The Null Device

It used to be said that electrons have no passports; soon, this may no longer be so, thanks to geolocation technology, which allows Internet users' geographic and political location to be identified. This, and the will to use it (two words: Senator Alston) could mean that tomorrow's Internet will be partitioned across geographical boundaries, with content restricted according to individual nations' censorship laws.

(When it becomes a possibility, if sites not implementing geographical censorship and keeping their what's-allowed rules up to date are found to be liable, it could also serve as a means to get all those pesky small sites off the Net, reserving the medium for gigantic corporations who can afford international censorship lawyers and geolocation.)

There are 2 comments on "":

Posted by: mihaly
http://
Fri Jan 4 16:00:43 2002

They used to say that some electrons couldnt take a corner at speed collect them, they'll be useful!

Posted by: Jimbob
http://the-fix.org
Sat Jan 5 03:35:00 2002

I firmly believe that the internet (or Internet-2, or some other replacement network) can always get around these things; if content is restricted in such a way, people will find other ways to communicate through an electronic network; maybe through inventions such as FreeNet, maybe through something else. There's always a way, and although the corporatization of the internet does disturb me, i'm not afraid of it. It's like MP3s; the fact is, encoders exist, decoders exist, a means of transfer exists, so you can't get rid of them. You can't un-learn knowledge.

All that _may_ or _may not_ have made sense. I dunno,

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