ISPs – P2P Foundation https://blog.p2pfoundation.net Researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices Fri, 14 May 2021 19:51:06 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.15 62076519 Project of the Day: Southern Connected Communities https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/project-of-the-day-southern-connected-communities/2018/11/08 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/project-of-the-day-southern-connected-communities/2018/11/08#respond Thu, 08 Nov 2018 09:30:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=73393 The following texts are extracted from Southern Connected Communities Website. About SCC Our project is a model of what a community-controlled broadband ISP could be in rural Appalachia and the South. We have built a working line-of-sight broadband tower at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, that will be able to deliver... Continue reading

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The following texts are extracted from Southern Connected Communities Website.

About SCC

Our project is a model of what a community-controlled broadband ISP could be in rural Appalachia and the South. We have built a working line-of-sight broadband tower at the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, that will be able to deliver 1 Gbps speeds wirelessly to anyone in a 25 mile radius. A further two additional towers will connect communities in Cosby and the Clearfork Valley. These communities will establish member-owned cooperative franchise networks and community members will be trained in connecting and maintaining their own wireless networks.

This project will empower and inspire communities by proving that it is indeed very possible for them to have affordable, equitable, and reliable broadband access; and that they can even be their own Internet service providers!

Installing a home wireless system

 

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Freifunk, the German group that aims to provide free internet to all https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/freifunk-the-german-group-that-aims-to-provide-free-internet-to-all/2018/05/26 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/freifunk-the-german-group-that-aims-to-provide-free-internet-to-all/2018/05/26#respond Sat, 26 May 2018 10:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=71134 Cross-posted from Shareable. Adrien Labaeye: Here’s the problem: Internet access has become an essential part of life. However, many still cannot afford it. There are also growing concerns that internet connections could be unilaterally cut by Internet Service Providers at the request of public agencies. How do we ensure everyone has internet access? Here’s how one... Continue reading

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Cross-posted from Shareable.

Adrien Labaeye: Here’s the problem: Internet access has become an essential part of life. However, many still cannot afford it. There are also growing concerns that internet connections could be unilaterally cut by Internet Service Providers at the request of public agencies. How do we ensure everyone has internet access?

 Activating the Urban Commons

Here’s how one organization is working on the problem: As early as 2002, the German activists of Freifunk, a noncommercial grassroots group, decided to self-organize to provide a free and autonomous internet infrastructure for all. In 2014, Münster free-internet activists from the local hacker space Warpzone decided to deploy a mesh network for their building complex. They visited a neighboring Freifunk community in Bielefeld that provided them with a crash course into the technology involved, which was mainly provided by the national Freifunk network.

The idea is that any WiFi router can be turned into an access point that communicates directly with other routers, passing along information between them, and thus forming a “mesh” of router-to-router connections. This way, people can send data from any point in the mesh without even connecting to the internet. The infrastructure is owned and maintained by the activists, who formed an association to handle legal and financial practicalities.

In 2015, Freifunk Münster joined with nearby Freifunk Warendorf to pool resources, including skilled people and IT infrastructure, and then made them available to the whole Münsterland region.

Results:

  • In June 2015, the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia (Landtag NRW) decided to support the local Freifunk initiatives by granting permission to use the roofs of buildings that belong to the state.
  • In 2016, the Freifunk initiative was awarded 8,000 Euros to build a wireless backbone over the city, bringing Freifunk to places with no internet connection and connecting the scattered little mesh clouds.
  • Thanks to the growth of communities in western Münsterland, the mesh reached 2,000 access points on April 20, 2016, making it the largest mesh network in Germany.

Learn more from:

This case study is adapted from our latest book, “Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons.” Get a copy today.

Header image of the Freifunk-Initiative installing WiFi-Antennas in Berlin-Kreuzberg in 2013 provided by Boris Niehaus

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How a rural community built South Africa’s first ISP owned and run by a cooperative https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-a-rural-community-built-south-africas-first-isp-owned-and-run-by-a-cooperative/2018/04/11 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-a-rural-community-built-south-africas-first-isp-owned-and-run-by-a-cooperative/2018/04/11#respond Wed, 11 Apr 2018 08:30:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=70400 This article, written by Bill Tucker, of the University of the Western Cape was originally published on The Conversation. Bill Tucker: Mankosi is a remote rural community in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. It is home to almost 6,000 people. The nearest city is Mthatha, about 60 kilometres away, as a bird flies. Most homes are not connected... Continue reading

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This article, written by Bill Tucker, of the University of the Western Cape was originally published on The Conversation.

Bill Tucker: Mankosi is a remote rural community in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. It is home to almost 6,000 people. The nearest city is Mthatha, about 60 kilometres away, as a bird flies.

Most homes are not connected to the electricity grid; residents charge their cellphones at a local shop or shebeen, for which they must pay. Both data and airtime for those phones also cost a lot: a survey shows that people spend up to 22% of their income on telecommunications. This is money that could be spent on food, education, transport and other needs.

They’re not alone. South Africa has some of the highest mobile voice and data costs in the world.

Yet, things are changing in Mankosi. A research team at the University of the Western Cape has worked with residents to develop a solar powered wireless community network.

The Zenzeleni Networks project – Zenzeleni means “do it yourself” in isiXhosa, the Eastern Cape’s most prevalent language – is, as far as we’re aware, South Africa’s first and only Internet Service Provider (ISP) that’s owned and run by a rural cooperative. Just like any ISP, Zenzeleni installs and maintains telecommunications infrastructure and also sells telecommunications services like voice and data.

Yet what’s special about the project is that it involves a registered not-for-profit company which works with cooperatives in the community to deliver affordable voice and data services. Crucially, the project also keeps money in communities like Mankosi, often beset by high rates of unemployment.

The community networks model has proven successful elsewhere in the world: the largest is in Spain – the Guifi.net project. Others that have been developed successfully include projects in Zambia and Mexico.

How it works

The Mankosi project was launched in 2012 and legally registered in 2014. I have done research on information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) in the Mankosi area since 2003. Since then, colleagues and postgraduate students have also worked, even lived, in the area for extensive periods of time.

To establish the Zenzeleni network we approached local leaders to help get the community on board and we provided help and mentorship. Ultimately the residents run the project themselves.

Zenzeleni is all about communities doing it for themselves.

With the local authority’s permission, a cooperative comprising ten local and respected people was formed. This group designed the network layout, and built and installed a dozen solar powered mesh network stations. These are mounted on and inside houses around Mankosi. These are organised in what we call a mesh network and WiFi stations cover an area of 30 square kilometres.

Zenzeleni constitutes a fully fledged Internet Service Provider (ISP), equipped with an Internet and Voice-over Internet Protocol gateway, and a billing system in isiXhosa run by community managers.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), which grants licences to ISPs and collects fees where necessary, granted Zenzeleni a licence exemption; so it costs Zenzeleni nothing in fees to operate infrastructure and sell services. The community only has to pay for the backhaul Internet connectivity, which they can get at wholesale prices from companies like EastTel and OpenServe, and for educational use from TENET.

Any device – even a low to mid-range smart phone – that’s WiFi-enabled can access the network. There are two dedicated wireless connections to “point of presence”, or POP, fibre in Mthatha.

Zenzeleni’s voice calls and data costs are much cheaper than what’s offered by the big mobile operators. For example voice calls can cost 20c a minute rather than the standard R1.50 or more while data costs can be between 20 and 40 times cheaper.

The solar powered stations also charge cell phone batteries less than what’s usually charged by spaza shops or shebeens. Those shops also tend to be some distance from the village, so people save time as well as money.

A true community project

Community is at the heart of Zenzeleni’s model. All revenues stay in the community: each cooperative has a bank account, and all residents get together to decide what to do with the money that’s been paid for Zenzeleni services.

For example, the Mankosi cooperative has provided micro-loans to residents for starting small businesses.

No one is currently earning a salary from the community network. Yet when usage grows, as we expect it will do with super cheap data, revenues are likely to grow so much that the cooperative will want to install more nodes and hire people to actively maintain them making the network more resilient. Since March 2014, the project has earned around R33,600 (about USD$2422.16).

Keeping money at home

On the surface it may appear that Zenzeleni cannibalises the revenues of big telecommunications companies like MTN and Telkom. We believe the opposite is true. Firstly, Zenzeleni purchases backhaul Internet connectivity from areas like Mankosi that Telkom and others have failed to connect – so it’s operating in entirely new areas that have been ignored because they’re considered too remote to generate good revenue.

Secondly, all telecommunications companies earn interconnect fees. Calls to mobile and landline numbers across South Africa incur these fees, which are charged when calling from one network to another. This is also true for Zenzeleni so that’s extra money in the bank for all telecommunications companies.

Lastly, and most importantly, most of the money generated by this project stays in Mankosi. This is perhaps the most crucial aspect of the Zenzeleni model, and one we believe will foster economic growth which will benefit people living in and around the village, and enable them to purchase telecommunications, and other goods and services, that they currently cannot afford.

The ConversationZenzeleni Networks’ next goal is to build critical mass to support between 20 and 30 communities surrounding Mankosi. When this happens, about 300,000 people will be able to sustainably connect themselves – and their schools, clinics, hospitals and homes – to cheaper voice, data and phone battery charging. This puts telecommunications into their own hands, by themselves.


Bill Tucker, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of the Western Cape

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Photo: A Zenzeleni cooperative member carefully aligns some equipment in the village of Mankosi, Eastern Cape /Bill Tucker

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The catastrophic consequences of the non-Neutral Net will be very hard to spot, until it’s too late https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-catastrophic-consequences-of-the-non-neutral-net-will-be-very-hard-to-spot-until-its-too-late/2018/01/12 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-catastrophic-consequences-of-the-non-neutral-net-will-be-very-hard-to-spot-until-its-too-late/2018/01/12#respond Fri, 12 Jan 2018 08:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=69231 Writing for Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow summarizes the conclusions of a standout interview with Stanford Law expert Ryan Singel and International Studies expert Didi Kuo about the meaning of the post-neutrality web. Cory Doctorow: Stanford’s Futurity interviews Stanford Law expert Ryan Singel and International Studies expert Didi Kuo about the meaning of a non-Neutral internet,... Continue reading

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Writing for Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow summarizes the conclusions of a standout interview with Stanford Law expert Ryan Singel and International Studies expert Didi Kuo about the meaning of the post-neutrality web.

Cory Doctorow: Stanford’s Futurity interviews Stanford Law expert Ryan Singel and International Studies expert Didi Kuo about the meaning of a non-Neutral internet, and the pair make an excellent and chilling point about the subtle, profound ways that Ajit Pai’s rollback of Net Neutrality rules to pre-2005 levels will distort and hobble the future internet.

The Pai rules allow ISPs to block rival services, but the real impact is likely to be much more subtle (and thus harder to spot in the moment and stop while there’s still time).

The ISPs are much more likely to approach the existing internet services like Netflix and demand money in return for a guarantee that their bits will reach you, the ISPs’ customers. The services, in turn, will simply raise their prices to make up the difference, resulting in you paying your ISP twice: once to connect to the internet, and a second time to subsidize the blackmail payments the internet services you make are now obliged to make to your ISP.

There’s another, even subtler and scarier distortion at work here. The ISPs want to create steady revenue streams from these services, and so the blackmail payments they demand will not exceed the services’ ability to pay. But they will limit who else can enter the market: Netflix and Youtube and the other established players were able to start because the capital needs of a video-on-demand service did not include a line item for blackmail to ISPs.

Future Netflix and Youtube challengers will have it different: their startup costs will include millions for hard-drives and marketing and bandwidth — and millions more for bribes to the telcos.

This is bad news for people who like watching videos, but it’s even worse news for people who make videos. With upstarts permanently, structurally frozen out of the market, today’s incumbent providers will become much like the telcos themselves: cozy, cooperative, and more interested in colluding than competing. Some of that will take the form of explicit conspiracies, but highly concentrated, stable industries can collude without conspiring: the executives tend to have worked at all the major firms at some point in their careers, know each other socially, understand one-another’s turf and territories, maintain out-of-work friendships and even intermarry. Without anyone having to draw up an agreement, these industries are perfectly capable of creating arrangements that are mutually beneficial and that freeze out any new entrants.

The online service providers understand that Pai’s rules mean that they’re just going to have to divert some profits to the telcos, but will not face an existential threat. They’ll always have a seat at the table: but the companies that don’t exist yet? They never get a seat at the table.

Here’s how to understand Net Neutrality: you get in a cab and ask it to take you to a Safeway, and you notice that it’s circling the block for no reason, delaying your arrival. “What gives?” you ask. The cabby explains that Whole Foods has paid for “premium carriage” by the cab firm, and so it gets “fast lane” service — which means that everyone else gets the slow lane. The cab driver explains that running a taxi is expensive and hard work, and that choosing one grocer over another helps the cab company fund its maintenance, operations and upgrades.

That’s nice for the cab company, but you didn’t get into the cab to be taken to the most profitable destination for the cab company — you got in to be taken to the place you wanted to go.

The cabbie says, “Hell, why are you being so particular? Safeway and Whole Foods aren’t that different. Besides, Safeway makes decisions about what food you buy: they don’t carry every possible grocery item, and they arrange their groceries in the way that suits them, not you. Why do you get pissed off when the cab company steers you toward the stores of its choosing, but you’re happy to shop at a store that sends you to the items of its choosing?”

The answer, of course, is that it’s none of the taxi’s business. Maybe Safeway is gouging its suppliers for endcaps, and maybe it isn’t, but that’s between you and Safeway. You might choose to tackle that yourself, or it might not matter to you. It’s not the cab company’s job to tell you where to go: it’s their job to go where you tell them.

Singel: The effects we’re likely to see will affect users secondarily. Verizon, for instance, can now go to a Yelp or a Netflix and say, “You need to pay us X amount of money per month, so your content loads for Verizon subscribers.” And there’s no other way for Netflix to get to Verizon subscribers except through Verizon, so they’ll be forced to pay. That cost will then get pushed onto people that subscribe to Netflix.

So what users do online will become more expensive, we’ll see fewer free things, and thus the internet will become more consolidated. Websites, blogs, and startups that don’t have the money to pay won’t survive. I like to think of it as the internet is going to get more boring.

Kuo: The worst-case scenario would be if ISPs blocked access to websites based on their content, but that scenario seems unlikely outside of a few limited applications, such as file-sharing. The ISPs have an interest in being apolitical and letting the internet remain “open,” at least in the ways that will be most apparent to consumers.

More likely, the rollback of net neutrality will have consequences for start-ups and companies with a web presence. It will allow ISPs to charge companies more to reach consumers. While large technology platforms can afford to pay for fast access, start-ups and competitors will have a far more difficult time.

What could net neutrality’s end mean for you? [Futurity]

(via Naked Capitalism)

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In the battle for net neutrality, can co-ops keep the internet open and democratic? https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/in-the-battle-for-net-neutrality-can-co-ops-keep-the-internet-open-and-democratic/2017/12/28 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/in-the-battle-for-net-neutrality-can-co-ops-keep-the-internet-open-and-democratic/2017/12/28#respond Thu, 28 Dec 2017 09:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=69063 Small, community-owned ISPs are spreading – and could help to protect open internet access Sammi-Jo Lee, writing for Coop News, gives us the lowdown on the P2P alternative to ISP big players. Sammi-Jo Lee: In 2011, brand new fibre-optic cables lit up for the first time across the forested terrain of the Ozarks and up... Continue reading

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Small, community-owned ISPs are spreading – and could help to protect open internet access

Sammi-Jo Lee, writing for Coop News, gives us the lowdown on the P2P alternative to ISP big players.

: In 2011, brand new fibre-optic cables lit up for the first time across the forested terrain of the Ozarks and up and down the farmlands of central Missouri, USA.

Here among the hickory and red oaks, you might expect to be in the land that the internet forgot. That’s what it could have been, had residents not decided to stop waiting for large for-profit telecommunications companies. They built their own internet instead.

They turned to their electric utility for a solution, and Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, established in 1939 to bring power to the region’s farms, answered the call.

“What got the project off the ground was the membership demand,” said Randy Klindt, who at the time was the general manager of Co-Mo Connect, the co-op’s internet branch. “The members all drove it from the grassroots. They went door to door. They paid their neighbours’ $100 deposit.”

Later at a community meeting, a local bank surprised the room by paying the deposit of everyone present. They quickly crowdfunded enough money to begin construction, and in 2011, just before Christmas, its first members came online.

There are hundreds of small internet service providers owned by member co-operatives.

Co-Mo’s members aren’t the only people who can say they own their own internet utility. In cities and rural swaths across the country, there are hundreds of small internet service providers owned by member co-operatives, local municipalities, or tribal governments. Over the past two decades, these small internet service providers (ISPs) have been spreading and gaining notice. As success stories travel and inspire other communities to ask how they can do the same thing, they’re multiplying faster than ever.

These locally owned networks are poised to do what federal and state governments and the marketplace couldn’t. One, they can bring affordable access to fast internet to anyone, narrowing the digital divide that deepens individual and regional socioeconomic disparities.

Two, these small operators can protect open internet access from the handful of large ISPs that stand to pocket the profits from net neutrality rollbacks announced by the Trump administration. That’s according to Christopher Mitchell, who is the director of Community Broadband Projects, a project of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Mitchell, who has been tracking and advocating community-owned broadband networks for a decade, hopes that this will be the moment when people rebel against the administration’s attack on net neutrality and expand rural cooperative and municipal ISPs.

“The FCC is basically taking the regulations off of big companies, but local companies can still offer high-quality internet access at good prices,” Mitchell says.

Without net neutrality, broadband providers will be able to charge more for better access and faster speeds or be able to restrict traffic to preferred business partners over competitors. More independent ISPs can offer consumers a wider variety of choices.

Internet connectivity is a crucial economic leveller, without which people fall behind in schools, health, and the job market.

“No one will have to offer prioritised content in the ways that we fear AT&T and Comcast will. So local investments can preserve access to the open internet,” Mitchell says.

Can internet co-ops offer an open alternative to big ISPs like Comcast?

But, for many, before the question of an open internet and net neutrality comes to the question of whether people can have access to and afford the internet at all.

Remote, sparsely populated areas like the rural Ozarks are often synonymous with the digital divide. Large carriers don’t have a financial incentive to enter those markets where getting high returns on their investment are unlikely if not impossible. According to the FCC, 39% of rural Americans – 23 million people – don’t have access to broadband speeds.

Before Co-Mo Connect got off the ground, Klindt says, only one out of five members had access to broadband. Many still crawled along on obsolete dial-up connections. By 2014, however, nearby Tipton (population 3,351) enjoyed connection speeds in the top 20% of the US and the fastest in Missouri. By 2016, Co-Mo’s entire service area was on the digital grid.

ILSR estimates that there are more than 300 telephone and electric co-ops that provide rural fibre-optic internet service. Since the late 1990s, these co-ops have been installing more cable and leveraging existing infrastructure to provide faster service to their communities. A few have even built networks from scratch, such as RS Fiber in Minnesota and Allband in Michigan.

Matthew Rantanen, the director of technology for the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association, tells another story of access and adoption from reservation lands, where the FCC estimates that 68 percent of residents – 1.3 million people – lack access. Rantanen directed the initiative, which introduced wireless internet to 17 tribal reservation communities in San Diego County.

“Whatever is right for the local culture and the local government capacity is probably the best way forward.”

The initiative, Rantanen says, inspired Valerie Fast Horse, the IT director of the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Idaho, to build an entirely fibre tribal network. “Networking is in its very early stages, and I can’t wait to see some of this blossom,” Rantanen says. He estimates that just 30 of more than 300 tribal reservations in the US have broadband access.

Internet connectivity is a crucial economic leveller, he says, without which people fall behind in schools, health, and the job market. “Without that resource,” Rantanen says, “You’re a different class. You’re [on] a different level of participation in the US and the world.”

Though unequal access is primarily thought of as a rural problem, it affects urban centres, as well. ILSR estimates 90 cities are connected with high-quality municipal networks, while more than 200 are connected with more basic networks.

“Customers want reliable, fast, and inexpensive service. The market is not solving this problem,” says Deb Socia, the executive director of Next Century Cities, which works with 183 mayors across the country in hatching plans to fund locally based solutions in 19 states.

“The biggest dilemma for cities is that there has been an erosion of the capacity for communities to solve their own problems, and that has happened primarily at the state and federal level,” Socia says. Some networks, like the one in Ammon, Idaho, lease their networks to other providers. Others, like the one in Chattanooga, Tennessee, sell services like a conventional ISP.

“There are a lot of workable models,” says Mitchell, “and whatever is right for the local culture and the local government capacity is probably the best way forward.”

Cobbling together local solutions is the common challenge across all of these community projects, says Mitchell, whether it’s cracking the funding code, slashing through the governmental red tape, or cultivating enthusiastic leadership to convince communities that, in order to have their own internet service provider, it’s worth it to try something new.

Looking down the road, Mitchell believes that a strong network of small, competitive community-owned ISPs is possible. By syphoning revenue away from the monopoly ISPs, they could disrupt their ability to dominate their markets. And also, if net neutrality does indeed get rolled back, competition could make it less appealing for large ISPs to restrict content.

“I would say that if we had a flourishing of these local networks, it would still significantly hurt the ability of Comcast and AT&T to create tollbooths,” to prioritise content, Mitchell says. “It’s going to be fascinating to see what’s going to happen in coming years.”

Photo by Stephen D. Melkisethian

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Is capitalism compatible with free P2P Systems? https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-capitalism-compatible-with-free-p2p-systems/2017/10/17 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/is-capitalism-compatible-with-free-p2p-systems/2017/10/17#respond Tue, 17 Oct 2017 07:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=67799 Traditional anti-capitalism focused on the ownership of the means of production, yet the modern capitalist doesn’t even want to own the means of production, they want to own the very right to produce. To control the ideas required to produce and simply charge rents for these ideas. This short text by Dmytri Kleiner was originally... Continue reading

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Traditional anti-capitalism focused on the ownership of the means of production, yet the modern capitalist doesn’t even want to own the means of production, they want to own the very right to produce. To control the ideas required to produce and simply charge rents for these ideas.

This short text by Dmytri Kleiner was originally published in his mailing list back in 2011. It’s still as relevant now as it was back then.

Dmytri Kleiner: In the meantime, I’d like to reflect a little on Evgeny Morozov’s keynote at #28c3 this morning.

The topic was Surveillance Enabling Technologies. Long story short, Telecoms, Tech Firms, and Governments are developing and deploying systems to control and monitor their citizens online communications, and even selling this technology to governments that are widely considered to be authoritarian. It’s this last bit that I want to expand upon a little.

As Evgeny mentioned, as did others asking questions from the audience, this can not be understood as a few unscrupulous firms making sinister deals with foreign powers to profit from the suppression of dissidents and activists. For this most part these firms are not designing and building surveillance technologies at the behest of the likes of Iran and Syria, but as result driven by law enforcement in western states. And what’s more, they are required by laws passed by western states to build-in the very backdoors and interception features that surveillance systems depend on. It’s hard to blame the companies for building in features that the law requires them to build in.

Expressing outrage that enemies of the US and it’s allies are using the technology being developed by the west also seems misplaced, and rests on regressive exceptionalist view that privileges western states as being somehow noble enough to be trusted with the ability to survey their citizens, but not sinister foreign powers.

Though certain firms are clearly beyond the pale in their eagerness to promote their freedom-denying technology. This overall view that these firms or some foreign powers are to blame was largely rejected by Morozov and by the commentators from the #28c3 audience. The blame for increased interception of communications and technological surveillance is best place at the feet of western governments, whose laws, law enforcement agencies and military-industrial corporate lobbies are the real movers and shakers pushing for more and more control and monitoring of civilian populations.

Promotors of such mass surveillance systems claim to be defending civilization itself, from the usual array of boogeymen, including terrorists, and child pornographers, but make no mistake, their real target is freedom itself.

These systems are part of the process of destroying peer-to-peer communications, to eliminate the mesh topologies from modern communication platforms and restructure them as star topologies, and the major reason for this is not to hunt deviants or insurgents, but rather to control the consumer, and protect Capitalist privilege and profits.

In The Telekommunist Manifesto, as well as other texts, I discuss that fact that Capitalism and Peer-to-peer systems are not compatible, that Capitalism depends on the ability of platform owners to control user data and interaction, in order to monetize it. Such control is a prerequisite of receiving financial capital from investors, who understand very well that there are no profits, or more accurately rents, to be had from free networks, and thus insist on control to ensure a return their investments.

The Internet, as it exists now, is an existential threat to capitalist regimes, not only does it allow individual users and groups to collectively share information that reveals the cosy relationship between governments and rent seeking corporate lobbies, more importantly it allows new forms of commerce that blur the distinction of producer and consumer, and allow users to produce and share in new ways, such fluidity of interactions puts downward pressure of profits as people share amongst themselves and “cut out the middleman,” as commerce becomes disintermediated.

This threat is of particular concern with regard to intellectual property, which can be digitized and sent across computer networks. This is bad news for western economies who more and more aim to make their profits by owning ideas and designs, while letting others actually make things. Traditional anti-capitalism focused on the ownership of the means of production, yet the modern capitalist doesn’t even want to own the means of production, they want to own the very right to produce. To control the ideas required to produce and simply charge rents for these ideas.

Capitalism thus depends on the elimination of peer-to-peer systems by replacing, freedom-enabling mesh topologies, with freedom-denying star topologies. Recent communication history illustrates this quite clearly, with Venture Capital funding Web 2.0s capture of all communications, replacing earlier and far more scalable p2p applications, and the military-industrial fueled enclosure of cyberspace is just another part of this.

Evgeny Morozov suggests that we act and get the media and our political representatives to take notice and lead an outcry against this rapidly increasing lock-down of our online platforms, yet this requires that our media and our politicians will rally against capitalism, since it’s not just a few rogue firms or states driving this development, but rather the requirements of our class structure.

At the bottom of it, Capitalism, as a system based on hierarchy, privilege and exploitation, can not create a free network, anymore than it can create a free society. If there is a way out this, it’s unlikely to be governments and popular news organisations that help us. Our only chance is to develop new ways of producing and sharing, and find ways to build communication platforms that do not depend on capitalist finance.

If we do not find ways to replace capitalist finance it is not only the internet as we know it that we will lose, but the chance the remake society in its image.

Photo by carious.photography

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The Internet is under attack: This is the Battle for the Net https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/internet-attack-battle-net/2017/10/10 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/internet-attack-battle-net/2017/10/10#respond Tue, 10 Oct 2017 08:17:42 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=68151 Reposted from Battle for the Net. What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers like Comcast & Verizon should not control what we see and do online. In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The rules... Continue reading

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Reposted from Battle for the Net.

What is net neutrality?

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet providers like Comcast & Verizon should not control what we see and do online. In 2015, startups, Internet freedom groups, and 3.7 million commenters won strong net neutrality rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC). The rules prohibit from blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization—”fast lanes” for sites that pay, and slow lanes for everyone else.

We are Team Internet. We support net neutrality, freedom of speech.

Nearly everyone who understands and depends on the Internet supports net neutrality, whether they’re startup founders, activists, gamers, politicians, investors, comedians, YouTube stars, or typical Internet users who just want their Internet to work as advertised—regardless of their political party. But don’t take our word for it. Ask around, or watch some of these videos.

They are Team Cable. They want to end net neutrality, to control & tax the Internet.

Cable companies are famous for high prices and poor service. Several rank as the most hated companies in America. Now, they’re lobbying the FCC and Congress to end net neutrality. Why? It’s simple: if they win the power to slow sites down, they can bully any site into paying millions to escape the “slow lane.” This would amount to a tax on every sector of the American economy. Every site would cost more, since they’d all have to pay big cable. Worse, it would extinguish the startups and independent voices who can’t afford to pay. If we lose net neutrality, the Internet will never be the same.

Send a letter to defend net neutrality.

Photo by DavidDPD

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Podcast: The Power and Perils of Cooperatives https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/podcast-power-perils-cooperatives/2017/09/23 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/podcast-power-perils-cooperatives/2017/09/23#respond Sat, 23 Sep 2017 10:00:00 +0000 https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/?p=67789 Cross-posted from Shareable. Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Christopher Mitchell, the director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks initiative, interviews Hannah Trostle and Karlee Weinmann, research associates for the Community Broadband Networks and Energy Democracy initiatives, respectively. The three discuss the cooperative model of ownership and how this model can enable investment in gigabit internet connections for their... Continue reading

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Cross-posted from Shareable.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Christopher Mitchell, the director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks initiative, interviews Hannah Trostle and Karlee Weinmann, research associates for the Community Broadband Networks and Energy Democracy initiatives, respectively. The three discuss the cooperative model of ownership and how this model can enable investment in gigabit internet connections for their member-owners, but also how they are subject to a low participation rates in their elections.

The trio details the challenges of cooperative ownership and the myriad of benefits for active and engaged cooperative boards and administration structures. “There are co-ops out there that are finding ways to…have their members understand how solar can work for them,” says Weinmann on the benefits of cooperatives for renewable energy. “[They’re] finding ways to implement solar in a way that is financially feasible and financially beneficial.”

For full transcript of this episode of the Building Local Power podcast, click here.

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About ILSR: We work to create sustainable, home-grown economies across the U.S. New episodes of the Building Local Power podcast are published bi-weekly on Thursdays. Sign up for new podcast notifications and monthly email updates from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Audio Credit: Funk Interlude by Dysfunction_AL Ft: Fourstones – Scomber (Bonus Track). Copyright, 2016.

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