Tag Archives: internet

Net Neutrality – What is it, and what will the recent FCC decision do?

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Net Neutrality is a big issue these days, and one that’s exploded out of the geek circles into mainstream media. I’ll admit that it seems like there are endless variations on exactly what people consider Net Neutrality to be (or what it should be). The general goal of Net Neutrality is to ensure that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide (relatively) unfiltered access to the Internet to their customers. Specifically, that if a given customer pays for a level of service – i.e. 10 Mbps downstream speed and 2.5 Mbps upstream speed – they receive that speed no matter what they are accessing. The goal of Net Neutrality is to require ISPs to treat their connections as a “common carrier”, much like telephone companies or freight trucks. Within reason (excepting explosives and other hazardous materials), UPS will ship a package for a given rate based only on what it weighs and how far it’s going (since the Internet is run by many companies, and data passes from one to another, the distance portion of this analogy is constant). They don’t charge more based on what’s in the box, and they don’t ship come boxes faster than others based simply on who sent it or what’s inside.

Likewise, over the past century, many laws have been created that regulate the telephone industry. While there was a time when customers had to rent their telephones from the phone company, long-standing legislation states that a customer can hook any properly functioning device into the phone network, and a customer can say whatever they want over the phone and receive the same call quality, at the same rate.

To try and summarize, the goal of Net Neutrality is to ensure that you, the customer of an ISP (whether cable, FiOS, DSL, etc.), is entitled to certain rights. Generally (the exact interpretation of this concept varies) this includes:

  • The ability to connect any device you want to your Internet connection – any computer, game console, or other device, running any operating system or other software.
  • Your ability to connect to any service (web site, protocol, etc.) that you want without it being intentionally degraded or slowed down, even if it’s a service viewed to be a competitor of your ISP.
  • Your ability to transfer data to and from any other user of the Internet, regardless of who they are.

What could happen if Net Neutrality isn’t enforced?

Let me first say that most of the following is pure speculation. These are things that could happen, but most have not yet actually been done. Some have. The ISP industry seems to say that Net Neutrality is “a solution without a problem”, but my personal view is that those are generally good things. Preventing a problem from occurring is generally better than fixing it after it’s a problem. So here are a few scenarios of what could happen if Net Neutrality isn’t properly legislated and enforced:

  1. Companies like Cablevision, Comcast, Verizon, and other major ISPs also offer TV services (Optimum, FiOS TV, etc.) that include Video On Demand (VoD) as a separate paid service. Websites like Hulu and Netflix offer the same service, for free or a much cheaper rate. Without Net Neutrality, your ISP could intentionally slow down or block sites like Hulu or Netflix to force you to buy their more expensive service. Comcast has already tried to do something like this, asking Netflix’s ISP for a substantial fee to allow Comcast customers to access Netfix (that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but gets the point). If this happens, it’s most likely that Netfix will have to increase their fees substantially. Net Neutrality legislation would require ISPs like Comcast to treat all Internet traffic the same, whether it’s from Netflix, Facebook, or my humble little blog.
  2. A few ISPs (mainly Comcast) have already tried all-out blocking Peer to Peer (p2p) file sharing traffic such as bitTorrent, Kazaa, etc. While they cite copyright infringement as the reason, there are many people who use p2p file sharing to distribute legal files, such as the Linux operating system and other free software. Blocking all p2p traffic because some people use it for illegal purposes is based on a presumption of guilt, no different from outlawing steak knives because some people stab other people with them.
  3. Throughout the history of the Internet, some of the most popular and innovative technologies, including Google, Facebook, etc. have started out as small projects run by a few geeks and programmers. If ISPs were allowed to charge content providers (i.e. websites) to be viewed by the ISPs customers, it would limit innovation and new technologies to only the big businesses with enough money to pay these artificial tolls.
  4. Most ISPs also offer a phone service. It would be trivial for them to flat-out prevent their customers from using Vonage, Skype, iChat, etc. and force you to subscribe to their service. It’s also possible for them to do this in a covert way – when Comcast blocked bitTorrent users, they did it in a way so clever that it took weeks for experts to figure out.
  5. Without a mandate that any suitable device can connect to the network, your ISP could partner with, for example, Dell and Microsoft, and say that you could only get Internet access on a Dell computer running the latest version of Windows (yes, this is a bit of a stretch, but possible in an unregulated ISP market).

The important fact to note here is that most people in the US don’t have much choice in terms of broadband ISPs – generally the only “choice” is between the cable and phone companies, who provide more or less the same service. With such limited choice, Internet users are effectively held hostage by the policies of a handful of companies that control Internet access.

A short note on the History of the Internet

Contrary to the ISPs “solution without a problem” view, I think this is a solution that should have been implemented long ago. The network that evolved into what we now know as the Internet, in the US, was first developed in the 1970s. The project, ARPAnet, was developed by the US government for research purposes, and funded by taxpayer money. It wasn’t opened to commercial use until the early 1990s, when it was privatized. While the development into what is now the Internet could never have been foreseen at that time, Net Neutrality rules should have been built in from the start when the project was handed over from the federal government to the private sector. Regardless, it must be remembered that the Internet is a technology that was originally developed with taxpayer funds, for the country as a whole.

What the FCC’s doing

Well, in short, not much. It appears that the Net Neutrality rules delivered by the FCC earlier this week are, more than anything, a compromise effort to make the issue just “go away”. The ISPs feel that the rules aren’t needed (and argue that the FCC doesn’t have the power to make them), and most Net Neutrality proponents feel that the rules pay only lip service to the goals of Net Neutrality. The main failings already apparent in the rules are:

  1. Two of three major parts of the rules ignore wireless ISPs (cellular carriers). With the explosion of smartphones, it seems that wireless is not only the new frontier of the Internet, but the way that more and more people get Internet access. If Net Neutrality is legislated, it should be about the Internet – regardless of how a customer is connected to the network.
  2. There is a provision for ISPs to be able to block or slow down traffic as is “reasonable” to operate their network, but there are no guidelines on what “reasonable” means, and it seems that the burden of proof would be on the customer to fight their ISP in court and show that something was unreasonable.

Up until very recently, ISPs generally didn’t engage in the kind of conduct that Net Neutrality rules would prohibit. The Internet as we know it today is a product of a world with unwritten Net Neutrality rules. Amazing sites and services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and many others started as experiments by a few dedicated people with little to no budget. The fact that you can easily view web pages created by anyone – like my blog – would be ended if website publishers had to pay ISPs to be allowed through. The choice that you have in using your ISP’s TV or phone service, or something like Netflix or Vonage, is central to the Internet as we know it, but is under attack. I know that many people look at this as a “problem for the geeks”. We take the Internet for granted. Over the next few days, every time you visit a web site or use an Internet-based service, ask yourself: Would I be happy if I had to pay for this? Would this even exist if the people who designed it had to pay from day one? Make no mistake, if websites have to pay every ISP in the country to be viewed, the days of wonderful free services sustained by advertising revenue only will be long gone.

In closing, I highly recommend reading an open letter on Net Neutrality by Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, genius, and guy who helped change the world as we know it.

Some other interesting links:

Book Comments: The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, by Jonathan Zittrain

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Last week I happened to find a Barnes & Noble gift card in my wallet, with $75 left on it. What a wonderful discovery! One of the pile of books that I ordered was The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. I’d fully intended to read the book cover-to-cover, perhaps even digest the content a little, before throwing my thoughts out there (presumably to get lost into the vast sea of crap that makes up the “blogosphere”). But I just have to get some thoughts down on paper…err…LCD.

First off, when I found out that Zittrain is a professor of Internet Law at Harvard, it immediately told me two things. First, that he probably sides with content producers and/or Big ‘Net a bit too much. Second, that he probably doesn’t really understand what the hell he’s talking about, or why people made the choices they have. The fact that the first chapter of the book, which talks about history, doesn’t seem to mention ARPAnet once only confirms this. But, the B&N summary sounded like the book has a healthy dash of iPhone bashing, so I figured it’s be a good read. It was also written in 2008, so I figured that the ideas would be relatively current.

Well, I’m just under a quarter of the way into the book, and given the vast mass of notes I’ve penned in the margins, I think Mr/ Zittrain and I wouldn’t get along too well on a desert island. But I’ll try to contain my commentary – and attacks upon the author – until I’m done with the book. The thought currently in my mind is a very specific one:

Many technologically savvy people think that bad code is simply a Microsoft Windows issue. They believe that the Windows OS and the Internet Explorer browser are particularly poorly designed, and that “better” counterparts (Linux and MacOS, or the Firefox and Opera browsers) can help protect a user. This is not much added protection. Not only do these alternative OSes and browsers have their own vulnerabilities, but the fundamental problem is that the point of a PC – regardless of its OS – is that its users can easily reconfigure it to run new software from anywhere.

To be sure, Microsoft Windows has been the target of malware infections for years, but this in part reflects Microsoft’s dominant market share.

Oh, wow, is it 2004 again? I thought we’d given up on the “market share” argument. When Apache had 10% of the market share of web servers, people said it wasn’t attacked as often because of low market share. Well, Apache currently has a 47% share of the market, compared to Microsoft’s 21%, and it’s still more secure, more stable, and has fewer critical vulnerabilities*. The same market share argument was made about Firefox when it had 5% market share. Now, the share is projected between 31.85% and 47%, and it still has less serious vulnerabilities (ones that can actually damage your computer) than Windows). I thought this “market share” argument was done with.

Most important is the thing that most Microsoft-biased pundits (and, of course, Microsoft themselves) don’t ever talk about: an amazingly large number of servers run Linux. Especially e-commerce servers which house loads of personal information and credit card numbers. Estimates for big e-commerce sites put non-Windows OSes at 30-50%, and they’re quite popular among small sites that probably don’t have well-trained SysAdmins. So, if Windows wasn’t really less secure, wouldn’t we see e-commerce servers getting compromised left and right?

But there’s a more important point here. It’s about curtailing the stupidity of users. I know, in Microsoft’s defense, that Windows Vista and Windows 7 are supposed to be better with this. But, at least in the past, Windows had virtually no privilege separation. With a little code, you could effect the whole system from an arbitrary binary – or worse, with ActiveX, through the browser. I was dumbfounded that any user could install a system-wide application. The real issue here, at least with older Windows (I don’t know much about the new ones) is that Windows, from the beginning, wasn’t written to be secure. Heck, it wasn’t even designed to be attached to a real network.

Linux does have real security advantages over Windows, and not just because it has low market share. First is an actual, true implementation of privilege separation. No matter what I do in my desktop web browser, no matter what I run, even if I installed a Firefox plugin that wanted to destroy my machine, it couldn’t happen. No matter what I let some random code do, it simply can’t escape the confines of my user account.

Ok, ok, I know what you’re all saying right now. I can hear it from here: “but what if the moron does everything as root? what if they just sudo anything that they’re asked about?” Well, I have answers to that, too. My own distro of choice, OpenSuSE greatly upset me when I went to install 11.1, and the installer showed a default of one user account, automatic login, and the same password for the user and root. That’s just stupid. In fact, it’s braindead, plain and simple. I don’t care how wonderful it would be to get Linux on every desktop in the world, if we have to destroy every advantage that Linux has over other OSes, it will be worthless.

I digress. In the end, it boils down to user education. And, in some respects, I think that Linux has become too dumbed-down. There are certain things that simply shouldn’t be put in a GUI. Excuse my elitism, but if you can’t figure out how to configure Apache correctly from the command line, you have no business running an Apache installation. The same goes for countless other services and applications. So, what’s my solution? Well, here’s what I do when I install Linux for non-technical friends. Some of these things are training items, others are things that I do in terms of configuration and, IMHO, should be OS/distro defaults (unless you know some esoteric hidden switch to change them).

  • Disable graphical login as root. This enforces proper use of sudo, and also prevents a user from becoming lazy and operating as root on a regular basis.
  • Pick a good, strong root password. Write it down on a post-it note and keep it somewhere near the computer. (Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But if it’s a home computer, anyone already in the house either is trusted, or will own the computer one way or another. I’d rather have everyone in the house have access to the box, than a password that a remote attacker can easily brute force.)
  • Disable caching of sudo passwords in the desktop manager, if it already isn’t done. This is a *very* bad idea, IMHO, and effectively defeats privilege separation. If someone needs to use sudo *that* often, they’re either a knowledgeable user, or they’re doing something wrong.
  • Set the package manager to use the strictest key verification settings.
  • Provide the user with extensive documentation (can be a list of links to helpful sites) that includes – this is of paramount importance – a list of common Windows (or whatever OS they’re coming from) programs and their closest Linux equivalents. This is another measure to try and dissuade the user from searching for and installing arbitrary code.
  • Give the user a good, simple explanation of what sudo is, what root is, and why they should be worried. One of my analogies – if I have time to explain it – is to think of the computer’s security like a jewlery store. Your user account is the front door; only people who look honest are buzzed in, but they still can’t do much damage. The root password is the combination to the vault; only very trusted people can get in, and they only open it when they absolutely have to.
  • Enable a wide range of trusted repositories by default. The more likely the user is to find a package in the repos already cached, the less likely they are to download arbitrary code.
  • Explain to the user that when you install software (as root), you’re essentially giving the developer access to your system. Software should be screened by someone who knows what they’re doing (i.e. the community) before you install it.
  • I always tell people to *only* install software from the repositories I enable. If there’s something they need and it isn’t available, ask me (or ask the community) and I’ll make a package and upload it to a suitable repository. The key here – and the most difficult part – is to conquer the Windows habit of installing software from disparate sources, and train the user that only software from their repositories, or other community-standard repositories, can be trusted.
  • Show the user the correct patch/update procedure for their system. Depending on skill level and the level of attention you’re willing to give them, it might be advisable to enable automatic updates (if the OS doesn’t have a way to do it, then via cron).
  • If the user is a developer or needs to run any services, even just for development – i.e. Apache, MySQL, Postfix, etc. – properly secure them and give an overview and links to the proper security procedures.
  • Setup a second user account. Explain to the user that this is only to be used for banking and other sensitive activities. Lock it down, make sure it’s in a different group from the main user, don’t install any Firefox plugins.

Unfotunately, a lot of this is just breaking the bad administration and security habits shared by most Windows users.

While we’re on the topic, a word about package managers. I’m a Linux sysadmin, and I believe in ‘eating your own dog food’. I’ve used Linux on all of my servers, desktops, and laptops for over 4 years now. I haven’t used Windows on a regular basis in ages. I’d say I touch a Windows box for about 5 minutes a month, and usually just to use a browser. A few weeks ago, I was asked to install Windows on a desktop for someone. I did. I then attempted to install Firefox. Using what I remembered of Windows, I navigated to the “Control Panel” and clicked (err… double clicked) on “Add and Remove Programs”. Seems logical enough. I then stared at the screen for about 30 seconds, trying to find the Search box, where I could type in “Firefox”. Finally, I literally began laughing out loud, when I remembered that Windows doesn’t have unified package management, and I’d need to manually find the Firefox binary on their web site, download it, and run whatever installer program Firefox chooses to use. Same issue with updating software. I’m utterly perplexed, being a Linux user, that Windows and Mac people still search through Google or multiple web sites just to find new software. I’m even more perplexed that the OS update/patch program doesn’t also update all of the software on the system. It seems like the stone ages.

In my opinion, one of the biggest failings of modern Linux package management is the assumption (derived from multi-user systems) that all software should be installed system-wide. Granted, it doesn’t do a whole lot to actually protect a single user if they install malicious software available to just themselves (especially since most desktop installs these days are probably used as single-user systems), but I really feel that distros (especially desktop-oriented distros) should have an option to easily install packages for just the current user, and possibly do this by default.

* I can’t find the link right now, but I did find an interesting article on Microsoft’s old anti-Linux campaign (“get the facts”). One of the things mentioned was that when Microsoft compared “vulnerability counts”, they were actually comparing: 1) entire Linux distros vs just the core Windows OS, and 2) counting individual patches in Linux versus patch sets released by MS. So, not only was MS literally counting apples and oranges, but they were totally ignoring unfixed vulnerabilities. Given Microsoft’s habit of not fixing vulnerabilities – especially in “unsupported” products – it’s no wonder how they got the numbers to look so good.

So, here’s a thought. People are used to paying for an OS and for software. Start a Linux vendor that sells a desktop, newbie-oriented Linux distro. Charge a per-user flat rate for the distro and a bunch of base packages, that includes X hours of telephone support. Charge per hour/minute/whatever for additional support. Bundle in secure VNC, secure remote access, etc. in a way that will allow support to remotely access the computer, but preserve the privacy and security of the user (perhaps an app that allows the user to initiate a reverse VNC or SSH session to support). Lock down root access – allow the user to do it, but remind them every time that, outside of a specified set of commands, their actions will be logged and won’t get full support. Then figure out a way for support to write a shell script that’s sent to the user to perform administrative actions, which will all be listed in relatively simple terms for the user to examine and approve. Finally, have a *giant* package repo, all of which is free or comes with paid support. Any F/OSS packages that aren’t already in the repo can be requested by a customer, and for a flat fee for the first requesting customer (say, $10) will be examined, approved, packaged, and added to the repo.

PCpro UK: Boycott ad-blocking Firefox, urges furious web designer

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When browsing through Digg this morning, I came by a story at PCpro UK entitled “Boycott ad-blocking Firefox, urges furious web designer“. This gentleman stated that, Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of website owners and developers.”

While I don’t like giving press to such a story, I found it alarming on many levels.

Firstly, I’ve never heard of rights of website owners and developers. Being a “website owner and developer” myself, I understand that the web is a dynamic medium. Moreover, I think of HTML as what it is – a markup language. It just tells a program (browser) how to display something in a user-friendly style. I test my pages with Lynx, and expect them to conform to HTML/1.1. In other words, I believe that the Internet is an information distribution tool. I expect, I *want*, my content to be viewable by as many people as possible. I try to use simple markup and make use of ALT tags so that as many people as possible will be able to view the content. I want it to make sense on as many platforms as possible. I want people who need accessibility aids to be able to understand it. In short, I want my content to reach as many people as possible.

Not only is this developer trying to do something which is ignorant and a case of being a flat-out bad citizen of the ‘net, but he is trying to fight against the progress which has so painstakingly been made in the field of web standardization. I well remember when, not long ago at all, I was handicapped by my choice of using Firefox. I still come by the odd site which chose to use a component which is tied to Internet Explorer, thereby alienating 35% of web users.

I will admit that I am by no means the typical Internet user. The fact that all of my some dozen or so machines (excepting one which I need to use a legacy SCSI flatbed scanner) run 100% Free/Open Source software. I use Linux. OpenSolaris. BSD. I believe that I have a right to examine and modify the source code of the programs that I use. When choosing a bug tracking system, I spent hours customizing an open-source alternative because I was unwilling to use the closed-source option which seemed to fit best. Therefore, I guess it is easy to understand that I refuse to buy from, or even visit, a web site that doesn’t support Firefox.

This is not a browser war. This is not me simply deciding to flame someone who isn’t a F/OSS zealot. This boils down to a deeper issue that can be seen all around us – including in the recent news surrounding the US FCC’s auction of a portion of the 700MHz spectrum. The issue at hand is the complacency of technology users, and the feeling by technology providers that they can push anything they want on users. The concept that providers are sending data to me, and that I can use that data however I want (within the extent of the law) is getting lost.

When I watch TV, I used to leave the room or pick up a book when a commercial comes on. Now that I have a PVR (specifically, MythTV), I can record the shows I want, and then have commercials flagged for automatic skipping before I watch them. When I decide to watch them, I have no commercials. When I use the web, I select the content that I want. If I don’t want it, I don’t get it.

Moreover, another large issue at hand is the simple nature of digital media. This applies to TV recording, music and movie sharing, software piracy, etc. Digital media is not the same as analog media. An MP3 (or, for that matter, a CD) is not the same as a tape. In product litigation, there is a term known as “perceived use”. If you make a glass coffee table that is exactly at knee height, it is perceived that eventually, someone will try to sit on it. That’s common sense. If it shatters and kills them, it was your responsibility to foresee such an obvious eventuality. It’s only common sense that if something is flat and at normal sitting level, someone will try to sit on it.

Likewise, I would argue that when any content is distributed digitally, you must foresee that it will be copied or altered. It is simply the nature of the medium. If the recording industry didn’t want people ripping music from CDs, they should have kept releasing things on tape. Even more so with DVDs – I’m sure we all remember the push. Five years ago, I was hard pressed to find a DVD in a local rental store. Today, I haven’t seen a VHS tape in years. The industry *pushed* the format on us, and is now complaining when we use it in a brutally obvious way. If I had to liken it to any legal phenomenon, I would pick entrapment. It’s not a far stretch to compare the recording industry’s actions to those of a police officer who leaves a car running, with the keys in the ignition, and a sign on the windshield that says “Take me for a spin around the parking lot” and then arrests someone for auto theft when they leave the lot. If they industry is worried about piracy, it should have been their obligation to look into exactly how easy piracy would be, before they chose a distribution medium.

In closing my rant, I will ask a few simple questions:

1) Why is it that the law, being as biased to corporate interests (and against the individual) as it is, doesn’t recognize the rights of the individual to use what they legally purchased in a way that they see fit? (i.e. if I buy a DVD, I should be able to make a backup copy on my computer – even the *copyright law* states that).

2) How long will it be before someone turns up an internal RIAA memo from ten years ago stating that the industry could increase its’ profits by releasing music on a medium (CD) that is prone to piracy, and then fining the people who exploit that common sense?

3) When they came out with VHS recorders, the industry was up in arms about piracy. So, they got together and added a small amount on the price of every blank tape, intended to reimburse the labels/artists/networks for the copy that it would be used to make. Why can’t they just tack $3 onto every blank DVD and CD, $20 on every blank hard drive, and stop suing college kids?

IT Conspiracy

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The “true” Internet is based on freedom. The original ‘net, a system of BBS’s and mailservers each with their own address format, was free.

More and more, that freedom is fading away. We have ads. Popups. Content filters. KGB-esque ISP’s. The great advent of centralized, high-bandwidth IPS’s, instead of person-to-person dial-up connections, has changed what the Internet is.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m bashing progress. I’m vary glad to have a home internet connection of 10 mbps down / 1.5 mbps up.

The problem that I have is that the concept of freedom on the Internet is based on its’ distributed architecture. In the old days, with dial-up links, there was no real backbone, per se, and the ‘net was really owned by its’ users, by everyone.

Part I: The Block

In 2006, we see an increasing trend towards the ‘net being owned and run by monopolies. Not to group them together, but companies such as Google, AOL, and Microsoft aim to provide an all-encompassing Internet experience. The former is a wonderful resource, while the latter two are evil. However, as these monsters evolve, and the Internet moves from a distributed architecture to that of one central pipeline, is freedom gradually fading away?

The case in point, and impetus for all this, was a recent event:
When I got my first high-bandwidth home connection, CableVision’s Optimum Online, it was amazing. And, though I’m sure they didn’t know it, it was perfect. My “dynamic” IP was leased for a few months at a time, so my domains just pointed right to it. I’d change them when it rolled over. Aside from the rollover day, and the fact that my IP didn’t reverse-validate (only a problem when trying to run a mail server, though I solved that by relaying outgoing mail), I had a completely functional connection.

Then, FiOS exploded on suburbia. Fiber-optic, high-bandwidth lines to the residence, claiming 5mbps down/1mpbs up. I was hooked. Verizon installed it on the first day it was available. The technician was still as amazed as I was, and was a real technician, not one of the trained morons that take over once the bugs are worked out.

The connection speed was amazing. Then I went to change over my domain names. Could it be possible? Yes. A conspiracy. Optimum had in their TOS that you couldn’t run a server, but I always figured it was a way to get rid of unruly customers. Well, Verizon thought otherwise. All incoming requests were blocked on port 80. Yes, they were attempting to actually prevent anyone from hosting their own web sites.

Well, simple fix. I had my domain names registered through GoDaddy, so I just bound Apache to port 10011 (an unused port) and forwarded my domains to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:10011. Beautiful. For about 24 hours. Then they stopped working. I was in a panic. I had returned to college, and had no access to my machines. I frantically called my mother at home. The her ‘net was working. She could ping my machines. What could it be?

It took me a minute to think of it. I instructed her on how to find the WAN IP. She read it off. Sure enough, it changed. I updated the IP, logged in, and, of course! The Verizon DHCP lease was less than 72 hours. Enter dynDNS.org, a wonderful (and free service) that provides DNS resolution with a client program resident on one of your servers or routers, keeping their DNS records for you up-to-date. A bit of a kludge, but now jantman.dyndns.org pointed to my IP, and jasonantman.com pointed to jantman.dyndns.org:10011.

For over a year, it’s worked. I’ve harbored resentment against Verizon, but at over 100% more expensive, I can’t possibly afford their static IP FiOS. So, I’ve just been infinitely upset at Verizon’s desire to quash free speech, freedom of use and, in my opinion, part of what the Internet’s about.

Part II: The Conspiracy

Since then, my father (who works at a very large state agency) has never been able to view my web page. Nobody else has complained of this problem. I get indexed by the search engine bots, and get plenty of hits. But my father can’t see my web site.

Now, I know that his entire organization, (supposedly back-end also) is run on Windoze, or, as I prefer to call it, the Blue Plague. So, I was already suspicious of their IT infrastructure.

Well, finally, I gave in, and asked him to e-mail his IT guys. The response that I got: They block any web requests to any port other than 80.

From a security standpoint, I can see this as being a potentially useful trick. However, the sheer reality of it is baffling. Residential ISP’s block any requests to a server on port 80, and meanwhile, large companies block all outgoing HTTP requests to anything other than port 80.

At what point will the users take back the Internet, and put ourselves in control again? How is it that we have allowed pop-ups, spyware, and our ISP’s and corporations telling us what content they want us to get, and what content we can provide to other people?

When will we users finally stand up and say, “This is what we want. This is what is expected of you, and we will not let you tell us otherwise”?