First Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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1. Does the internet foster democracy by enabling citizens and groups such as Reading Liberally to break through the monopoly that 3-4 news organizations used to have in determining what events are “news” and how we should view the events they select?

2. Will access to the internet in jurisdictions with repressive regimes ever be unfettered? Or will access always be a Cat And Mouse game as possession of Smart Phones (with internet access) is criminalized and transmitters to which Smart Phones are tethered are programmed to block internet access?

3. Will the Smart Phones of the future operate directly off satellites rather than transmitters so that anyone with the courage to keep in her/his possession a smuggled-in illegal Satellite Smart Phone will have internet access (subject to the repressive regime’s ability to jam satellite reception)?

4. Will so-called Crowd Funding of start-ups via the internet create scandals because, in reality, Crowd Funding is nothing more than an end run on all of the Securities Laws so carefully crafted in the 1930’s to prevent fraud and abuse?

5. The news has been full of reports recently about how a University of Texas law student up-loaded 3-D printing instructions for the creation from standard blocks of plastic of a pistol which was fired in a video clip on the PBS Newshour (the instructions were down-loaded more than 100,000 times before the student voluntarily took down the website at the request of the FBI) -- so does 3-D Printing mean that any future terrorist can simply download 3-D printing instructions for Weapons of Mass Destruction?

6. Is the Common Wisdom correct that in order to maintain cyber security, it is only necessary to have two computers, one of which is NOT connected to the internet and data transmission between the two is ONE WAY ONLY with the CD’s used for one-way transmission destroyed afterwards (or donated to charity)?

7. Or has Scorpion/Thresher technology already made it possible for super-thieves to take a picture of your hard drive from miles away with no connectivity (like a Paparazzi) in order to replicate all of your computer files?

8. Has the essential hardware comprising the internet already been located in jurisdictions whose laws, current and future, will permit the internet to operate in an unfettered manner? As distinguished from, say, U.S. connectivity to the essential hardware located “on Mars” so that U.S. law can only address U.S. connectivity rather than how the internet itself operates? Does this mean, to wallow momentarily in the mundane, that the U.S. Congress will never succeed in requiring state sales taxes to be imposed on internet sales?

9. If the essential hardware comprising the internet (vs. connectivity to it) has been located in jurisdictions with favorable legal systems, do those jurisdictions have sufficient military power to ward off hostile regimes? Or even Somali pirates?

10. If the U.S. can’t control access to terrorist websites, how important is it for the U.S. to be able to monitor the websites its citizens/residents visit? Or would it suffice for anti-terrorist organizations to create the most-enticing terrorist websites and then see who logs on?

11. Is there any chance that false or hateful content can be kept off the internet?

12. And, to finish on a light-hearted note (pun intended), do Schmidt and Cohen hold out any hope for classical-music lovers that the LOW FIDELITY AUDIO that has plagued the world to this day and is an ABOMINATION when contrasted with the HI FI(delity) that we used to enjoy during the analog/vinyl era -- will ever be rectified???