Regarding the blockage issue in general

["Pat Frank" <pat@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Folks, I'm a little confused.  There seems to be an unspoken fear here that
Tor needs to have 100% access to all web sites on the Web in order to be
successful.  But surely Tor is never going to be a perfect solution for all
Web browsing anyway.  Why not instead focus on building the proxy service
into Tor, throw a great big "ANON ON/OFF" switch for the whole package into
the System Tray, and let the user use it as they may?  

After all, that also solves the problem of proxy slowdown (which I suspect
will have a much greater impact on casual user acceptance than the blockage
issue).  When you need privacy, you turn it on.  When you don't, you turn it
off.  Clickity click, the best of both worlds.  

Tor is not "IP++".  It's "Dingledine AntiIdentity 2006".  It's something
that makes people anonymous *if they want to be*.  That's it.  This idea
that it should hum along quietly, below the radar, forcing politically
incorrect web site owners to comply with some people's idea of how the Web
should be.... viewing it as "The Tool That Set The Web Free and Saved The
World for Democracy"... all that stuff does is just set Tor up for failure.


Look at it this way: You're improving the operating system, not rescuing the
World Wide Web.  You're giving Web users something they never had before --
a switch for anonymity.  Does Microsoft do this?  Linux?  Solaris?  Nope.
When I finish installing Windows, there's no big red privacy switch on my
desktop.  Why not?  This is where Tor's awesome potential lies -- in
extending the Web, not enforcing political concepts.  

Just my two bits, for what it's worth. 


--------------------------------
Pat Frank, pat@xxxxxxxxxxxx  
http://www.patfrank.com 
http://hardrockstars.org/blogs/pats_blog

"Never interrupt me while I am adjusting my tin foil hat!"