ftp, even text file xfer... (Score:2)
This has been said before, so I can't take credit for it. What the big guys really want is a T.V. with a buy button. This is absolutely the truth. They don't want the Internet to stay open and free (as in speech). They want it to become just another marketing tool. And the government wants to be sure that they also get a cut out of it. So, new net taxes and extra sales taxes, and ___________ taxes. It's just a matter of time.
While I truly hope you are the one that is right, I fear that you aren't. Big business and the government must control and regulate anything that people enjoy. If people enjoy it, there has to be a way to scrape some money out of it right? Too bad, the net was so much fun about two years ago. Now it's just as ridiculous as going to the local mall and watching the teenagers get into fights about who has the coolest hair style/color while trying to fight your way into whatever store you came for.
It was fun while it lasted, but the net community needs to face the reality that business will not let it live as it is.
Re:Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:2)
Not too likely. I fail to see how this is any different from alt.binaries.* on Usenet. Plenty of companies and universities no longer carry them (or any newsgroups for that matter) for the exact same reason sites now wish to restrict bandwidth used by Napster: It uses up an inordinate amount of bandwidth at the expense of those who wish or need to do real work. If this is the monumental civil rights violation you make it out to be, why aren't you up in arms about office dwellers and university students not getting their Usenet pr0n?
Ill conceived and Hasty (Score:2)
Quite the converse. My fear is that file sharing, media streaming, bandwidth hogging applications will not be stopped. The developers of these applications are under no obligation to stick to their current easy to recognise ports and protocols.
This is a treand that has already begun thanks to mis-configured firewalls. I maintain the code for a tcp based client/server communication protocol used by my companies products. When choosing port numbers for the servers I cannot choose whether to use ports between 0 and 1023 or 1024 and up based on any criteria more rational than "how much chance does this port have of successfully negotiating any firewalls between the client and the server?".
I am under a lot of pressure to simply throw in the towel and recast the entire protocol as HTML over HTTP so it can at least escape networks that have a proxy. My boss unfortunately has heard of XML - I can see the end comming.
In the long run it seems that all protocols will converge to running over port 80 looking enough like HTML that these so called smart filtering firewalls can't tell the difference.
And that will be the bad thing. Every grey featureless protocol looking like every other grey featureless protocol. Bloated with loads of headers all telling lies. A great loss to the richness that the internet once was or could have been.
I still imagine a world where many different protocols exist, each suited to its task. Sadly this seems to be becomming more and more of a pipe dream.
Re:disturbing (Score:2)
With each passing post of this nature, the doomsayers and rebels and freedom fighters jump out with "How can anyone POSSIBLY regulate ME?" It can be done and will be done. Court decisions are overturned. Laws are changed (that's why we in the US still have a Congress).
Perhaps you are forgetting a slew of amendments written to protect us from this regulation.
The 4th Amendment The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
No company has the right to police our personal hard drives, and the government can only do so when there is probable cause for some specific crime and when a search warrant has been issued.
The 6th Amendment In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
This means that in the event that the government does get a search warrant for the materials on someone's hard drive, that someone has a right to know for what reason his hard drive has been seized and who his accusers are. Never mind these bullshit NetPD lists.
Now, the record companies may point out this phrase from the 5th Amendment:nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. To that, I counter with the 9th Amendment:The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Ergo, the loss of profits [read:pennies] does not justify the clampdown on file sharing that the RIAA would have you believe is utterly justified.
Something illegal is currently occurring somewhere, it is only a matter of time before the government does something (either regulate by denying service or by taking a substantial take on the profits)
Remember, the 12th Amendment allows the people to elect their Senators. The power to vote is a power we would do well to exercise.
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:2)
WTF? (Score:2)
how in the world would any companies manage to actually stop file sharing? i mean, suing napster and running them out of businees and thus forcing their server to go down is one thing, but the is no legal action anyone could take to stop other protocols. and even so, how would they do it? the major backbones would all have to have restrictions over what ports/protocols could be used. given how even script kiddies seem to ger around things like napster bans and whatnot, it seems like companies would have to invest more manpower (and thus money) in keeping people from xfering files than it would be worth... even if they are the companies being hurt by piracy. This story looks like so much typical slashdot FUD. oh no, your rights are being taken away. big brother is watching everything you do. yeah, right. as if i'm important enough. c'mon, this is ridiculous.
Increase the bandwidth? no.. that would make sense (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Oh my god... (Score:3)
You bastard!
I don't see a problem (Score:3)
Not as bad... (Score:3)
The article just covers some of the more interesting developements as we move to a distributed media environment.
Media Enforcer, written by a white-wearing blackhat it would seem, is a tool for tracking the popularity of media files. Actually fingering individuals is silly, IMHO, but tracking mass usage is a very useful tool in attracting advertisers with real income models.
The bandwidth shaping tools will most likely become a bit more commonplace. You don't want the kids dl'ing mp3s to interfere with your streamed-on-demand newscasts now do you? Kids comps get 128k, dad gets 2mbs. That's seems like normal evolution of bandwidth to me.
I really didn't see any need of fear-mongering from this article. That'll come when TW implements a hardware solution in all their routers to give the highest priority to AOL packets.
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Re:FTP vs Napster/Gnutella (Score:3)
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Re:WTF? (Score:3)
Obsolete but powerful. (Score:3)
I agree, but try telling that to the fat, wealthy record executive. His fortune is built on this system and he, sure as shit happens, is NOT going to tear down his own empire. Do you think he really cares what the people think? Those guys have the idea in their head that they can tell us what we want. Unfortunately, that idea is not too far from the mark, given the popularity of groups like Kid Rock and N'Sync.
Money is power. If you propose a system, no matter how wonderful, if it does not generate money, it has no power. The file sharing utilities are used by a very small minority of users, and since the recording industry currently has the power, they are using it to squash this new medium.
But progress is a cruel fact of life. Eventually, recording industries will be "selected" out. The smart ones will evolve into something else, and the inflexible will make the transition to the new model as painful as possible as they are sent to the great beyond kicking and screaming. Either this, or there will be a new digital tyranny imposed on us. It all depends how the general public (with their spending money) reacts. The public holds the power, but is largely ignorant of the new technology. The recording industry will try to sell their method. We must sell the alternatives.
Re:Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:4)
Slashdot: you guys need better QC on your editors. This headline/alert was just blatantly wrong and, if you want to retain your credibility, you'd better start taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Considering that credibility is really all you have, you're being awfully careless with it.
Not enough bandwith for 3,600 students. (Score:4)
Agreed... that bandwidth is patently absurd! (Score:4)
But 3600 people shareing two lousy T1's?!?!?!?
Hell, you may as well just drop the ethernet connection and revert to 56K if you're counting on 1/3600th of 3Mb!
I have a 640/640Kb DSL connection (equivelent to just over a third of a single T1, IIRC) TO MYSELF at home, and I STILL saturate that connection from time to time.
Just last night actually, I ran out of bandwidth. Between downloading the latest Mandrake ISO for my soon to be functioning again web, file, and mail server, grabbing a handful of MP3s, listening to a realaudio broadcast of a radio station I like but get no reception on my stereo, downloading the new X-Men trailer, and casual websurfing on top of all that (Flash and Shockwave sites suck a good bit of bandwidth as well), and you can easily saturate 640Kb! Subtract the ISO download for the average traffic, and you STILL get a hearty chunk of bandwidth. But add the server, and online gameing, and you're right bach up there.
And I'm not even running that server yet! AND I pay the telco a *LOT* less for that connection than I payed to live in the dorms back at school!
We're not just talking about free speech here, we're talking sheer stupidity! Just what kind of neanderthal crams 3600 people onto a pair of T1s? If 640Kbps is inadaquate for ONE user, how the HELL is 3Mbps sufficent for 3600???
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Re:Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:4)
It smacks of unnecessary alarmism designed to generate message traffic... Trolling, almost.
Correct. What you need to understand is that the Slashdot editors make millions of dollars from stories like this. They do not understand the issues they are discussing, but they know when they put up articles about hot topics, that it will line their pockets even further from all of the click throughs.
Lastly, the deployment of these boxxen on networks could be challenged under the First Amendment by a particularly talented ACLU/EFF type law team.
Incorrect. The internet data lines are owned by private corporations who can do whatever they want and put whatever restrictions they want on them. There is no free speech guaranteed on the internet, since the internet media is not publically owned (like the airwaves, or street corners are).
Re:Evil? (Score:4)
Any good rant deserves a good nit-pick.
The reason Napster is being "evil" is because they are (imagined to be) making money, by exploiting IP without sharing a slice with the creators of the product. If Napster had started out by drawing up contracts with the big media whores^H^H^H^H^H^Hcompanies, they would have been in good shape.
Napster lawyers had to know (unless they're idiots) that these lawsuits would be coming, but they decided that the company would be easier to start if they got it off the ground first, and settled the license issues later. Napster might shut down if the get bitchslapped too hard, but I'm willing to bet that they will eventually pony up, just like MyMP3 did.
All this means almost nothing to MP3 warez kiddies, who will probably all be using Gnutella to collect their Kid Rock "songs" by then anyway.
Re:WTF? (Score:4)
Heh heh.
Your lazy spelling resulted in a great malipropism to coin as a jargon term!
From now on, I'm going to refer to any tired, over-reported and meaningless article as a "typicle".
Definitely a problem.. (Score:5)
Anyway, I am getting concerned about cable and DSL companies that want to take similar policies. I know that many companies scan their subscribers' computers looking for anything remotely troublesome. You could probably get your connection shut off for even having identd listening on an FTP port, even if in.ftpd or whatever is not installed on your system.
I know that bandwidth is an issue, but it will always be an issue.. I think you could justifiably block a service for a certain amount of time, until your bandwidth supply is enhanced, but they should always be temporary things.
Of course, one thing that my family's cable provider (@home) does is limit upstream bandwidth to some pretty low numbers. I think it's sitting at 112kbps right now. Certainly, that's still a pretty good speed, but it does have an impact...
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Ski-U-Mah!
Stop the MPAA [opendvd.org]
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! (Score:5)
Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted! [tuxedo.org]
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Unnecessary Alarmism (Score:5)
Comment removed (Score:5)
Fight illiteracy in America! (Score:5)
Legitimate use in controlling private networks (Score:5)
Our strategy for suppressing napster is tough firewalling, user education, as well as what I call "domainjacking" -- making my nameservers primary for off-limits domains (opening www.napster.com gets you the copyright section of our computer policy). Domainjacking coupled with restrictions on what nameservers you can query is very effective as lots of these types of apps have hostnames coded into them that will now never resolve properly.
There are many examples like this where businesses have an obligation to their shareholders, their employees, customers or others to constrain the flow of information they have. It used to be easy to block stuff, but with the advent of gnutella, freenet, etc it's gotten much, much more difficult.
Having tools and techniques to block these applications is important to those of us that have to defend the legal security of our private networks.
FTP vs Napster/Gnutella (Score:5)
As gfor shutting down the internet... well microsoft claims it would hurt the economy if we just broke them up...
peanuts compared to the damage that would be done by shutting down the internet...now where'd I put that copy of Wildcat BBS...
Most of this discussion is clueless, was Re:Unnece (Score:5)
a) It's their hardware and their data connection. They are entitled to do whatever they please with it. If they choose to block traffic I want, too bad. I can choose to vote with my dollars. Anyway, before you cry heresy and mark this flamebait, I would like to point out that this is _exactly_ the argument a sysadmin makes when blocking spam. The H/W is theirs and they don't have to relay for you.
b) They ain't made no router big enough to pass multi-gigabit backbone traffic and filter packets at the same time. Therefore, They ain't no fucking way they can cut off napster and your other favorite apps at the backbone (but please, if you are one of those "pseudointellectius" types, do continue to say draconian, I understand it is a necessary part of your diet :).
I believe point b) entirely mitigates further discussion on this topic. Go home...there's nothing to see here.
Try reading the article! (Score:5)
Re:Try reading the article! (Score:5)
And I, like you, am skeptical that they can really do what they claim. I'm curious what kind of heuristics a software package like this would need to employ to quickly and effectively block packets with a low error rate. After all, the failure of various software packages to effectively classify network flows based on content (for the purpose of QoS) shows how difficult it is to do something like this. Simple pattern matching ain't gonna do the job, and more complex heuristics would still be error prone, and less efficient. How do you identify a Napster packet from any other, which simply contains two 16-bit shorts with a command and length, and a payload? Search for two sets of 16-bit shorts at the start of a packet which are within a given range? What happens if I happen to be transferring a binary file that looks like that? Do I get blocked? In other words, this ain't an easy job. :)