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Comment by lavametender | Hacker News Reader

Did not sign. This is technological challenge, not political. Statements will get you nowhere. We need cold hard code (software) and balls (hardware).

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We can't keep ignoring politics or we'll end up with laws so invasive that not even hardware and software can overcome them. And more importantly we can't let them gain any legislative precedence. It's much easier to fight now than in five years.

And further more I don't see how we have any advantages in the realms of hardware were we would afford to fight.

Normally I would agree with you, but the pace at which computers and the internet improves is now so high, and congress is so gridlocked that I do believe that we have left them behind, permantly.

I believe this is where I point out that the USA is not the only developed country in the world worth fighting for.

I wouldn't fight for any other, with the possible exception of Germany, Spain or Austria.

France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed.

But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about.

I should note that I am not American and so this is not a matter of nationalism.

"France is too egocentrical, Britain (as much as I love the country) has a government hell-bent on recreating 1984, the Scandinavian countries are dying a slow death of too many paper-pushers and most of Eastern-Europe cannot rightly be called developed."

Ignoring for the moment that much of that sounds overly cynical and is definitely an overgeneralisation, which part of 'fight' did you miss? The very reason we're fighting is to do away with many of these problems and improve the situation! For some reason, you think this applies to the USA and a few other countries, but when it comes to other countries, what you say comes down to "Now, listen, I really want to solve these problems. Really, I do. But listen, you guys have problems, so now I can't help you." How does that make sense?

"But none of that matters as realistically the US is the only country powerful enough to cause sufficient damaged to be worth worring about."

I think you would be surprised. The USA is still only one country. It's a very powerful one, of course, I'm glad we agree on that part. But you can't focus on one country to the exclusion of almost everything else. (Well, you can, but that would not be very smart.)

Also, you forgot the Benelux, but I suspect you would also consider these countries too small to be considered.

Someone called the Pirate Party movements "political selfdefence", and I reckon that's just what it is. Just fighting from the outside is exhaustive, we can't have big protests every week and the attacks keep coming.

Saying that this isn't a political challenge would be like ignoring the language that a framework is built in. Technology is a framework built on top of our society, made possible by the rules and laws (or lack thereof) of our society. It is a political challenge, because we're discussing the foundation on which the rules of our society operate.

The realm of politics is engaging in technology, so it's up to us whether or not this is a one way street or a two way street.

However, I caution anyone who advocates a one way street (the government regulating technology and technology ignoring government) -- they're going to get it wrong (either intentionally due to lobbying from competition or just incompetence), and it's going to materially affect your business.

Although the points are a bit vague and overlapping, I don't see how questions of censorship, openness, and privacy are inherently and exclusively technological. Yes, there are technological methods that can enhance our ability to rout around obstructions in each of these areas, but addressing social problems via technology is a lot more reliable and effective than attempting to address technical problems via politics.

We do need code and infrastructure to support freedom even (and especially) when it is threatened, but the preservation of freedom in a social context isn't a merely technological endeavor.

In some ways, yes this is technological. Access to the internet is a technological problem. In other ways it is political. SOPA is an example of something writing more code would not solve (well legally at least). That is because it is telling us what we can and cannot write. As nerds, we tend to just want to skirt the political aspects of the internet. Unfortunately its become larger than ourselves. Its time to accept the world for what it is, and fight to keep our place we've built.

Along those lines, I'd expect a declaration of freedom to go like "We're free, and we're going to do the following things" rather than "Hey, people with actual power, please respect our freedom in the following ways."

I totally agree the challenge can only be won by technology, but a manifesto is no bad thing.

I truly doubt this challenge can only be won by technology. There will always be physical parts on the technology that can be controlled by those in power, by force if needed.

Just look at China.

I think it's both. Yes, the Internet's more technical people will always be ahead of whatever the Government is proposing and enforcing. The masses won't be except for a short while at most. This is why you need to treat this as a political issue, too, otherwise you'll have your technical issues of escaping Government oppression of the Internet, but you'll always be persecuted.

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