http://slashdot.org/yro/01/07/26/1553257.shtml These are a bunch of people who want to make fundamental architectural changes to the internet, to make it so they can prevent people from getting services unless they are paid money. Oddly enough, this comes at a time when I've been thinking very seriously about some of the implications of "Plan D." Basically, we need to think very hard about the infrastructure, if we intend to build something that is truly censorship-proof (as opposed to merely content-neutral). Mojo nation and freenet are current appoximations, but they work over the Internet, and that may be their downfall. The problem with Plan D, if implemented over the current Internet, is that the low levels of the internet are a tree rather than a proper network. There are choke points and listening points at which all of a particular person's traffic can be guaranteed to be intercepted. Every packet that traverses the internet can be queried to see where it's going, where it came from, how many hops it has left to live, etc. Most are associated with particular applications, and easily identifiable by a port number contained in the packet headers. Encrypted traffic stands out. Mixes are complicated by the absence of true broadcast (radio, ethernet in promiscuous mode, anything...) anywhere in the infrastructure, with the result that while you may not be able to tell which of the Mixers are responsible for a particular packet, but you can damn sure tell who the Mixers are, and if the Mix becomes enough of a problem you can outlaw it and stomp anybody who traffics in its characteristic packets. Every "solution" to these problems requires identifiable nodes to traffic in detectable types of packets over an increasingly monitored and controlled infrastructure. And the business types, as well as the pols, who haven't been able to cope with the internet's chaotic nature, want the infrastructure *more* monitored and *more* controlled. Since these are the groups that have the money and the power, respectively, they *will* get their way. Most cypherpunkish "dream" applications don't stand a chance of actually surviving full-out censorship and the descendants of the DMCA, in this network or the network that these people want to build. So, while these guys want to make the Internet into some kind of centrally-controlled monopoly, I've been wanting to create something that goes completely the other direction -- a "chaos web" with its own routing and switching and content-migration algorithms, designed specifically to facilitate the desire of some or all nodes and operators to remain impenetrable, uncensorable, and content-unlinkable to any unauthorized listener or would-be spoofer, regardless of the resources (including government) the would-be attacker has available. Characteristics of a "chaos web" include mobile content -- an idea already espoused by mojo nation and freenet -- but that means you can't hook up the database servers on the other end of your website and monitor where the people go, so mainstream businesses will probably not use a chaos web. ultimately though, it comes down to some kind of alternate infrastructure. Bear