One step closer to everyone ceasing to pretend the Internet is in any
   way free or democratic. It was a nice fantasy while it lasted. Even
   where ISPs are nominally private, you can't be a licensed user of the
   airwaves or have fiber along government right-of-ways and expect not to
   have the government impose its own interests on you. I wonder how long
   it'll be before they outlaw any kind of overlay network they can't
   snoop on? I guess that's what the attempts to outlaw useful crypto are
   all about. I bet we'll eventually see warrants to decrypt legal,
   escrowed crypto envelopes entirely on suspicion that the user is using
   a layer of unescrowed crypto inside. Which will accomplish exactly what
   the content cartels want by forcing those who care about privacy into
   low-bandwidth covert channels while doing nothing to make it more
   difficult for genuine criminals to communicate privately. Maybe it'll
   be harder to share kiddie porn. But at a huge cost to the future of
   humanity, as we all know where this road is leading.
   Maybe there's some hope for wireless services where the hardware is
   licensed rather than the user. Or extremely line-of-sight stuff like
   FSO.
   On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 11:38 AM, grarpamp <[1]grarpamp@gmail.com>
   wrote:

     [2]https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1420226/gchq-
     planning-uk-wide-dns-firewall
     UK surveillance agency GCHQ is exploring the use of a national
     'firewall' in its fight against cybercrime, according to the
     organisation's head of cybersecurity. Alongside BT, Talk Talk and
     Virgin Media, GCHQ will work to filter out websites and email
     campaigns which are known to contain malicious content. The
     intelligence organisation believes that the best to way to set up
     such
     a blockade would be to build a national domain name system (DNS). In
     a
     speech delivered at the Billington Cyber Security Summit in
     Washington
     DC, director general for cyber security at GCHQ, Ciaran Martin,
     said:
     'We're exploring a flagship project on scaling up DNS filtering:
     what
     better way of providing automated defences at scale than by the
     major
     private providers effectively blocking their customers from coming
     into contact with known malware and bad addresses?'
     [3]https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1512257/10-
     years-in-prison-for-online-pirates-a-step-closer-in-the-uk
     The UK Government's Digital Economy Bill has moved a step closer to
     becoming law after its second reading in Parliament. With unanimous
     support, the current two-year maximum custodial sentence for online
     piracy is almost certain to increase to a decade, TorrentFreak
     reports. From the article: Due to UK copyright law allowing for
     custodial sentences of 'just' two years for online offenses,
     anti-piracy groups such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft
     have
     chosen to pursue their own private prosecutions. These have largely
     taken place under legislation designed for those who have committed
     fraud, rather than the more appropriate offense of copyright
     infringement. Physical pirates (CDs, DVDs) can be jailed for up to
     10
     years under current legislation. During the past few years, there
     have
     been lobbying efforts for this punishment to apply both on and
     offline. That resulted in a UK Government announcement last year
     indicating that it would move to increase the maximum prison
     sentence
     for online copyright infringement to ten years. They also urge
     Google
     to do something about growing incidents of piracy.

References

   1. mailto:grarpamp@gmail.com
   2. https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1420226/gchq-planning-uk-wide-dns-firewall
   3. https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/14/1512257/10-years-in-prison-for-online-pirates-a-step-closer-in-the-uk