The Internet

[TiG]

Had a rather interesting discussion with friends last night about the use of technology that stopped non us ISP's from hitting certain sites in the USA. I've done a bit about the legalities of the internet and loopholes that exist within the system, but i'm rather concerned that the USA think that they own the internet too.

In my opinion the internet is one of the biggest assets the world has today, shared knowledge in the public domain can only be good for all of us. But i'm concerned that if governments start doing things like blocking sites so that only their own citizens can see them that it could cause major problems with the internet.

Can you imagine an internet "Trade" war between Europe and the US?. blocked sites, not being able to get pretty much anything from the US web sites.

I know the US is not the only government doing this sort of thing, China, North Korea etc. but then they only try and impose rules on their own people from what i understand, the US again is trying to impose rules on the world?.

Personally i think this would be a "war" that the US would lose tho, imagine the US being shut down from anything apart from itself, it would be absolutely fundemental to economies.

Thoughts?

TiG

[daniel_owen_uk]

What does WWW stand for?

Nuf said.

[Big RICHARD]

What does WWW stand for?

'The United Stated Internet System', or WWW as it's also known!

[Kumagoro]

Its up to them who they want to see their web sites as far as im concerned... if they started trying to tell others, who can and cant see NON US web sites or say who can and cant see private US web sites then that would be different.

[Zedmeister]

Its up to them who they want to see their web sites as far as im concerned... if they started trying to tell others, who can and cant see NON US web sites or say who can and cant see private US web sites then that would be different.

I agree, setting up borders on the internet would be an excellent idea. It would help to keep out undesirables and to be able to enforce the law of each country with regards to internet usage...

[Zak33]

sorry....are you both being serious? You think that the United States should be allowed to block NON USA ISP's from viewing US websites? and yet allow its own citizens to view them?

Imagine Microsoft's website becoming UN-ACCESABLE to anyone outside of the US, because the US Goverment wanted to then impose a charge to UK ISPs to allow their users to access Bill's web site for critical updates and anti virus stuff.

Imagine that! You can see the Microsoft web site if you are in the US, but not if you are in England....

Bonkers chaps....bonkers

We also have a problem, as it is, with price variations across the world, but that would make it worse...a thousand times worse. To NOT be able to shop online in the US for a CD to download. Or to get the latest Firewall software.

Scares the pooh outta me. And TiG is right to say that the US seem to be trying to CONTROL the web.

Our only challenge would be to stop THEM seeing OUR sites...then we'd have a trade embargo to sort....blimey....horrible thought!

[Grey M@a]

America shutting itself off from the rest of the world, wars.... sounds like George Orwell's 1984 book

And here is the best thing, aren't they always barking on about freedom of speech so what is censoring the internet then?

[TeePee]

Well, the Labour government would happily turn us into Airstrip One...

BTW, there were no wars in '1984', The idea of us being at war was used as a method of control, and to encorage patriotism. Like the Cold War.

[Kumagoro]

Maybe i wasnt clear enough... its up to the US government if they want to block their sites. Private web sites is a different matter i.e. MS or other company or person.

[Paul Adams]

*dons flameproof suit*

I'm in favour of countries having the ability to specify which source IPs can access specific destination IPs, there are certain cases where a website does not need, or in fact want to be visible to the world.

If businesses want to remain purely UK-based, for example, and do not want to have to deal with the load on their servers of search engines, infected servers, script kiddies hitting their servers without having to resort to in-house measures, then they should be capable of doing so.

I don't really see it as a gross infringement of civil liberties to want to have a target audience, plus proxy servers mean that you can always get round such schemes if you really want (but worms, search engines and script kiddies are unlikely to know when, or possibly how to use them.)

Edit:
Badly worded paragraph 1, I mean that countries should have the ability to block ingress traffic from foreign sources to domestic destinations.
(i.e. I don't agree with the Chinese method of blocking their citizens from viewing the rest of the world.)

[Swafe]

get out of that flameproof suit....i agree with you, i mean if it was a site only for americans, then why not ?



but otherwise, if it was enforced all over the shop, on every US site there was im with zak...

Bonkers chaps....bonkers