Thursday, October 26, 2006
A Net of Control
"Picture, if you will, an information infrastructure that encourages censorship, surveillance and suppression of the creative impulse. Where anonymity is outlawed and every penny spent is accounted for. Where the powers that be can smother subversive (or economically competitive) ideas in the cradle, and no one can publish even a laundry list without the imprimatur of Big Brother. Some prognosticators are saying that such a construct is nearly inevitable. And this infrastructure is none other than the former paradise of rebels and free-speechers: the Internet." --Steven Levy
The Internet, until most recently has been open to anyone, relatively free of restrictions. Can we really afford to operate on today's Internet without security? A friend of mine--who at one time spent countless hours on the computer hacking, figuring out HTML codes, and learning other computing tricks that were not known by the masses--told me that the era of Internet freedom had already come and gone long ago with the end of dial-up access and AOL being the #1 online service provider. "You used to be able to do almost anything if you knew the commands. Now there's all this software that takes the fun out of it," he said.
"The best-known implementation of this scheme is the work in progress at Microsoft known as Next Generation Secure Computing Base (formerly called Palladium). It will be part of Longhorn, the next big Windows version, out in 2006. Intel and AMD are onboard to create special secure chips that would make all computers sold after that point secure. No more viruses! And the addition of “digital rights management” to movies, music and even documents created by individuals (such protections are already built into the recently released version of Microsoft Office) would use the secure system to make sure that no one can access or, potentially, even post anything without permission." --Steven Levy
But who really wants an insecure Internet? While we deserve our privacy, don't we need our protections as well? We could think of it as the equivalent of locking up the house while we're in the shower, and no none else is home. No intrusions into our space. However, those people who were the first on the Net and are witnessing the progression toward restrictiveness are not happy, I'm sure. As for me, I like my computer as clean and secure as possible, even if that means restricted access. "Unfortunately, our increasingly Internet-based society will get only the freedom it fights for." But anarchy can't work, and freedom comes with a price...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3606168/
The Internet, until most recently has been open to anyone, relatively free of restrictions. Can we really afford to operate on today's Internet without security? A friend of mine--who at one time spent countless hours on the computer hacking, figuring out HTML codes, and learning other computing tricks that were not known by the masses--told me that the era of Internet freedom had already come and gone long ago with the end of dial-up access and AOL being the #1 online service provider. "You used to be able to do almost anything if you knew the commands. Now there's all this software that takes the fun out of it," he said.
"The best-known implementation of this scheme is the work in progress at Microsoft known as Next Generation Secure Computing Base (formerly called Palladium). It will be part of Longhorn, the next big Windows version, out in 2006. Intel and AMD are onboard to create special secure chips that would make all computers sold after that point secure. No more viruses! And the addition of “digital rights management” to movies, music and even documents created by individuals (such protections are already built into the recently released version of Microsoft Office) would use the secure system to make sure that no one can access or, potentially, even post anything without permission." --Steven Levy
But who really wants an insecure Internet? While we deserve our privacy, don't we need our protections as well? We could think of it as the equivalent of locking up the house while we're in the shower, and no none else is home. No intrusions into our space. However, those people who were the first on the Net and are witnessing the progression toward restrictiveness are not happy, I'm sure. As for me, I like my computer as clean and secure as possible, even if that means restricted access. "Unfortunately, our increasingly Internet-based society will get only the freedom it fights for." But anarchy can't work, and freedom comes with a price...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3606168/
