Techdirt Podcast Episode 8: Threats To Internet Freedom, Recorded Live At BitTorrent

from the killswitch dept

The latest Techdirt podcast is a bit different from our usual fare. This was actually a panel discussion, held back in December at the offices of BitTorrent, right before they did a showing of Killswitch, a new documentary about the battle to control the internet. The panel discussion was wide-ranging, touching on issues from net neutrality to cybersecurity to surveillance, copyright, patents and more. I moderated the panel, which consisted of Evan Engstrom from Engine, Rainey Reitman from EFF, Eric Klinker from BitTorrent and Ali Akbarzadeh, the director of Killswitch. It was a good discussion about the various threats that are facing the internet today, and what's being done about them.

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Filed Under: ali akbarzadeh, eric klinker, evan engstrom, internet, internet threats, killswitch, net neutrality, podcast, rainey reitman, surveillance, techdirt
Companies: bittorrent, eff, engine


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2015 @ 12:48pm

    'It was a good discussion about the various threats that are facing the internet today, and what's being done about them.'

    absolutely nothing and in my humble opinion, because the governments hate the fact that people can talk to each other in seconds, half way round the world. it's fine when there is something being decied, but when it's showing up a government how it really is, it's hated! and the worst governments are the same governments that are saying that the only way to beat terrorism is to have constant surveillance of everyone and everything, everywhere! these are the democratic governments! they are doing things that are worse than the things they were condemning other countries like N.Korea and China for doing! but the aim is the same. to control news and therefore control the people! under no circumstances can behaving the same or worse than terrorists (surveillance of everything) be classed as fighting terrorism! losing (read 'taking away') the peoples rights to freedom, freedom of speech and privacy be worth what is left, because once the governments have taken them away, there is more chance of finding a man eating chicken with a sucker instead of a mouth!!
    this has all come about because of the completely self-interested view of the USA government and the security forces. after the disgraceful happenings on 9/11, there was paranoia which is as strong today as then, but it is destroying the USA and all the countries that are friends of it, the worst one being the UK which has become so incensed with stopping terrorism it is implementing that same effect on its own people! how the hell can that be right? how can that save anyone? how can it be justified, when millions died preserving the very things held most dear, more precious than anything, freedom and privacy! we are on a downward spiral, people, it's gonna take some truly drastic event to get us out of it!!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2015 @ 1:19pm

    Talk a big game...

    Speaking of free and open, has BitTorrent open sourced Sync yet? If they want it to be as widely used and secure as they claim, they can't keep it hidden and proprietary.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 20 Jan 2015 @ 2:24pm

    Re: Talk a big game...

    No, it's not open sourced -- but there are several alternative implementations of the sync protocol that are open source.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2015 @ 3:07pm

    If this shit continues, I'll have to tell my kids about the time when the US Government wasn't the ultimate enemy of the Internet.

    Then they'll turn me in to the State for dissent, not to mention accuse me of being on drugs because no straight-edge man could possibly come up with concepts like "the free flow of information" and "privacy."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    direct download link, 20 Jan 2015 @ 4:52pm

    direct download link

    For grab-and-go offline use, or anyone who lacks the required type and versions of hardware/OS/browser/etc to stream this audio, here is a direct download link:

    https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/187008726/download?client_id=b45b1aa10f1ac2941910a7f0d10f8e28

    (Note to Mods: If posting direct download links to Techdirt podcasts is not allowed here, please feel free to delete this post.)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2015 @ 5:21pm

    Re: direct download link

    Direct downloads have always been available via the RSS feed.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2015 @ 7:16pm

    Re: Re: direct download link

    But what about the aging dinosaurs who don't have any RSS reader needed to get the 'news' feeds needed to get the download links? Why not make it simple and inclusive for everyone by offering a direct download link up-front?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 21 Jan 2015 @ 7:38am

    Re: Re: Re: direct download link

    You can view RSS feeds with almost any browser, too. They won't be pretty, but they are usable.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Jan 2015 @ 9:42am

    "You can view RSS feeds with almost any browser"

    You mean almost any current version of web browser. No version of Netscape Navigator (1.0, 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0) ever supported RSS, for instance.

    For tech dinosaurs, the problem is that modern sofware usually busts the resource capacity of old computers, making it a never-ending challenge to find a browser version that's at least a marginally-acceptable compromise between the low memory footprint of an older version and the standards-compatibility of a newer version.

    Techdirt, by the way, is one of the very few active sites that still works well on 1990s-era hardware and software (thankfully, still Disqus-free and Scribd-free) with the only exception being download links to the podcast shows.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. icon
    John Fenderson (profile), 21 Jan 2015 @ 10:03am

    Re:

    RSS feeds are just XML, and can be viewed with any browser that can display XML. This includes nearly all browsers that have been produced within the last decade or two.

    Explicit RSS support is not required.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 21 Jan 2015 @ 11:36am

    Re: Re:

    And for any browsers that fail to display RSS/XML, the raw code can always be read (on browsers that support that function) or in any text reader, since it is basically just text, and the download links can then be fished out. Certainly a lot easier than trying to find things in typical modern-day webpage code, which has gotten ridiculously huge and complicated (at least when compared to the simple page code typical of 20 years ago when I learned HTML).

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Ethan Henderson, 19 Mar 2020 @ 8:33am

    great

    Thanks for the good podcast as usual. A lot of helpful information I believe I could apply for https://scratchcards-now.com/best-scratch-cards-to-buy/ with a good results.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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