charlesattlan

A good, if slightly out there, analogy would be Pepsi or some other company using its unfair financial position to use existing infrastructure to pipe its product instead of water. In this case the absurdity would be apparent, but when it comes to the internet there seems to be a lack of knowledge (especially in the aged political class) of how it should and does operate.

There is work being done on an alternative internet which would be free for all. Each home would be a node, with the capacity to be a cache, a destination or a bridge, achieved by leveraging wireless routers to create a mass mesh network. http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/?pag=home

I see bits like any other resource that gets piped to your home. It would be disgusting if some could pay extra to siphon off water, electricity or gas at the expense of others. There would be riots if access to water was subject to how much you could pay.

The talk of "special services" is just a ruse: ultimately every service is the same, ie data. The only consideration should be the maximisation of bandwidth in a democratic way: equal access. The only people that would benefit from tiering would be the incumbents; those that generate the most traffic. This will further increase the centralisation of content and money more so that it is now. The only "innovation" needs to be laying cables and pushing the laws of physics.

A slight aside: I find it particularly galling to

You do know there was a leak of Clinton telling her drones/diplomats to spy on anyone they could: biometric data, secure passwords, emails [1]. Even the UN was spied upon. Do not forget, Wikileaks is just a publishing company, people submit data, they release it.

The rest of the world already knows that the US will break any law if it sees fit (GTMO anyone?) and is a morally and financially bankrupt state. I understand: if the US invades a country, it is "bringing democracy"; if the US spies and gets information it is foreign policy/diplomacy; if the US through buying oil and selling ammunitions supports a totalitarian regime like Saudi Arabia, it is business as usual, but if Wikileaks publishes damaging material a US soldier submitted without coercion, it is terrorism.

[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/clinton-ordered-diplomats...

If you read the whole transcript then you will find that he does indeed want "your" company secrets. He believes in markets but insists they cannot function without good information to highlight bad competitors. This allows the good endeavours to continue, rather than going bankrupt due to the undercutting from companies that get an advantage from unethical or illegal behaviour.

I am hearing this example too often. It is far from an intelligent response and reminds me of the meta contrarian [1]. An equally flippent and useless retort would be here: fragme69. There's the launch code; what use is it to you? It might take the next level of insight to point out the "danger" of Wikileaks, but further reflexion brings you back to the initial gut feeling: THIS CAN BE NOTHING BUT A GOOD THING? So what if even 100 informants get murdered? If these leaks prevents the invasion of Iran (note: Saudi Arabia are agitating for this [2]), then tens if not hundreds of thousands of civilians will be saved.

People are really laying into wikileaks. Do not forget that they are just the messenger. A near boy has been held without trail for 8 months I think now, and for what? To risk his life by highlighting fraud and corruption, only for people to be still to stupid or too embedded in the system to realise. If Wikileaks had a cache of embarrassing Chinese data, you wouldn't be able to hear anything above the "Amerkah Fuckyeah". You live in a democractic society (probably), enjoy the freedom of information, then realise you actually live in a kleptocracy and the US is a pathological state.

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable...

Assange himself would agree that the emmotional impact was strengthened and has said so in his interviews: his aim is to get the biggest political impact to honour the courage of the submitter. The full video was an hour long if I recall and this was condensed into a watchable 10 minutes. Nothing was added apart from annotations and the original video was released. The New York Times is not to be trusted; they are begrudgingly reporting on these leaks. I shall give you concrete evidence that there is heavy censorship at that paper:

"Frago 242" (short for Fragmentary Order 242), was a high level dictat to troops to ignore torture by Iraqi forces, or at least not to intervene directly. This was a key expose for that release, and Assange talks of a story actually getting killed by the editors -

140 results Guardian.co.uk http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&...

And buried in some community comment section a solitary 1 result at NYTimes.com http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...

You are not being fair to Wikileaks.

I'll concede bad journalism on my part; my post was rushed and not accurate. The important part is the following taken from the official European Human rights on rights to a fair trial (6.3):

"Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of...".

Publicly announcing the desired arrest goes against this idea, and that suggests systemic failure inside Sweden, and subsequent bad journalism that started in sweden and is being copied else where, particularly by the nytimes. If you compare EU coverage of the leaks; death tolls, frago 242 (an order not to actively prevent torture) and civilian casualties were the lead. In the US it has been Assange's private life. That smacks of an agenda, and nytimes actually spiked a story on frago 242 and a google search for "site:nytimes.com frago 242" comes back with 4 useless results. Search "site:guardian.co.uk "frago 242" and you get 164 good results.

The initial stub was utter trash, barely above a copy-and-paste of a Swedish tabloid with the good bits removed. The nytimes pushed this article as soon as they could without possibly fact checking. The lengthened article is a little bit better, but still uses any excuse to push the rape charges and the idea that he is a wanted man. More accurately is Assange perhaps facing charges of molestation which is a better translation, and what did he do? Assange claims he had sex (there has been a claim else where this could be unprotected sex) with multiple partners who found out and retrospectively took revenge through legal proceedings. And remember the media has pushed the "rape" charges without evidence, initially just hearsay and from leaked police reports. Again that goes against the idea of a fair trial.

I believe there is deceit or incompetence somewhere, and that is not produced from cognitive dissonance. The evidence I use is how botched the process has been. If there was evidence of rape, a very serious claim, he could have been arrested in Sweden at the time. He was told he was free to leave, without even the need for an interview. Months have gone by and no attempt had been made. Now he is out of the country (Sweden) it all conspires to portray him as a guilty man on the run. That is the narrative that is being pushed; ignoring the 15,000 deaths the Pentagon lied about, the hint of a molestation is more important.

This article stinks. Someone seeking means nothing. Juilan's official response: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/71lsqt

The main point is that it is against EU legislation for arrest warrants to be made public. Every attempt at contacting the wanted person has to be made. This suggests shenanigans at some level: bad journalism from nytimes/the swedish tabloid pushing the agenda of the Pentagon, or some form of corruption/incompetence of government officials in Sweden.

How do you protect against an arms race scenario? He hit me, I'll hit him harder; and repeat. I would agree a mostly anonymous attack can be rebuked without much consequence (unless he pulls a knife), but what about for the occasions where animosity can fester: schools, villages, etc?