On 07/02/11 21:26, Geert Lovink wrote:

The question indeed is: what does it mean when we call to run our own servers? If they are located somewhere in the 'cloud' then what's the difference anyway in comparison to Facebook or Google?

The alternatives we suggest cannot be empty gestures if we propose to use 'virtual' servers that are under the same corporate control anyway.

Yes, Amazon volunteered to cut off Wikileaks, which demonstrates that the degree of freedom that EC2 instances give you are very limited - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/11/wikileaks-amazon-denial-dem... Eben Moglen gave a very good talk about the issues of privacy and control that I think are at the heart of the question you raise, recommending that people run servers on computing machinery that they physically control - http://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/feb/10/highlights-eben-moglens-free... It's possible to implement Moglen's ideas with current technology: here's a "wall wart" plug server in the corner of my living room running GNU social on Debian - http://foocorp.org/projects/fooplug/ And here's a project to create a distro specifically for such devices - http://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox - Rob. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE