The United States Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to repeal rules designed to protect net neutrality.
“Priyabrata Dash, editor of Crypt Bytes Tech, wrote earlier this year that the biggest threat to cryptocurrency markets is the repeal of net neutrality.”
http://www.ibtimes.com/how-net-neutrality-vote-may-block-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-trading-2628175How important is the U.S. for bitcoin? Will the U.S. devs working on bitcoin need to move or stop working on bitcoin?
Though that’s a really stupid policy, and it will cause plenty of damage, I somehow doubt it could cause “the end of bitcoin in the USA”. If nothing else, there are too many rich Americans who are too deeply invested in Bitcoin at this point. I think the rules over there say that nothing will get completely trashed if that would upset too many rich people. That’s in the U.S. Constitution, or something. On the other hand, sometimes
even that rule has been blatantly broken; is this 1933 all over again?
The
Priyabrata Dash article cited by IBTimes.com says:
Without neutral access to the Internet, small businesses, exchanges and startups in cryptocurrency ecosystem would face higher costs or competitive disadvantages in reaching users, and therefore might not even be in a position to take advantage of low cost payment processing.
Yes. Probably. The little guys might get crushed. Meanwhile, even more USAian users will be shepherded into the Coinbase playpen where their use of “Bit Coins” is supervised by a nanny. So they don’t inadvertently hurt themselves, you know. For their own good. Toddlers sometimes swallow coins. How could a doctor even find a “Bit Coin” on an X-ray?
But I doubt it will result in a total ban, whether
de factor or ultimately
de jure. Unless, unless.... 1933 U.S.A., meet 1984 Oceania in 2017!
As far back as 5 years ago, politicians in the USA were saying america needed to adopt an "internet kill switch" and stronger censorship of internet content "similar to what china implements". If net neutrality is repealed that could be what we end up with.
They already
have an “Internet kill switch”! Politically undesirable sites can be
mysteriously hit with such large and sophisticated DDoS that they get
forced behind Cloudflare; thus, they will become dependent on staying in Cloudflare’s good graces. Oops! Now, Cloudflare has the kill switch.
“If a private party does it, it’s not censorship. Only governments can do censorship.” Repeat that nonsense ten times like a good little libertarian. The U.S. government can never, ever censor a website which does not otherwise break U.S. laws, due to the First Amendment of its Federal Constitution. Huge, centralized private parties with quasi-governmental
de facto censorship powers are a loophole in the First Amendment.
And if you want for ordinary people to actually be able to find you? For the past 15 years or so, you have already needed the Holy Imprimatur of Google. Another “private party”. Get delisted by Google, and the only traffic you will get is mysteriously large and sophisticated DDoS. Well, I guess that’s plenty enough traffic for one server, anyway.
Looking further: Domain registrars. Backbone providers. “Last-mile” providers (your local ISP). You are dependent on so any different “private parties” for your “free flow of information”. They are all in substance public utilities, and should be regulated as public utilities.
The point of this FCC ruling is to go in the wrong direction. “Net Neutrality” rules
were regulating ISPs as if public utilities. Those rules required ISPs to provide fair service on equal terms to all traffic, with none of the discretion of “private parties”.
Oh, yes—add this, too:
From the article a lot of internet providers AT&T specifically have been investing in the blockchain technology which is another plus for bitcoin.
Did you
read the article?
Among other things, it says that AT&T has been “AT&T has taken particular interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole, patenting a number of technologies that would utilize the digital tokens in unique ways”. Patents provide an awful lot of censorship and suppression power to private parties who, of course, can never “censor” or “suppress” anything because they are private parties exercising their Intellectual Property rights.
I’ll tell you what’s coming next:
SOPA/PIPA by the backdoor, implemented by “private parties”. Remember how SOPA wanted to stick its fingers into the workings of the DNS? Well, the registrars and registries will do that so the governent needn’t worry about it. Not that they’d be prohibited from taking actions the U.S. government would enjoy seeing. That’s their free choice!
Does the U.S. government dislike you? Well, then, Cloudflare might decide to dislike you, too; and they’ll throw you to the DDoS jackals (none of which are intelligence agencies acting covertly—oh, no!). Not that Cloudflare would ever take the U.S. government’s opinion into account, of course.
Do you have an awesome new technology which will make Bitcoin more decentralized, more robust and ”anti-fragile”, more private—more difficult to control? Well, just wait till you see the thicket of interlocking, overbroad patents which will cover any and every possible new feature for anything deemed a “cryptocurrency”. The U.S. governent will not be tyranically suppressing your invention. Rather, AT&T will be exercising their Intellectual Property rights. What are you, a pirate or something?
And if all
that fails, the FCC has now ruled that ISPs can deliver services and sites they dislike at the rate of a 300 baud modem. Or not deliver them at all.
Most observers miss the bidirectional benefits of such connections as having former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai as Chairman of the FCC. It’s practically a corporate merger between Verizon and the United States. Here is Ajit Pai with Verizon executive Kathleen Grillo. Now, if the government dislikes a site—well, who is to stop Ajit from telling Kathleen his opinions over lunch?
(For the dimmer bulbs in the peanut gallery: That last was rhetoric. Of course the working day-to-day connections will be much subtler. Ajit and Kathleen are VIPs, who are too busy to compare notes on what websites and services should be blocked or throttled by Verizon, which can never, ever do “censorship” because it is a private party in the free market.)
Mitigation ideas with various pros and cons, mostly applicable to
everybody and not only Americans:
0. Use Tor.
1. Study up on how people in PRC China get onto Tor. So, American tinpots want censorship mechanisms “‘similar to what china implements’”? Tor is banned and blocked at the GFW. People use it anyway. Yes, Tor is currently U.S.-based; and I am almost certain that it’s organizationally compromised. So, see (4) below.
2. Study
the technical side of Internet censorship, generally.
3. Get a
satellite dish to keep up with the blockchain. But how will you hide it from the surveillance drones? Also in the U.S.A., “land of the free”, you’ve got some small surveillance planes running over various cities—operated by “private parties”, some of them using their aerial observations for marketing purposes (tracking cars’ shopping habits, and the like). I guess you’d better hide that dish.
4. Other backup communication options outside the scope of a bitcointalk.org thread. Just pretend I’m talking about RFC 1149. Maybe I am, in the worst case.
5. Preferably, make sure that nobody knows you have Bitcoin. Otherwise, make sure that you have Bitcoin nobody knows about. Observe the distinction. One way or another,
protect your privacy.
6. If you live in the United States, perhaps you should consider moving. The beauty of Bitcoin is that you can memorize a seed phrase
carefully, destroy all media containing any recoverable Bitcoin keys, and then walk across the border with a king’s fortune locked inside your head. The TSA will either physically molest you, or make a porno of you; but they won’t find your Bitcoin! Should you be concerned about rubberhose cryptanalysis, see (5) above. (5) is very important.
HTH.
