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>Chinese RFC proposes separate, independent, national internets and DNS roots

See how it's ALWAYS about politics and never about technology?

I say that for hackers that believe that political action doesn't matter, and that technology will just liberate us every time, because we can always "find workarounds for closed systems, surveillance technologies, DRM" etc...

Will it do much good for you to be able to use some obscure technical workaround, when 99% of your country's population cannot or fears to get to the outside "internet", including all your friends and relatives?

Not to mention, that would only work for your private computer use. I mean, let's say (a contrived example) your country forbids standard SMTP. OK, you can still use it over SSL, over a proxy, etc. But would you be able to use the same workarounds also in your business? Would you be able to give your employees the same ability? What if one of them rats you out to the police?



Cory Doctorow has an excellent examination of this issue (which he coins "nerd determinism") and another similar issue ("nerd fatalism") in his Guardian piece "The problem with nerd politics": http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/14/problem-ner...

For those on the go, here's a direct link to the podcast of said column: http://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_229/Cory_D...




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