^{Photo: Night sky in September 2017}

Hello!

It is stark news for freedom of expression and free speech as the EU mandates that every file uploaded must be cataloged, scanned and filtered against already existing copyrighted works, and that websites will have to start paying a link tax for links directed to news sites, or else face fines for illicit linking by their users.

This is the imperative we need to create a completely decentralized Internet, unimpeded by draconian laws like these.

Watch this video by Computing forever as it explains what's to come.

So it's not really about Copyrights, it is about our ability to communicate online, that's under threat.

Because I suspect that websites foreign to the EU will stop serving EU citizens in fear of fines, I implore everyone to start using the Tor browser or some other VPN to bypass such restrictions. I also suggest everyone move away from sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook en mass, and start looking into distributed and decentralized social networks like Steem for publishing. Maybe even host a witness node if you can.

One thing that would be beneficial is for all the Steem services to provide a tor hidden node for browsing through them completely anonymously. Hell, even Facebook has one.

The problem with Steem though, is that it is mainly available as web services. And those are vulnerable to the new EU copyright law. How many of these sites can afford to pay for filtering or fines for linking to news sites? I suspect that if we are not getting a standalone Steem client soon, we are going to lose access to Steem, at least here in Europe, just like the people in China did a while ago.

Thus. I'll list some other interesting decentralization projects here just in case anyone wants to take a look and try them out. Most of them are actually apps that you can install and then use to connect to others. That way you don't have to rely on the Web that's actively been censored, and thus you'll be less likely to get detected and punished for "not following the rules".

• Zeronet – a peer-to-peer distributed Web 2.0 basically.
• RetroShare – A secure social communication and filesharing peer-to-peer app.
• Tribler – A filesharing app based on bittorrent, working on top of Tor.
• Freenet – An encrypted, distributed content storage. (The predecessor of IPFS)
• IPFS – An encrypted, distributed content storage.
• Tor - The Onion Router – Browse the net anonymously, and publish hidden websites.
• Tox – A p2p instant messaging and video conferencing protocol with many application implementations.
• Ricochet – Anonymous instant messaging.
• Salut à Toi – A social networking app based on XMPP (not encrypted, afaik)

And there are many more. I recall there are some that are based on cryptocurrencies even, but I haven't looked into those yet. I've also left out web service based social networks like Diaspora, because the EU law will eventually have an impact on those as well.

Let me know how you think about this. Also, have you ever tried these apps? I think they, coupled with cryptocurrencies will have to trend now, that the legacy Internet is going the way of dinosaurs.

Be safe! See you all later!!