LWN: Comments on "ActivityPub is now a W3C recommended standard"

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 08:38:17 +0000

You're telling that TOS of ISPs is impeding innovation, yet it's demonstrably not true in the actual reality.

I admit that you lack the power to demonstrate the untrueness you claim. And unfortunately with the current state of the politics, I don't see my argument denting the reality of the establishment's preferred status quo in the near term future. In general arguments of the form "if the world was significantly different in this specific way, then I believe such and such would result" are definitionally unable to be demonstrated true.

Downloading copyrighted movies through BitTorrent is a federal crime. People have been fined tens of thousands of dollars for it and theoretically can be imprisoned. It's also against TOS of pretty much all ISPs.

Yet millions of people are still doing it. Why?

If that is a rhetorical question, why don't you answer it yourself if you think it is relavent? Clearly when millions of people do anything, it is often for a wide spectrum of differing reasons within differing contexts. Driving a vehicle three miles per hour faster than the speedlimit is a crime, that unlike the federal crime of non-fair-use downloading of copyrighted movies through bittorrent, has a scientifically measurable bodycount, as well as maiming-count, yet millions of people are still doing it. Why? Yes, that was a rhetorical question- obviously when millions of people do anything, it is often for a wide spectrum of differing reasons within differing complex contexts. No doubt some are doing so within the legal framework of exigent circumstances. While others no doubt do it because they have no respect for the concept of the Law. Many others do it because of personal analysis involving an understanding of selective enforcement of the law, as well as knowledge of social understanding (even the people who obey the law still note what percentage of people don't obey the law, particularly on metropolis beltways).

Getting back to downloading copyrighted movies with bittorrent- No doubt some are engaging in fair-use scenarios. No doubt others have no respect for the law. No doubt some others have no respect for the subset of law around copyright. No doubt many others are basically addicts of popular culture. Perhaps some of these latter entertain the idea that satisfying their addiction here inherently does not carry the same kind of risks that in aggregate lead the sugar and salt and other refined ingestable addiction dynamics to have measurable bodycounts.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Cyberax — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 03:28:33 +0000

> You can disagree with the analysis, but failing to see the logical argument behind it seems odd.
You don't have an argument. You're telling that TOS of ISPs is impeding innovation, yet it's demonstrably not true in the actual reality.

> There is nothing straightforward about the Fair-Use nuance of U.S. copyright law.
Downloading copyrighted movies through BitTorrent is a federal crime. People have been fined tens of thousands of dollars for it and theoretically can be imprisoned. It's also against TOS of pretty much all ISPs.

Yet millions of people are still doing it. Why?

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 02:15:33 +0000

I fail to see how an obscure contract item is somehow stemming the overwhelming tide of home-based services.

There is nothing obscure about it. Servers of any kind prohibited (until the Utah small children holding picket signs protest followed less than 48 hours later by the allowing of 'non-commercial' servers. Which in my mind is a smoking gun for the bogosity of the 'reasonable network management' defense. And in fact looks like a clear impediment to interstate commerce to me.). It's simply a matter of the word 'platform' as it relates to 'potential users'. If there are a billion potential users of some type of software out on the internet, that software will be developed more rapidly than a type of software for which there are only a million potential users out there. That's simple utilitarian/capitalism/economic theory. You can disagree with the analysis, but failing to see the logical argument behind it seems odd.

Heck, BitTorrent is hugely popular, even though its use is a straightforward crime in the US for most of the content people really download.

There is nothing straightforward about the Fair-Use nuance of U.S. copyright law. More importantly, the 'war on video copyright infringement' with it's $222K soccer-mom crucifixion story and all the rest, is a pretty sad state of affairs. Law should be crafted rationally, with appropriate proportionality to the harms it addresses. The cumulative amount of human seconds spent watching bold FBI warnings about long imprisonments and large fines at the beginning of all DVDs (due to non-free user interfaces that disallow fast forwarding through those warnings) is just about as stupid as the war on cannabis has been in the U.S. Those things, and how they pervert what Law should accomplish with society, are indeed big problems that society would be wise to address sooner rather than later.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

jezuch — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:17:13 +0000

> Dude, nobody cares about running servers on local PCs. Get over it.

Actually, I do. BitTorrent runs better this way :)

server prohibition? net neutrality?

anselm — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 09:05:11 +0000

Home ADSL connections are not great for “commercial servers” in the first place, because of the limited upstream bandwidth, and port restrictions that ISPs enforce in the name of anti-spam. The prices for VM hosting being what they are, it's probably not worth the hassle, anyway (€10/month for unbreakable kit that sits on a reasonably fat pipe with no power-reliability issues doesn't sound so bad). Which is not to say that you couldn't run a small web server at home for something like OwnCloud/NextCloud for yourself, friends, and family.

At least here in Germany, the ephemeral-IPv4 issue seems to have mostly gone away. My domestic ISP used to disconnect me every 24 hours and my router would have to reconnect (and be given a different IP address), but since my connection got upgraded from ISDN to VoIP that no longer seems to happen. They don't guarantee that you'll be keeping your address but dynamic DNS looks more reasonable now.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

renox — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 00:58:14 +0000

If memory serves France has at least one ISP whose TOS bar users from having commercial servers at home.
Plus there is the static IPv4 issue, but that less an issue now that you can use a static IPv6 address.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Cyberax — Sun, 28 Jan 2018 21:32:31 +0000

> I haven't lived my life in those places, or researched them enough.
Please, do so. I fail to see how an obscure contract item is somehow stemming the overwhelming tide of home-based services.

Heck, BitTorrent is hugely popular, even though its use is a straightforward crime in the US for most of the content people really download.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 20:27:02 +0000

"Germany? France? South Korea? Sweden? Italy? Why aren't they overflowing with home-server-based services?"

I haven't lived my life in those places, or researched them enough. I suspect if I did research their laws and their ISP's ToS I could find reasons why they are not simple examples of (U.S. - server_prohibition). However my off the cuff response would be that it's probably the same reason they aren't overflowing with music that I like more than U.S. music. To be somewhat less intentionally offensive, I would say that I still believe enough in the propaganda that the U.S. was a world trailblazer as far as liberty and freedom of speech are concerned. Setting aside all the obvious blood on our national hands throughout history, it still seems like our tradition of at least paying lipservice to freedom of speech and the separation of church and state are something to be proud of. Or another facet would be- why is so much of the money being made from the internet centered around 'Silicon Valley'? Why haven't Germany, France, South Korea, Sweden, and Italy had a more equal share of internet profits? The internet is still relatively young tech, at least young enough to see its roots from 20 years ago still profoundly influencing its shape today. By all means, Germany, France, South Korea, Sweden, Italy- go forth and develop great stuff. Really however, going back to my initial comment about the U.S. FCC and GoogleFiber, if in fact those countries are examples of simple lack-of-server-prohibition environments, I would say that is all the more proof that GoogleFiber's arguments of server-prohibition being 'reasonable network management' are clearly bogus.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 20:13:41 +0000

You've misunderstood my position. My belief is that if the internet is established as a 2-way street platform (no server-prohibition), that we would see the rapid advancement of home server based solutions that are no more technically complex to set up than modern big company cloud based devices/services. I do have belief that there are a large enough number of technical users to get the ball rolling. I view it as the same dynamic as Linux. In the late 90's and early 00's, Linux required users to be very technical. There were a lot of pains in utilizing Linux as your OS. A decade later, and the popular distributions have collected a tremendous amount of volunteered work that makes Linux quite usable by non/less-technical people. The key element is the internet as a platform. Currently the FCC ensures it is a platform amenable to "energetically marketed pre-built client for a client-server arrangement run by a corporation". And thus those corporations are predominant. If the FCC ensured it was a platform for any FOSS developer providing home-server based software to anyone who wished to try it out, I think we would fairly rapidly see such options regain their rightful place on the internet. $0.02.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

pizza — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 11:21:40 +0000

I'm one of them, specifically so I can run servers. Others I know of don't run "public" servers per se, but still need to serve stuff from their homes.

I'm also paying double for that privilege. The non-useless support is an added bonus.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

farnz — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:17:48 +0000

Add the UK to that list - and how many homes in the US that have business class service from Comcast et al actually host servers?

Note that there are many homes that do pay for business class service, because the support you get is better for the same service.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Cyberax — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 09:19:39 +0000

> I don't know about other countries, but with Russia's recent history of oppression of journalism, I doubt there are many people interested in pushing free speech boundaries from there.
Germany? France? South Korea? Sweden? Italy? Why aren't they overflowing with home-server-based services?

Please, do stop imagining things.

> Rational actors use the tools they have available.
No. Revolutions are made by actual people. And people use whatever is convenient. That's it.

A server in a closer serving a crashy CGI page is not convenient so it won't be used.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

mpr22 — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 08:58:39 +0000

Your faith in the willingness of J. Random Non-Technical User to become a technical user in order to get a home server set up (rather than buying - or downloading for free! - an energetically marketed pre-built client for a client-server arrangement run by a corporation) is pleasant to see, but I don't share it :(

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Sat, 27 Jan 2018 07:58:31 +0000

How do you explain that?

By referencing my answer to basically the same question/issue from the same questioner/commenter in 2016 of course

"I don't know about other countries, but with Russia's recent history of oppression of journalism, I doubt there are many people interested in pushing free speech boundaries from there. I'm not saying the U.S. is some free speech panacea. In fact, I kind of get the feeling that keeping the power of home server operation out of the hands of the masses is precisely how establishment forces in the U.S. maintain much of their power in the face of the 'disruptive' technology of the internet.

In reality all recent revolutions used simple plain social networks to organize.

Rational actors use the tools they have available. Many tools are available, many with overlapping functionality. The wiser rational actors will select the best tool for the job at the moment given the current context. I suspect there may have been some less used, but importantly so, less than simple plain social network internet com tools used in addition the more often used, simpler plainer type. Clearly the simplest, plainest forms of communcation are verbal. There was no doubt a lot more of that used overall than the simple plain internet social networks. I'm sure SMTP had its place too. Maybe even an SFTP or three. I'm sure revolutionaries would have worked around the lack of any particular sets of tools. People are creative. But my perspective would be trying to provide better tools to more empower the populations at large, resulting in better outcomes. Who can say whether or not recent revolutions might have turned out even better if the revolutionaries had better/more-secure internet com tools years ago. I certainly would like to believe that the U.S. could have done better than potus Trump if twitter and facebook hadn't been allowed to remain so dominant for so long against federated home-server based foss options using protocols I'm guessing would be similar to this activitypub thing. I certainly am of the perspective that if the FCC had stood up for home server operation in 2012 (or preferably 2002 or earlier), that facebook, twitter, youtube, and skype would not have had the dominant history they have had (especially in relation to FOSS based alternatives). And the world would have been a better place for it. $0.02...

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Cyberax — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 05:42:33 +0000

> Setting aside the disinformation you posted about destination being the only relevant criteria for net neutrality, there are many examples in life of things that 'almost nobody cares about' which still matter with high degree of significance to vast numbers of lives.
It quite demonstrably isn't. Other countries don't have restrictions on hosting home servers and there's no real difference in the Internet usage there.

How do you explain that?

> If the FCC would get a clue, and a fertile field of potential server software utilizers were available, I think we would see enough use cases thrive that in twenty years almost everybody would care about ISPs en-masse prohibiting server-functionality to the majority of ordinary internet users. $0.02...
You sound like kiddie cipherpunks from 90-s, who were thinking that the next revolution will be done by exchanging PGP-signed encrypted messages through content-centric mesh protocols over homegrown hardware and software. With very complicated protocols to ensure the security and privacy of communications.

In reality all recent revolutions used simple plain social networks to organize.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 05:12:09 +0000

Setting aside the disinformation you posted about destination being the only relevant criteria for net neutrality, there are many examples in life of things that 'almost nobody cares about' which still matter with high degree of significance to vast numbers of lives. Even though 'almost nobody cares about' the multitude of important, but complex and esoteric issues, it does not follow that those who do should 'get over it' if they run into what they perceive as important misunderstanding of the issue. I view this issue through the lens of Freedom of Speech. Twenty years ago, long before Snowden, as the Internet was emerging as a useful tool for the masses, Free Speech got a lot of play in the sphere of discussion of the impact of the internet on humanity. Significantly less so these days. I believe, perhaps due to U.S.A. public school propaganda, that the most controversial aspects of the history of Free Speech mattered a lot. I won't try to calculate a bodycount, but even in middle age I can't discount the sense that Free Speech might be the best defense against the next Holocost. When Alice and Bob are prohibited from the server-operation aspects of internet usage, it follows that there is some Chuckie out there (managing the server Alice and Bob's client applications use to communicate) who now by the server-prohibition situation gains the power to interfere with Alice and Bob's ability to exercise Free Speech via their Internet access subscriptions. That's how I see it anyway. And given the summary quote I chose, this feels as dead-on to an on-topic place to bring the issue up as I can imagine. If the FCC would get a clue, and a fertile field of potential server software utilizers were available, I think we would see enough use cases thrive that in twenty years almost everybody would care about ISPs en-masse prohibiting server-functionality to the majority of ordinary internet users. $0.02...

server prohibition? net neutrality?

JFlorian — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 14:32:29 +0000

I've been very happy with my postfix + dovecot setup. Just works is my favorite technology.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Wol — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 10:37:25 +0000

:-)

Seriously, I'll have to investigate dovecot, at least.

Cheers,
Wol

server prohibition? net neutrality?

LightDot — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 08:16:46 +0000

> So why am I running postfix and courier-imap on my home pc?

I have no idea. As we all know, you should be running qmail and dovecot. :p :)

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Cyberax — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 08:13:06 +0000

A smallish exaggeration, actually.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

jrigg — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 07:59:47 +0000

>Dude, nobody cares about running servers on local PCs. Get over it.

I took that comment as sarcasm.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

dskoll — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 20:45:13 +0000

Dude, nobody cares about running servers on local PCs. Get over it.

The server running at the end of my DSL line is not a "local PC" (whatever that is.) I would be mighty ornery if my ISP changed its rules and prohibited me from running my personal mail server at the end of my DSL line.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Wol — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 15:40:00 +0000

> Dude, nobody cares about running servers on local PCs. Get over it.

So why am I running postfix and courier-imap on my home pc? None of my email is stored "in the cloud", I use a private email address on a family-owned domain, and I would like to be able to access that email when I'm not at home.

Surely that means my home PC has to be a server?

Cheers,
Wol

server prohibition? net neutrality?

NightMonkey — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 15:31:57 +0000

What is a "Local PC"? I've been running my Tor Relay for 10 years on my home-office network. Got t-shirts for it over the years for that donation, yay. Is that a "local PC"? Running MTAs for a few of my domains, too. And www. And FTP. And asterisk. And rsync mirrors for Gentoo. and and and.... I look for ISPs that allow that, and perhaps even encourage it.

To claim "nobody cares" in this community where there's likely, 400K people in world of billions, is a bit tone-deaf. By that standard "nobody cares" about the Linux kernel. :)

I do not disagree with the rest of your post. Just the "Get over it" part got me a bit. :) Cheers.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

liw — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 11:55:17 +0000

The importance of a specific freedom is not directly dependent on how many people make use of it. Even if only a small minority do, humanity as a whole may well benefit greatly from it. Freedom of speech is critically important even when it only used by one child to point out the emperor has no clothes.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

pabs — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 11:38:47 +0000

s/nobody/a small minority of humanity/

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Cyberax — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 08:46:43 +0000

Dude, nobody cares about running servers on local PCs. Get over it.

> It sure seems to me the ability to use one or the other variety here is precisely what 'net neutrality' is about, and therefore ISPs should not be able to use ToS to enact such discrimination of usage-type.
Incorrect. Net neutrality allows ISPs to do anything with the connection, for example to block ports numbers divisible by the current minute of the hour. It's perfectly fine as long as they don't discriminate against different destinations of traffic.

So blocking or throttling port 80 connections to the outside world would be perfectly fine. Blocking connections only to Netflix would not be fine.

server prohibition? net neutrality?

Garak — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 03:47:12 +0000

I wonder if someone can explain to me how this-

You can use the server-to-server protocol or the client-to-server protocol on their own, but one nice feature is that the designs for both are very similar.

is or is not related to this-

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7522219498.pdf

(my 2012 net neutrality 'informal' complaint about GoogleFiber's prohibition on the operation of 'servers' in their ToS. And implicitly the other big ISPs, especially the group the GFiber lawyer surveyed in their compelled response)

It sure seems to me the ability to use one or the other variety here is precisely what 'net neutrality' is about, and therefore ISPs should not be able to use ToS to enact such discrimination of usage-type. Of course that is to the extent that so-called net neutrality is in effect. I guess we are a month away from that possibly changing. However my point is less about that, and more about why I haven't seen acknowledgement of this issue in the rumblings of what the next and future forms of net neutrality will look like (i.e. speculations, state laws/orders).