Eliminating online censorship: Freenet, Free Haven and Publius

Protecting speech on the global data networks attracts an increasing attention. The efforts and the corresponding abilities of governmental authorities, corporations and copyright enforcement agencies are countered by similar efforts and abilities of researchers and engineers to provide means for anonymous and uncensored communication, as Freenet, Free Haven and Publius. All three of them show a similar design. Content is split up and spread on several servers. When a file is requested, the pieces are reassembled. This design makes it difficult to censor content. All of these systems are not commercial products.

The most advanced system seems to be Publius. Because of being designed by researchers and engineers at the prestigious AT&T Labs, Publius is a strong statement against online censorship. No longer can it be said that taking a firm stand against the use of technologies limiting the freedom of individuals is a position of radical leftists only.

For more information on Publius, see John Schwartz, Online and Unidentifiable? in: The Washington Post, June 30, 2000, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21689-2000Jun29.html .

Freenet web site: http://freenet.sourceforge.net

Free Haven web site: http://www.freehaven.net

Publius web site: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius

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Further Tools: Photography

Art has always contributed a lot to disinformation.
Many modern tools for disinformation are used in art/photography.
Harold D. Lasswell once stated that propaganda was cheaper than violence. Today this is no longer true. Technology has created new tools for propaganda and disinformation - and they are expensive. But by now our possibilities to manipulate pictures and stories have gone so far that it can get difficult to tell the difference between the original and a manipulation.

Trillions of photographs have been taken in the 20th century. Too many to look at, too many to control them and their use. A paradise for manipulation.
We have to keep in mind: There is the world, and there exist pictures of the world, which does not mean that both are the same thing. Photographs are not objective, because the photographer selects the part of the world which is becoming a picture. The rest is left out.

Some tools for manipulation of photography are:



Some of those are digital ways of manipulation, which helps to change pictures in many ways without showing the manipulation.

Pictures taken from the internet could be anything and come from anywhere. To proof the source is nearly impossible. Therefore scientists created on watermarks for pictures, which make it impossible to "steal" or manipulate a picture out of the net.

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Economic structure; digital euphoria

The dream of a conflict-free capitalism appeals to a diverse audience. No politician can win elections without eulogising the benefits of the information society and promising universal wealth through informatisation. "Europe must not lose track and should be able to make the step into the new knowledge and information society in the 21st century", said Tony Blair.

The US government has declared the construction of a fast information infrastructure network the centerpiece of its economic policies

In Lisbon the EU heads of state agreed to accelerate the informatisation of the European economies

The German Chancellor Schröder has requested the industry to create 20,000 new informatics jobs.

The World Bank understands information as the principal tool for third world development

Electronic classrooms and on-line learning schemes are seen as the ultimate advance in education by politicians and industry leaders alike.

But in the informatised economies, traditional exploitative practices are obscured by the glamour of new technologies. And the nearly universal acceptance of the ICT message has prepared the ground for a revival of 19th century "adapt-or-perish" ideology.

"There is nothing more relentlessly ideological than the apparently anti-ideological rhetoric of information technology"

(Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, media theorists)

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Cisco, Inc.

Being the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, Cisco Systems is one of the most prominent companies of the Internet industry.

http://www.cisco.com

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Neighboring rights

Copyright laws generally provide for three kinds of neighboring rights: 1) the rights of performing artists in their performances, 2) the rights of producers of phonograms in their phonograms, and 3) the rights of broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs. Neighboring rights attempt to protect those who assist intellectual creators to communicate their message and to disseminate their works to the public at large.

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Economic rights

The economic rights (besides moral rights and in some cases also neighboring rights) granted to the owners of copyright usually include 1) copying or reproducing a work, 2) performing a work in public, 3) making a sound recording of a work, 4) making a motion picture of a work, 5) broadcasting a work, 6) translating a work and 7) adapting a work. Under certain national laws some of these rights are not exclusive rights of authorization but in specific cases, merely rights to remuneration.

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