You experience it everyday. The immense and vibrant internetwork. You click a mouse, tap a screen and plug in the power cord when the battery is almost flat. The question is, how long can people last without the internet? How long can you last? Are you obsessed? Does your heart skip a beat when you find free wifi? Does your stomach turn when the server stops working? Take a good long think about this aspect of your life.

Can you survive without the internet?

Yes.

It's shit now anyway. It's just becoming another market.

I like the internet for the ability to express myself and be free. I fucking hate getting letters from some fuckers who want to sue me, I goddamn hate having to deal with censorship and websites being closed and I hate the N5A and FB1.

If the internet is not a place of absolute freedom, and if people think things on the internet have value, this is not the one I want to browse. And yeah, I believe everything should just be free, with no cost at all. Everything dematerialised should have no price in my opinion.

The Internet is not free.

The Internet is a collection of wires and computers. Every single one of those computers, servers, wires, switches, routers, and other hardware is owned by a person. They are not publicly owned.

Until there is a group of fair people that can somehow come up with funds to lay cable themselves around the world, or until every person in the entire world that wants an Internet connection can manually cut and lay cable themselves, it will remain this way. People are very willing to take it in the ass from large corporations if their life is made more convenient.

There are a couple of large groups of people with lots of money that have almost completely monopolized the entirety of the physical Internet for a long time. And, to be fair, no one has enough money to link this many people other than huge corporations. There's really not much people can do other than boycott the use of this equipment. It's only a matter of time before they can legally monopolize the virtual World Wide Web.

For laughs and porn, though, it's great.

There wouldn't be any dollars if we didn't have any internet though eh? And no Anime to inspire it. In fact we wouldn't even be talking about this right now if there was no internet. Imagine trying to go back to sending letters to everyone, to having to pay for everything with physical cash instead of a card, to be unable to read the news, or entertain yourself on tumblr or facebook or twitter or the dollarsbbs or on whatever multiplayer game you play or blog you follow or family/friend you skype? How would you check the stock market, or the weather? The internet has become so integrated and so necessary that there can never be a replacement, and we could never do without it. Humans (at least all humans withing the more economically developed countries, and some in the less economically developed) live around the idea of instant inter connectivity. We've become faster paced and less patient, and as always, time is money. And so is the internet.

>>7 That text class breaks your post quotes.

LOL.

no. i'm addicted to it.

>>4

That doesn't mean ISPs should do whatever they want. I'm paying for my internet. What's more ISPs aren't responsible of privacy violations and such, governments are.

>>11 ISPs are small fish in a big pond.

Where do you think ISPs get their service they give to you from? Where do they get their IP range to give to their customers? They get it from bigger fish, essentially ISPs to ISPs. They give the service to Sentex, Bell, and every other ISP in the world.

Even those companies aren't at the top. They also get their service in the same way. I doubt there is any one person that knows how the chain works in its entirety that is still alive.

I think it's the Illuminati at the very top, personally.

As for privacy, the ISPs have to give that information to the government. Usually it's strongly coerced, usually legally, but they still give it all the same. Phone records is different, as I believe they sized some records but also did some recording of their own. I don't think the government does widespread electronics surveillance, only on specifically targeted individuals. They can just get the records of that through the ISP, which already does it by law anyway.

>>12 It should have been the CERN. Anyway, I call everyone at the top ISPs ( well yeah, they provide internet services to other people who provide internet services).

The problem is not whether the government actually does surveillance but the fact anyone can, through law, reach an information about you. Also entreprises are enjoying violating our privacies, getting and selling our informations.

But what bothers me the most is that what I did on the internet could end up having legal consequences against me.

>>13 "But what bothers me the most is that what I did on the internet could end up having legal consequences against me."

Explain this

>>14 A 19 year old boy was convicted for two years in prison for saying he wanted to shoot up a school, jokingly.

If you download something someone wants to make money on, you also get fined, and depending on country go to jail.

>>15 That was on Facebook, to clarify.

>>14 Well >>15 got an example.

Another example would be how I was going to get sued by some anime editor for uploading licensed animes. Well in my case you could say I deserve it, but I have a low opinion on everything that's dematerialized and I'm all for people sharing. I'd agree to share my things for free if I ever got anything done, by the way.

I could copy a disk online and share it with my whole town, no one'd say a shit. But the internet's a place where some people can ( and do ) act like Gestapo. I'd get a hundred times worse punishment for sharing a single file than I'd get stealing scouters in town.

Of course the internet is not the real life, and that's why I also don't want it to end up as a big market. I want it to be an international zone no one has control over.

>>17 You are portraying the internet as a giant government controlled market, I don't believe this is what the internet is.

The amazing thing about the internet is that for the most part, it is free (in a free to do what you want sense of the word). If you want to make content for free and share it with everyone, awesome, you are free to do that. If a huge studio wants to put a lot of money into an anime and then sell it via the internet, great, they are free to do that. You are saying that "I'm not free to go and take their payed product and distribute it for free, therefore, I'm not really free am I?" and in a sense, you are right. There are some restrictions, but not unreasonable ones.

Think about why this restriction exists, so that they will be free to decide if they want people to pay for their product or not. If you were free to take their product and give it away, then they wouldn't be free. In the same way, you could produce content free of charge, and someone could take your content and sell it, and you wouldn't be free to decide if that happened or not. Either way, your freedom to decide what happens to your product is compromised, but with the restriction, the original creators freedom is preserved, and not the people redistributing.

My point is this, stop thinking of what you would do if people pirated your stuff, and respect that that company has a right to decide what they want people to do with their things.

Also, for the OP, I could not live without internet.

>>18 Not a government controlled market but government controlled place and a market too.

The problem is not having one company selling things but going overboard on people not respecting their right to share and such. There we go with DRMs and shits like CISPA/ACTA/whatever.

One example would be anime editors monopolizing the market and in this case there's no freedom. You can't make a " free and open source alternative " of animes, right ? And you don't have fansub anymore, because of how strict they are about sueing people who bother their money income. In the case of France you get an editor who can't even spell correctly, insults his clients, and sells medium quality overpriced translations ( only dematerialized and he doesn't fix errors even when notified, nor does he even bother translating openings and some other things ). He also sends notices to everyone on the whole fucking visible web who is sharing their content or simply implying they might pirate it. What's more he tries to investigate on them, which is pretty much illegal.

In my opinion you should just be free to share the material you possess just as you might do with something material. I'm part of these people who persist on having piracy as a legal way of sharing.

>>19 I don't understand what you mean by you cant make an alternative. If you have the skills and manpower you certainly could, look at RWBY, it's all free on youtube.

Fansubbing is complicated and multi-layered and I'm not getting into it.

The difference is that if I have a physical bottle of soda and share that, now I have less soda. If I share an anime, I still have it, and can share it infinitely. Only one person would ever have to buy the anime.

I feel like we are deviating from the original intent of this thread, so that is all I will say on the subject, I apologize to the OP for being such a distraction.

>>20 You can make copy of an anime in real life, too, and give the CD/whatever to someone else, not losing yours and multiplying it. It's the same, except the price isn't the same ( there's still one though, even if almost non-existent, as you're transferring data ).

I should have spoken about an alternative to anime editors. The animes aren't theirs but they have it's monopole in the whole country. An alternative ( free and open source ) in this case would be to have fansub too.

As of now it's not even proper capitalism as there's no freaking competition. It's just all about who is the only one who gets the popular anime, and then he can just shit on its clients, people will be forced to depend on that one company.

Of course another editor would be a good alternative too, and I'd be fine with that. At least competition would raise the quality and we wouldn't get spat on our faces.

Even if I wish for Freedom I'm fine as long as I'm not endangered anyway, I can always avoid getting my privacy rapped.

About the main subject, I do not think it's wrong to deviate somehow, as we're only adding a debate to a thread full undisputed opinions. This could relate to much more than animes on the internet, so it's not off-topic.

>>21 CD's are priced with a copyright fee added onto them. It's factored into the price; they are assuming you will use the CD or DVD to store copyrighted material. So, when you copy onto a CD, you are actually paying copyright holders. That's why they care less about that.

>>22 I don't know about the USA specifically but that fee should be applied on your hard drive, your screen and the TV you might use

>>22 I don't know about the USA specifically but that fee should be applied on your hard drive, your screen and the TV you might use, your mp3 player or phone, et cætera.

>>23 I think it's mainly on CDs/DVDs because it is very unlikely you will use CDs legitimately compared to those other things.

But, I agree they should have a fee added onto hard drives, at the very least.

Well, for the most part I can go without it, but overall, I don't think the world could, too many companies and such have gone digital and all that bull...

I get annoyed when i'm on the internet and an error happens or i lose the connection. I get annoyed. That's it. I understand people who have jobs directly linked to using computers and the internet, and how they might become used to it or dependent of it. It's pretty sad some people who use the internet as a pleasure wouldn't be able to handle it. The internet is a privilege, cherish it but don't drown in it. It's not like you popped out of the womb on a laptop anyway.

>>27 >It's not like you popped out of the womb on a laptop anyway

That's what it's getting to now. Babies are being given technology at a very young age to play around with, and to learn. They become dependent on it. You are right, we should treat it as it is: a privilege.

I hate the internet as much as I love it.
I hate the selfish people, the rude people, the stupid people- The people that I don't think DESERVE internet. I hate dealing with them. I hate differing opinions, because I truly believe that if people do not have the same opinions as me they must be undeniably WRONG. I hate dealing with it. I really should just leave.
But.
I have this awesome app called Instagram. I say it as if you haven't at least heard of it, but I hadn't until months ago. I love it. I post stupid little things and talk to random weird people and I just am something I couldn't be otherwise. Without the ability to share my art and utter randomness with people I don't know, I wouldn't feel happy. If I didn't have it anymore I wouldn't die. If I sincerely felt the need to delete my account on Instagram, destroy my 13 year old laptop, and get rid of my internet forever, I'd be okay. We'd all be okay. Surely we depend on it, as all society HAS to do now, but we won't physically die without it.
Yet.

>>29 >I truly believe that if people do not have the same opinions as me they must be undeniably WRONG.

I hope for the sake of the human race you are kidding.

Honestly, it would be one of the largest inconveniences that would happen. The internet is our library, our TV, our telephones, and even our relationships. I think total connection is a scary thing, but that's where we are heading. I enjoy it a hell of a lot, though.