[p2p-research] Google gets into the DNS business

[Paul D. Fernhout]

M. Fioretti wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 06, 2009 10:43:54 AM -0500, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> 
>> This may reflect a deeper shift in our society. For most people, the
>> Google corporation is now effectively the de-facto government that
>> structures their lives online. So, how can we make Google a good
>> government? :-)
> 
> With all respect, this is the wrong question. The question is "how can
> we make peple realize that a) there's no need for such a government,
> b) it's in everybody's interest to take management of their
> communications in their own hands?"
> 
>> Well, one could also put a willingness to use Google for convenience
>> or free-of-direct cost down to "digital fatalism" in just assuming
>> you have no privacy online.
> 
> What I see is lots of people going "I'd rather be tortured than learn
> how to choose and configure software, so I'll fatalistically go for
> total loss of privacy here and now, never mind 2019"
> 
>> Of course, another issue is that digital evidence is fairly trivial
>> to fabricate.
> 
> Yes, this is a serious problem, but not really the one we started
> from, is it?
> 
> Even the discourse about limiting corporation rights (which is really
> interesting for me, thanks Michel for the link!)... I am not sure how
> relevant it is to this other one. If it's already possible (at the
> software level, physical infrastructure is another issue) to
> communicate without multinationals, why discuss how they should be
> regulated, in this context at least? I mean, they should be regulated
> for a lot of reasons, but having reliable and easy to use email is
> definitely not one of them.

Those are good points, but the fact is, multinationals lay the fiber cables 
under the sea, launch the satellites, repair the cables to people's homes, 
supply the power to the equipment, train the operators, and so on. So, 
unless we talk about a radical restructuring of the economy (which I've been 
happy to talk about) we are stuck with Google (and corporate friends) as the 
de-facto government. Which is another way of saying "fascism" -- a binding 
together of business and government. So, how can we have a "better" fascist 
state using P2P if that's what almost everyone has chosen? :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/