Old, but relevant: http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/26/att-blocks-4chan-this-is-going-to-get-ugly/

@Kow: IIRC that was an accident -- AT&T tried to block some bad IPs, and accidentally hit 4chan instead.

Cobb merely means that banning something, such as guns, removes the object of the ban from the possession/use of law-abiding citizens. Because the law-abiding citizens no longer have/use the object of the ban, the criminals who would do harm, who have the banned thing, are made infinitely more powerful.

While this is not a perfect analogy to the removal of internet anonymity, it is close. Those who would misuse the internet (and really, who hasn't--downloading music illegally, at the very least) become more influential than those who do not. And even those whose identities are known may be suspect, because who is to say that this is really poison_us posting this, not some internet hacker?

In addition to this rather meaningless post (so far) is that allowing someone to know the identity of a person, plus IP address hacking (some part of the IP contains the area in which you are, can't remember which) and my IP says that I'm around Amelia, Ohio. Those two parts are enough for a dedicated person that I might've pissed off to find my address and hurt either me, my family, etc. The two paragraphs above this one I really don't care about...but I don't want just anyone to know my address.

Quote from Mini Moose 2707

I cannot support such a motion.

Again, an internet passport doesn't need all your information to all you see. All that needs to be public is maybe a name and an ID. the Address, internet provider, etc would only be visible to whatever the internet authority would be.

Criminals being more influential is a very bad point, because I cannot see how it matters to you whether some guy elsewhere is arbitrarily more influential. It's like saying that a murderer is more influential; what, does that mean we need to legalize murder?

Anyone dedicated could find out your approximate location, and anyone good at it could find your exact location anyway.

We can't regulate the internet. Its impossible. We can regulate *a* internet, but someone else will start a new one and build the infrastructure needed to sustain it. Which would you go for?

One internet where people are held to what they say, hackers are punished severely and people behave more civilly towards each other, or one where anyone can post anything, security is laxer and 4Chan thrives. Hrrm. Yeah, tough one.

The Internet (it's a proper noun) can only wholly survive without regulation.

Explain.

There is no regulation and it's still not dead.

Who said that the internet would die without regulation? I'm confused now.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

@poison_us: A primitive hunter-gatherer society without science, knowledge, or study of the world wasn't broke. But we fixed it, and now we have awesome things, like the Internet, and StarCraft, and music, and over 9000 memes. I'm not disagreeing with you -- I think the Internet should remain anonymous -- but your point is rather dubious.

Most humans value privacy... for proof scroll down to the very bottom of your staredit.net page

How is privacy an argument against this? You have passports, right? You have the ability to get yourself a room, or communicate with friends, or do things offline. However, with an internet identity that carries over from website to website, most of it unaccessible to non-government organizations (NGO's, lol), where people could track your views across different websites (unless you don't want them to), where hacking or sending e-mails anonymously is near-impossible... I think that'd make a pretty good internet.

Quote from DavidJCobb

[snip]

I was explaining Ducky? Sorry, shoulda tried to quote/indicate that I was just answering Cent. That wasn't my first post in here bro.

Cent, as much as removing anonymity appeals to you, think about this: a dedicated hacker can find where you live. Why bother to make it more accessible, and expedient, for a even lousy hacker to find you? And furthermore, if you're accessing a school/library/shared computer, why make it possible for them to know not only the identity and location of the computer, but also the identity of the user?

I mean, you pointed out earlier that any hacker can find your exact location. Not going to argue, but I'm assuming this is true. Seems very likely. Regardless, they don't know who is on it. Maybe this is poison_us. Maybe this is really Centreri, providing a counterpoint. Who's really to say? IP addresses can be changed, and even remotely accessed. So maybe the keyboard that is typing this resides in Timbuktu, but the IP address says it's in/around Amelia. Great. Hackers will know that it's in Amelia, if they're dedicated. Why bother making it any easier for someone you obviously don't want to know your location or identity to find those? And if they're a lousy hacker, or the reason they want to find you runs out of juice (I'm thinking maybe someone wants to find you to hurt you. Not likely, but eh), why would we make it possible for them to find the person's identity before they otherwise would've given up?

TL;DR: Just read it.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 17 2010, 5:54 am by poison_us.

Waste of resources. Also, I'd suspect people would just use proxies to overcome identification.

This is what marketing people try to do ... And people create, download, and use anti-spyware and various softwares to prevent this.

This is just a huge loss of privacy, which most people will not enjoy. ;o

A dedicated hacker can find where you live under the current system. Hell, Rockz found Dumbducky's school using simple IP identification. It'd be harder under an internet management, because the information would (if done a certain way) only be gettable from the agency servers - have you tried to hack the government lately?

As for your second point, PU, who cares? What if you are me? Software can be rewritten to allow one user per account. My theoretical management organization can hide, for the most part, all personal information you'd rather not share with the public. Again, for some reason you think that a central management will make doing this easier. The way I imagine it, the only information that's carried as your browse is an account name (not even necessarily real name) and ID. You couldn't be separated from these two while on the internet; a hacker gleaning these two will have nothing to work with. The important bit is if you're caught spamming emails from your account or selling information on how to make a bomb (trackable), all the information about you will be kept in a secure database (again, the government is harder to hack than you). A lot of this is already possible, but the main selling point is that people would be able to track you online and it'll be easier for the government to monitor internet communication.

>.>
<.<

BTW, IP locations are fairly inaccurate outside of the USA, and people can use proxies to stop that anyway.

Again, that's irrelevant, as, the way I see it, it'll be more difficult to get the information by hacking a government agency anyway.