The internet is dead, long live the internet

The internet is increasingly falling under the control and restrictions of governments and multinational corporations. Internet connections are filtered and censored, not only in China but blatantly so in 'western' countries such as Australia and Canada. The content industry is clamping down on infringement on intellectual property and calls for ever more far-fetching and over-reaching laws to be put into effect. Meanwhile, telco's are making deals with content providers to decide how gets premium access and who gets degraded access to their networks.

We have seen the internet rise, saw its potential and then lost it to capitalism and state control. It is time we truly 'take back the web'. The modern manifest of cyberspace is a call to action, urging the community to regain control and fight for a free infrastructure to sustain an uncensored and unbiased flow of information.

The internet is increasingly falling under the control and restrictions of governments and multinational corporations. Internet connections are filtered and censored, not only in China but blatantly so in 'western' countries such as Australia and Canada. The content industry is clamping down on infringement on intellectual property and calls for ever more far-fetching and over-reaching laws to be put into effect. Meanwhile, telco's are making deals with content providers to decide how gets premium access and who gets degraded access to their networks.

As such, the independence of cyberspace [https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html as declared in 1996] is a thing of the past. We urgently need to reclaim this independence, to ensure the free flow of information. One way out is the deployment of darknets and encrypted tunnels layered over the existing commercial internet. In this talk I will argue for a more radical option though; I will call to abandon the existing infrastructure and build our own.

This talk will highlight various already ongoing initiatives supporting this bold idea, and ideas that are currently bubbling up to build grass-roots internet. Wireless mesh networks that connect local areas, initiatives to connect rural areas to the larger networking community and the [http://events.ccc.de/camp/2011/space.html hackerspaces space program] launching this year at the CCC camp in August, which creates the environment for an actual grass-roots telecommunications satellite network and unites various ongoing efforts in this area.

But most of all, this talk will argue that the time is here to join loose initiatives and localized grass-roots telecommunication efforts to implement a world-wide and independent communications network. This talk will explore possibilities, challenges and perhaps the need to unlearn the familiar and adapt to a new era of a truly decentralized infrastructure without traditional hubs of power and controlling agencies.