Writes a friend:
I’ve been playing online poker for a living for the last five years. The government might think they can shut down the industry, but they can’t. As John Gilmore famously said, “The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Poker Stars was taken down for US Players on April 15th. It’s taken me less than a week to set up a virtual private network (vpn) that makes it look like I’m playing from another country, acquire a foreign PO Box, obtain a Skype virtual foreign phone number, and deposit money onto a foreign site that doesn’t accept US players. Now I’m back in business!
As the US and other governments attempt to further restrict the online activities of their subjects (I refuse to call us citizens), I expect to see increasing use of vpns, encryption, untraceable virtual currency, anonymous remailers, etc. It’s an arms race between the factions of freedom and tyranny, but unlike most conventional arms races, this seems like one that the good guys are the favorite to win.