Jonathan Zittrain On the Future of the Internet

uctpjac writes "Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford and renowned cyberlaw scholar, gave a lecture explaining that the Internet has to be taken out of the hands of the anarchists, the libertarians, and the State, and handed back to self-policing communities of experts. If we don't do this, he believes the Internet will suffer 'self-closure' — the open system will seal itself off when the inability to put its own house in order leads to a take-over by government and business. The article summarizes Zittrain's points and notes, "Forces of organized interests that do not play by the rules, like malware peddlers, identity thieves and spammers are allowing another army of interests — corporate protectionists, often — to demand centralized, authoritarian solutions. This is the future of the Net unless we stop it.'"

No No No

[Anonymous Coward]

The future is the same as the past: porn porn porn.

The strongest economic and technological driving force in the universe. Forget going to Mars - you want to develop more technology, just let porn do the job.

Re:I didn't get it.

[RiotingPacifist]

could be worse, he could of said blagotubes (http://xkcd.com/181/).
I have to admit that i didn't even bother reading more than the summary, saying something has to be taken out of the hands of anarchists is never a good start, because by anarchists he means people!

Re:Why is that so bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word that we call a "possessive" is just a word that is accepted by the efforts of very large numbers of people who realize that a possessive is already possessive and so doesn't need an apostrophe to protect the "s" from the other letters.

Re:Another Yank With Bad Grammar

[iminplaya]

...what's your excuse for voting in a lying HALFWIT fearmonger like "Dubya"?

The TV told us to.

Re:okaay

[Yetihehe]

Why not? Because the net will contain sub-internets within game worlds. sub-internets will be the new places to hang out.

Yeah, but thos subnets have all the problems of internet plus their own. In internet we have spam, in SL we have flying penises and griefing.

Re:No No No

[smittyoneeach]

Without the hope of future customers, who would invest in development?

The government: "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy." (CivIV)

Re:Why is that so bad?

[CptNerd]

Hm.

Simply taking elementary graphics, applying new, obfuscatory, generally reliable algorithms processed heuristically, you utilize secure, effective Internet technology.

Wasn't That Fun?

USENET Cabal

[wiredlogic]

Hand everything over to the USENET cabal. They can surely whip this internet thing into shape. Okay. The "cabal" is probably down to one 40yr old guy still living in mom's basement. But we can dream can't we?