Who or what will control the Internet????

riptides · Jul 8, 2005

There is no control, only rules, protocols and content.

Now if you control the protocol, you might manage the content which can make you bend the rules.

And money, really, will not buy you new rules or protocols, it may let you exert influence on them, but really, no control.

-Mike Z. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

getut · Jul 8, 2005

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) have been lobbying hard to get internet routing protocols changed to include the copy protection bit. They want internet backbone routers and eventually smaller routers down to consumer level devices to include technology that senses if copyrighted material is being being sent over the routing device, in which case it will refuse to route the packets.

The thing is is that they want the user to have no control over it. There is no way for the device to know if the copyrighted material is being transmitted in a way that constitutes "fair use". Such as a home user email his set of legally created MP3's to work so he can listen to them there.

Innovation of products like this one that have many legal uses, but can also be used illegally will be stamped out if the money starts ruling the internet. Instead of going after infringing people, they try to go after the technology that makes infringing possible, even if it has substantial non-infringing uses.