Hmmmm...

Privatizing brings in Privateers carrying Letters of Marque (unless someone patents the process) to enforce rules or even laws...

(shakes head)

Sadly, he didn't mark out the huge Caldera on the ocean floor...

All right, so they'll encrypt it...

Who gets the keys?

Who would *you* trust with the keys?

Bruce Schneier has, as a security wonk, recommended the "open" router; If someone cracks your key (or pass-phrase) the cops will assume (yes, ASS-U-ME) that you provided it and approve of how access was used.

An open WiFi router should, in any rational analysis, disclaim responsibility for other's use of the router so you are NOT the "gate-keeper".

The hell of this is that laws can be made to make open routers "illegal" but, absent "real" security...

The only way to guarantee security is to turn off router-level wifi and force wired connections for all client systems w/i your house-hold.

I'd like to see a non-technical cop set up router security and have a competition for cracking his pass-phrase and/or key.

Blogs are so very different from the "true" community builder: UseNet.

While UseNet is subject to spam, it's "many to many" nature allows for communities to form and maintain themselves. Unfortunately NO OTHER INTERNET structure supports the same "many to many" connectivity that allows the formation of a community. A blog-- or facebook, gather, linkedin, etc-- assumes a pre-existing connection BEFORE enabling communication.

UseNet is as good as dead and the communities-- like "Callahan's"-- are hanging on by their fingernails as more and more ISPs drop UseNet connectivity. Google is not helping, either, since you need to use their we interface rather than, say, pointing nn/trn/etc at google's server pool.

(shrugs)

Web-resident "social networking" (what a laugh!) services are just using that as a draw to bring advertising to the eyes of the people seduced into using the "network".

I see no way to bring back UseNet... because there is not enough money to be made by providing the connectivity. I miss it and will be mourning it for a long time.

This, I think, would implement a Distributed Denial Of Sanity attack.

How typical, France re-invents the Maginot firewall. Churchill: "Where are your anti-circumvention procedures?" French high command: "Aucune..."

With the migration towards a non-PC-centric world of handsets and tablets under a corporation's control of apps you are "allowed" to download, it reminds me of Brian Stableford's story "The Florians". When does "approved censorship" expand in scope to hide information from us? The first amendment to the US Constitution (FWIW these days) was to ensure an unencumbered ability to not merely express opinions, but, really to ensure that we can hear as many voices as we want to. "Political correctness is an effort to abrogate the First Amendment under the assumption that there exists a right to not be offended and that it has priority." - The Toberman