Information flowing out of Iran has slowed to a trickle because of the the governments intense control over the Internet.  The government has banned usage of social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, and is monitoring traffic to ensure suppression.  But many Iranians are getting around those blocks by browsing over an encrypted network call The Onion Router (Tor). The problem is, Tor relies on bandwidth from it’s users, and since it’s use is not as widespread as regular Internet traffic, users experience very slow transfer speeds when using the Internet.  The more Tor relays (bandwidth donators) there are, the faster the Tor network becomes, so you can help Iran’s Internet users browse safely by becoming a Tor Relay, click on the link above the “Featured Topic” section to download a flyer about Tor relays that contains links to all the information you need to help out.

P.S. - please distribute the flyer whenever and where ever you can.

Thanks to user “Cogs” at the WhyWeProtest forums for making the original flyer.

With radio, television, newspapers, and all other classic information dissemination mediums, ads pay for things, so pissing the advertisers off with objectionable content is a bad idea.  You don’t want to loose funding or be canceled outright for saying something the advertisers don’t like.  Even some websites are subject to this if their advertisers or sponsors are corporate in nature.

Mythbusters vs. RFID

Jeff Gerstmann vs. Eidos

CNN + Exxon Mobil

With the internet, as it exists today, ads rarely effect the content you see on a website, unless the ads are corporate sponsors of some kind.  But for sites like this one, Joystiq, Engadget, and Ars Technica, ads are placed through an ad service like Google Adsense, which detects the kind of content on the site, and displays ads that are relevant.  The pool of ads that Adsense pulls from is maintained by Google, not the manufacturer of the product being advertised.  So you could have an ad about remington guns on a blog that favors Smith and Weston guns, and there would be absolutely no backlash from Smith and Weston, probably no backlash from readers of the blog, and certainly no backlash from Google.

Ads on websites are not a bad thing.  They help the owner of the domain pay for things, they help the company whos product is being advertised, and they help the ad service thats displaying the ads.  All of this without much complaint from anybody.

You are not under the thumb of an advertiser when you’re on the internet, and that’s one reason the medium is so great.  If net neutrality is protected, this remains true.

update: I want to add one point.  Though Pay-per-click advertising cannot, by its very nature, affect a websites content, it is a scammable system.  Pyrabang.com is trying to reduce that scamming with an earn-per-click system:

“With PyraBang’s earn-per-click system you’ll earn micro-payments on clicks of your news, entertainment, music or advertising. Pay per click systems are wrought with fraud since it’s the advertiser who pays for the click. There are actually groups of webmasters out there who make a killing clicking on each-other’s websites! With earn-per-click, there is no incentive for webmasters to be fraudulent because they are actually paying for each click in return for new members being added to their groups. This is a win-win for both the webmaster and the advertiser!”

S. 773, the Cyber Security Act of 2009, was introduced by Senator John Rockefeller (D, WV) with Senators Evan Bayh (D, IN), Bill Nelson (D, FL), and Olympia Snowe (R, ME) as cosponsors.

Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT):

“The cybersecurity threat is real, but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jennifer Granick:

“Essentially, the Act would federalize critical infrastructure security. Since many of our critical infrastructure systems (banks, telecommunications, energy) are in the hands of the private sector, the bill would create a major shift of power away from users and companies to the federal government. This is a potentially dangerous approach that favors the dramatic over the sober response.”

In forums and comment threads across the internet, users are typing in all caps, scared that this act will give the president unfettered power to “SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET”. I’ve read the bill, and it is as scary as everybody makes it out to be, but let me remind you:  one cannot simply shut down the Internet, that’s virtually impossible.

There are a few ways for you to understand this legislation:

1. Read the full text of the bill, and use your superb linguistic abilities to comprehend it.  Here’s the full text.

2. Read this bill breakdown in it’s entirety, it’ll take awhile, but you’ll understand everything about the bill and you’ll know pretty well how to talk about the bill with others.  In bold lettering throughout the text, you’ll find key points which you can follow if you’re speed reading it.

3. If you’re lazy, just skip to the summary at the bottom.  You’ll get the main points of the bill, but it’ll be out of context and you won’t be well-read enough to discuss the bill with others.

I’ve broken the bill down into each section.  I summarize what each section proposes and provide excerpts of the sections.  Have fun.

Section 2, (6):

Paul Kurtz, a Partner and chief operating officer of Good Harbor Consulting as well as a senior advisor to the Obama Transition Team for cybersecurity, recently stated that the United States is unprepared to respond to a ‘cyber-Katrina’ and that ‘a massive cyber disruption could have a cascading, long-term impact without adequate co-ordination between government and the private sector.’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Text of bill (PDF)

Section 3101 of the bill calls for six billion dollars to be invested in broadband infrastructure; an excerpt:

(2) ensure that grant recipients—
(A) meet buildout requirements;
(B) maximize use of the supported infra10
structure by the public;
(C) operate basic and advanced broadband
service networks on an open access basis;
(D) operate advanced wireless broadband
service on a wireless open access basis; and
(E) adhere to the principles contained in
the Federal Communications Commission’s
broadband policy statement (FCC 05-151,
adopted August 5, 2005).

Ctrl+F and type “3101″ to find the section on broadband.