Then in his opinion, wouldn't email be the same? It's stored on some 3rd party mail server somewhere... and for that matter, wouldn't all form of electronic communication that gets copied/stored somewhere not under your personal control also be classified as a "man in the middle attack"?
No, email is not centralized (unless you refer to gmail and other BIG email providers). You know that you can run your own email server? - It's easy.
It amazes me that people think Moglen is overstating the case. He is not. Let's forget the datamining for commerce. Let's just think about what a simple post on a social network can do with ones life. People have been murdered over a post on social networks by goverments. People have been held in custody (hi USA) over posting a qoute from family guy... Moglen is right. Everything you post on facebook, twitter, hell any service that has an office in the USA will get into the FBI, CIA an SS databanks and you will get in trouble if you post something those warmongers don't like. Moglen is right. Using centralized, datamined networks is stupid and even more dangerous. It takes a lot of effort not to see that.
Actually, it is very easy to overlook this or ignore it (since it is so convenient). And unfortunately, it takes a lot of effort to open people's eyes so that they can see it.
Besides the term doesn't apply -- in a man in the middle attack, the man in the middle needs to be invisible.
To the contrary: the term applies absolutely. You just need to apply it on the social level instead on the technical level. Who is aware about FB (and its use of the information), while using FB? While it is visible, it is not perceived by the users as being the man-in-the-middle.
Moglen is absolutely correct and I am very impressed by this great analogy: Facebook (and some other "social" media) is a man-in-the-middle attack; it's just not a technical hack but a social hack. Best 20 second explanation ever.
Google might very well join them soon - if they use profiling on gmail conversations.
Google is not censoring anything. They are not stopping freedom of speech.
They ARE redirecting blogger blogs through ccTLDs.
Correct. But why is a user outside of the USA redirected to a ccTLD, if he asks for "blogger.com"? More and more corporations are doing this redirection and it sucks big time. I, and probably most people, know how to write "google.de"or "google.fr" - if I write google.com, I want the same page as users in the USA. And the same is true for amazon, dell, hp, blogger, twitter etc.
I am against ACTA and I have called my congressman as has my son to ask him to not support it. Interestingly, he knew little about it and wanted information. We had a fairly long call. At the end of the call he said that he would not vote for it.
Who is your congressman?
Thanks, I learned something today (even while Wikipedia is blacked out).
Legal language != intuitive (used) language
...useful arts
LOL. What the heck is "useful arts"? And what has it to do with copyright? So, not-so-useful arts get no copyrights?
You can criticize free (as in beer) stuff, but if you want free (as in freedom) stuff, you should create/build/host it on your own or under the umbrella of free licenses (e.g. GPL, creative commons, etc.).
You can't have it built and run by any profit-oriented corporation and then expect that you can use it freely (as in freedom).
Those are the rules and they are known since centuries. No exception.
Absolutely right: If you don't pay, you are not the customer, but the product. And you do not have any rights; you actually wave them when uploading any content.
BTW: Today you can easily host the content on your own Web site - it's very easy.
If you relativize "good" and "evil", you end of having nothing.
For the evil the good is evil.
This is absolutely wrong. My wife's Math books last semester were $400 more for the text book over the e-book version. That paid for our new iPad.
OK, now we know the difference. How is this possible? Did the textbooks cost $800 and by using the electronic versions you got 50% off - or did you pirate textbooks that cost otherwise $400?
And, what I also do not understand: I also studied Math and Physics; textbooks cost some money, but $400 per semester is quite a lot.
Actually when somebody is paying by the hour instead for the work done, you can bet that the hour is not too productive.
In many cases maybe your data is even more secure in a cloud than on your own servers, especially if you choose your 'cloud' carefully (outside of your country/jurisdiction).
The real threats to your data are your own employees and your government. The outside 'hackers' come as a very distant third.
Actually the real thread comes from the government, where the cloud provider resides. If you are running a corporation in Europe, it is probably illegal to use US based cloud providers (even, if your data stays on their European servers) for anything that contains user or employee data - and this is thanks to the Patriot Act or similar, which gives the US government the right to inspect all all accounts and their data of an US provider. And this is illegal to (most) European countries law. And since this is illegal and the European company knows this fact, the European firm can get itself in trouble, when using cloud serviced from a US provider.
Somehow the whole story is a deja vu. Remember, how encryption could not get exported from the US market? This created lots of opportunities for encryption software vendors outside of the USA. I am just looking for the global (minus USA) cloud providers to pop up and making loads of money by just replicating existing cloud models and running them in a different jurisdiction.
Fully agreed. As long as most cloud providers are US companies (or other global companies with a strong US presence) and the Patriot Act (and similar) exist, there is no way that a non-US corporation could even think about using their services for any sensitive data. Of course, for Web hosting (without user logging) a cloud service is optimal.
Non-global providers might be a solution, but then you also lose the big advantage of having your cloud services replicated near to the locations where they are used.
You're using a keyboard! How quaint!
