[ NNSquad ] Re: New P2P Privacy System from Univ. of Washington

[Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>]

On 02/24 14:15, Richard Bennett wrote:
> I think there's a big difference between technologies that can be  
> "abused by evil people" and those that are *meant to be used by  
> criminals in the commission of crime*. There's no legitimate reason to  
> mask the identities of the members of a P2P swarm in any free and  
> democratic country, and no chance of doing so anywhere else.

This is a remarkable statement.  I assume Richard means it in the
context of illicit use -- but of course what is meant by "illicit"
varies widely.  In some countries, negative comments about the
leadership can get you thrown into a dungeon or your brains blown out
by government edict, courtesy of a bullet to the base of your skull.

But we know that all use of P2P is not illicit by most definitions,
and the percentage of illicit material in overall P2P usage is
(according to the figures I've seen) dropping at a significant rate.

For those of us who still believe in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution (obviously an ever smaller cult), the concept of
anonymity is important, since around that revolves much of the entire
problem of unreasonable search and seizure, and the related protection
of legal activities.

> This Washington U. stuff is just garbage.

I'm sure the U. of W. team appreciates your respectful technical
analysis of their efforts, Richard.

> Are we doomed to transmitting a unique copy of  
> the entire packet stream of each episode of "American Idol" to each of  
> its 50 million viewers, or can we relax the layering dogma enough to  
> cache copies of the stream close to the end user?

Bullpucky.  That's a completely specious argument, and you know your
technology well enough to realize that.  So do most people reading this
list, I'll wager.

> Solving this problem will require some awareness of the content by the  
> delivery system, and that's not a bad thing, is it? According to  
> neutralist dogma, it's the Original Sin. So the choice appears to be  
> this: efficient networks or neutral networks, pick only one.

No, the real choice is being honest about technological realities, vs.
pseudo-political spins leading us toward technology's inner circle 
of hell.

There are a multitude of topologies that would well serve mass
distribution of media content over the Internet that could be deployed
without creating the kind of anticompetive, inappropriately skewed and
limited frameworks that have become the center of the current
neutrality debate.  The question is whether or not these topologies
can be economically and effectively deployed given the existing
warped, largely unreglated Internet telecom landscape that we must
build upon to move forward.

--Lauren--
NNSquad Moderator