Once again the error of thinking of the Internet as a ‘space’ inveigles into Government thinking

The report described the internet as “one of the few unregulated spaces where radicalisation is able to take place” and suggested it played a greater role in promoting violence than prisons, universities or places of worship.

via BBC News – Home Affairs Committee warns of far-right terror threat.

It’s not a space, people.

The Internet is communication, and regulation thereof is called “censorship”.

Damn, I really need to fix these folk.

Comments

2 responses to “Once again the error of thinking of the Internet as a ‘space’ inveigles into Government thinking”

  1. I find the “replace Internet with phone” meme works for some people.

    “The telephone system is one of the few unregulated spaces where radicalisation takes place.”

    – wouldn’t happen as much when the operator could listen in, and only rich people could afford a telephone.

  2. Dave Walker

    New metaphor:

    The Internet looks like “Cyberspace”, as space travel looks like “Star Wars”.

    While the “telephoneworld” metaphor is fine up to a point, it only goes so far (but see below). Circuit-switching and packet-switching make a big difference in what’s feasible, in some situations; I did a thought experiment of “start with a blank sheet of paper, and design an internetworking infrastructure from the ground up, with lawful metadata intercept as its principal design requirement”, and the only thing which looked even remotely likely to work, had to be circuit-switched.

    The irony, of course, is that calls made on a 3G ‘phone within 3G coverage, already use VoIP.

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