Stulle, on 12 February 2012 - 10:43 PM, said:
Radical change is not something we can afford in our civilization if we want to retain peace amongst ourselves. Look to northern Africa and look to Greek! Unless you want a similar situation in all of the western world you will have to come to terms with the idea that the internet is not the playground you want it to be. And in order to not be that playground there is a necessity to implement measures that allow tracing users.
Of course that's not true or even sensible and betrays a (natural) zero knowledge on the reasons that have set Greece to the current state she is. The reasons is precisely the unwillingness of Greece to make radical changes against the destructive Socialist system introduced by Andreas Papandreou (the father of George Papandreou, the former prime minister). A system that destroyed my country's competitiveness and made the government employee the most coveted job offering in the market. A system the made the Socialist Unionist the most powerful decision maker, above parliament and above justice. A system that undermined a much respected Academia (for a small country) to a mess of protests and politics.
Were we afraid to overthrow these policies ? The fear of another junta was strong and the addiction to lending stronger. But it was no fear. After the mid 80s, people had started speaking against that system, about an impending catastrophe. But those were immediately branded as paranoid or funny figures or just philosophical eggheads; besides, how could the system be wrong ? The socialist unionist in an expensive Boss suit, unlocking the expensive Mercedes or BMW in front of his suburban house was the proof of everything going great. Thus, the press and the media, at least the vast majority of them, were always against any thought of layoffs in the government sector, privatization of state monopolies, or even application of existing laws about destruction of private property during unionist protests.
Change was impossible.
Only during the last 3 years did I notice some turning of events, thanks to the free Internet. For example a blog that revealed the past experiences of Socialist politicians: most of them were illegally hired as government employees without any contest. Of course when this blog started gaining notoriety, legal threats ensued. The blogger decided (even if Google could guarantee some protection) that he could not risk his peace of mind and got the blog down.
There is another example. Michael Liapis, one of the most funny people in the Greek political spectrum had tried to remove the videos which proved his incapacity to act normally from youtube. Little did he know of p2p; I and many others had already moved the files to eMule and the videos could be found there. Eventually the videos reappeared on youtube as it was obvious that the truth could not be hidden.
In short I believe that you have your facts completely twisted.
It is exactly the lack of those tools that should be blamed (aside from the major culprit which is us) on the issue. Therefore, it's not a free Internet that may endanger a state to destabilize but the lack of it. If you don't want a similar situation to "northern Africa" and "Greek" then make sure that you do your part change bad policies as soon as possible. The free, unmonitored, Internet is one of the tools available.