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Saturday, January 31, 2004

See You on the Darknet 

See You on the Darknet - Why we don't really want Internet security. By Paul Boutin: "Walker's scenario is credible enough that Newsweek covered his essay in an article that only de-Orwellized it to the extent of changing Big Brother to 'Big Government.' But Newsweek also added the missing part of the story: a more nuanced sense of how Internet users would react to such a system. Using the Net without the feeling you're being watched, downloading and uploading stuff you'd get in trouble for leaving on your desk—come on, that's a major part of its appeal. Any privacy clampdown would boost outlaw computing as surely as the 55 mph limit did speeding*. 'Picture digital freedom fighters huddling in the electronic equivalent of caves, file-swapping and blogging under the radar of censors and copyright cops,' Newsweek concluded. They might as well have added: Cooooooooooool.

An ad hoc alliance of techno-rebels covertly transferring unauthorized data in defiance of network authorities—sound familiar, Neo? It's such a popular scenario that the same Microsoft researchers leading the company's secure computing efforts wrote a paper two years ago describing this inevitable backlash, which they dubbed the darknet. The darknet! Jeez, are they trying to make piracy cool? Who'd want to hang out on the boring old Internet when the other kids are on the darknet? The term has been picked up by mainstream publications including Rolling Stone, which defined darknets (plural) as 'file-trading networks created by and for small, private groups of people.' Instead of relying on KaZaA, these groups use programs like WASTE that let them swap wares on discrete networks without being remotely tracked. Even a cop with a subpoena would be hard-pressed to detect such a network's existence.

Microsoft's paper flatly warns that trying to shut down these networks could backfire:

There is evidence that the darknet will continue to exist and provide low cost, high-quality service to a large group of consumers. This means that in many markets, the darknet will be a competitor to legal commerce. From the point of view of economic theory, this has profound implications for business strategy: for example, increased security may act as a disincentive to legal commerce."

...

"...As the Net gets more powerful, other powers will feel increasingly threatened by it and try to take it under control. But to do so, they'll need the complicity of those who build the hardware and software. If the Consumer Electronics Show is any clue, the gadget makers have figured out that if the powers that be get their digital imprimatur and their secure Internet, the real money will be in darknets."

The Darknet has you, Neo...uhhh...just keep your eye on attempts to build anti-piracy protection into hardware. It'll never work becausae another company will make its name by selling its products without such protection. Barring massive government intervention, the net will always be a wild-west of information. And it should be, that's part of its value. It is a place where ideas may be exchanged freely and without oversight. If democratic advocates in China can use the net to help push for more freedoms in their state, than the music industry can find a way to deal with piracy. It's an exchange that's worth it.

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