Infrastructure

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.

I, Robot

Perhaps the timing was too perfect, for last night Violet and I watched “I, Robot” with Will Smith for the first time. This morning, I got up and saw the news. As you may already know, AIG has paid $165 million in bonuses from the federal bailout money, and congress is working on writing tax laws in response to try to mop it all up. While I may be coming from my usual unusual angle, I am reminded of this film.

News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090319/ap_on_go_co/aig_outrage
Film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/

I’ve no doubt that all of mankind can stand there, watch AIG pay those bonuses, and feel horrified at the thought of $165 million in fresh, federal bailout money being washed away. As one focusing on public infrastructure, I see robots.

As everyone stands horrified, it is robots that pay these bonuses. Our robots are the trusted, publicly documented agencies of our civilization, and they respond with built-in precision. The robots of our day are our rules, our procedures and our laws.

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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.

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