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Week 7 [26.11-2.12.18] The case for decentralized internet

In Poland we have free internet, but for example in China, the  internet is controlled by the government. Some years ago was ACTA, now the European Parliament has a new law called Article 13. Therefore Tamas Kocsis started building a decentralized web 3 years ago:


Questions:
  1. Do you worry about the future of the internet? Why / why not?
  2. Is it a good idea to build decentralized internet? Why / why not?


Comments

They tried to do it on HBO's "Silicon Valley" and it did not ended well xD

To be serious I'm not really worried about future of internet, because I think that it's impossible to control internet. But I'm not any expert of it, so I may be wrong. Cheers!
Ok, when it will be time for conspiracy theories? Government controlling the information and all that.

Now seriously, it is controlling information. However, I am absolutely not worried about the Internet. It was an omen of the new era, and cannot be silenced so easily. We shall see.
It's very important topic, because governments more and more want to control people. And maybe this will sound pessimistic, but I think governments wouldn't give chance to hide personal information from them, they will block all services which can at odds with their politics. But some part of people always will find way to solve this problem. Decentralized internet it's very good idea, we saw at video that China already blocked it and maybe with time this move will do another countries. At this time decentralized internet is unknown for most people topic, also if I understand correctly, all information is stored at device as a result device must have a big storage to store all of data. Maybe with time we will come to it.
Unknown said…
Of course I'm worried about the future of the internet.
There is one thing that hurts me at the moment is that they want to control everything.

In the past the internet was something more than television because there was a complete freedom od speech. Now I am not sure that still will be freedom of speech.
I don't worry about the future of the internet at this time but in future I think I will do because censorship is getting higher every year and this can be dangerous for freedom.

I think that this is good idea to build decentralized internet but in general internet is only connection between computers in my opinion and this is mean that internet can exist in different scales and it is not so centralized as we think.

Also I remember the serial called Silicon valley and main characters in it try to create decentralized internet but this is only serial :(
I guess we already should start worrying about the internet just because by looking at the examples with China and other countries where government or political organizations trying to filter all the information in order to control peoples minds. The other problem is the privacy. In Russia you can get arrested if you make a post which contradicts politic of the government. It is not a joke. Of course there is other side of the coin. There are thousands of insane weirdos who are trying spread terrible ideas about terrorism. And of course it should be blocked some how.
Peter Clemenza said…
Do you worry about the future of the internet? Why / why not?

Worst case is that The US continues down the path of destroying Net Neutrality and mass surveillence. A few large companies remain that are able to survive on the internet. We are forced to them simply because there are no other options. Everything is expected to be paid for by the viewer. Torrent and piracy gets shut down by increasing technology for filtering, and because those who aren't licenced have upload speeds in the kbps. Everything you do on the internet is scoured not only by the NSA, but also by a dozen other firms, such as Google.
Your every preference and click is uploaded to servers, for more direct advertising,
profiling, and to make sure that you aren't a terrorist.


Is it a good idea to build decentralized internet? Why / why not?

What I hope to see happen is a move to a more distributed Internet. That was closer
to what was imagined the Net would be back in the 90s. The efforts of the pirate bay,
Onion networking, and others might help that
Unknown said…
I do. I do worry about the internet. I know that more and more people try to monitor it and have control over what people say, write and send between one another. It has or eventually will have a harmful impact on us. Why? When we are free, we are more creative. I think in a long-term we are able to discover new things because of this.

Decentralized internet is like a pandora box. You never know what is inside. Unfortunately, bad people make use of it in the wrong ways many times. On the other hand, it gives us an opportunity to find new ways of chasing after bad guys and power for innovating better algorithms and solving variabilities in current solutions.
Of course, I care about the fate of the Internet. I am definitely confident that the Internet must remain free, because if we lose this last island of freedom, “hello, the media!”. We'll lost more than just the Internet. More and more, governments is trying to control the activities of people on the Internet. For example, in Russia you can go to prison for a long time as a real criminal who kills or maims someone. How is this possible? Publish your online memo on your Facebook or Vkontakte page (social network in the CIS) and wait for the doorbell :) I don't want to live in a country that will take control of the Internet.

In my opinion, decentralized Internet is like utopia, and it doesn't matter, to be honest. Decentralization at the same time, everywhere and nowhere, which is unsafe. As other students said above, we have an Onion network for this purpose, luckily.
Iman Masjedi said…
It's better to ask your question, are you satisfied with the current Internet conditions?
We are the future of the Internet ten years ago, so it can be roughly predicted that the future of the Internet will not be so bad.
There have always been unpredictable events in human history, people who tried to restrict the internet and control it, and people who tried to free the Internet.
Centralized Internet, I think, is not a good idea, since it places power in the hands of a group, and this group can use this power to make a lot of misuse. I think the decentralized Internet will have more freedom for humans.
Marcin Zając said…
Thanks for your comment. I haven't watched "Silicon Valley" yet, so I can't refer to it.
I also think that full control of internet is impossible, but looking at the ACTA or article 13, I'm a little bit worry.
Marcin Zając said…
In this video Tamas don't specified all technical details, but if I understand properly it works very similar to peer-to-peer network so data which you watched are stored on your device. Later this data can be shared with others, but you'll can delete from your disk. I think is impossible to store all of data.
Marcin Zając said…
I think in Poland, we still have internet freedom especially in comparizon with for example China or Korea, but I agree that we don't know what happends in the future.
Marcin Zając said…
Thanks, very true.

You are the second person referring to "Silicon valley" series. Unfortunetely, I haven't watched it yet, so I must catch up.
Marcin Zając said…
Thank you for paying attention to the issue of privacy. It's very difficult topic. As you said all of us wants privacy, but on the other hand there must be tools to fight terrorism.
Marcin Zając said…
Yeah, that's true. Unfortunately most of the biggest, most popular websites are made by US companies and our data are stored on US servers. This is also a serious problem.
Marcin Zając said…
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Onion network is also a solution, but has some disadvantages(as everything). Here it is interesting article about that: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1404.4818.pdf
Marcin Zając said…
Thanks for your comment. I think this is good comparison of the decentralized internet to pandora box.
Marcin Zając said…
Thanks for your comment, but I couldn't fully agree with you, looking what happens in countries like China or as other students said Russia.
Unknown said…
Yes, I worry about future of the internet. Since I notice my phone track what I saying and after that I see related to this ad (its very creepy). The second example is this Article 13 about tracking EU internet its horrible, because people who don’t use and don’t know about internet anything created ridiculous system which will control what we putting on the internet and we cant do about it anything. I think this is stupid idea.
Unknown said…
I am not afraid about the future of the Internet because of that kind of people - internet is created and used by people so even if the new regulations would appear, people will always find a way to bypass them or enforce governments to revert them.

It is really hard to answer this question. On the one hand decentralized Internet would provide freedom in the countries where content is tightly censored, on the other hand this kind of network could be easily misused for criminal or prohibited activities.
Unknown said…
Looking at how the EU is slowly restricting our access to the "free" internet, we may be afraid that it will not be as easy o use as it should be in a short time, which does not inspire optimism.
It seems to me that it is a good idea to decentralize the internet because it is an option of freedom in the network, which EU tries to limit. May it never happen and that the internet is the only and unique source of your own word and the meaning of freedom of expression.
Marcin Zając said…
I agree with you it's horrible. Recently it turn out that the Japanese cybersecurity minister does not use a computer. He can feel very safe xd. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46222026
Marcin Zając said…
Thanks for commenting. I think this video can be an great example of finding way to bypass some restrictions, but of course it has some drawbacks connected with criminal activities.
Marcin Zając said…
I also hope that it never happen and we will have internet freedom.
Unknown said…
I am not worry about the future of the internet because it will always be a way to avoid any new restrictions.
I think that building decentralized internet is great and it is the future of the internet. For me internet should be place that is free from any restrictions and every human on the world should have access to it and decentralized internet is ideal tool to achieve that.
I do fear for the future of the Internet. Since its inception it was a method of sharing culture and information, and communication over vast distances. It’s an invention that has evolved faster than anything else in the history and nowadays it’s hard to imagine our lives without it. One thing that the lawmakers are doing wrong is trying to “update” the old laws to encompass the Internet – and something that has changed humanity this much definitely calls for a completely new set of rules. I fear that with all the attempts at censoring and controlling the Internet that we see nowadays creation of a decentralized network will be a necessity to uphold the freedom of information, rather than just an option. There’s a lot of ways it could be abused, but we may simply not have a choice but to accept it.

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