[free-sklyarov] Congress says: Keep Dmitry in jail! Washington loves DMCA...

[Eric Tully]

At 12:09 PM 7/25/01 -0400, Jon Bober wrote:
>
>this is a thought that also occurred to me this morning on the train.
>
>i wonder just what it would take to take the internet down for a day.
>




It's not a realistic goal.

It could be done a few different ways:

1.  Get a rogue engineer who administers MAE-East or West to shut the
servers down.  Even if you did get an engineer to take that down, it would
be back up in minutes since armed guards would have that employee removed
and other employees would bring the system back up.

2.  Get operators of the biggest Internet services to erase routing tables
or power off routers.  They have contractual obligations that they must
honor and the potential lawsuits would be enormous so they would never
agree to participate in this.


Even if you did take down the Internet for a day, it wouldn't change
Washington's mind about the DMCA.


I suppose a nuclear bomb in the DC/Virginia area would take out enough
peering points to put a damper on the Internet for a few years.

I'm not actually recommending this as a way to urge Congress to eliminate
the DMCA.


- Eric