What is the net neutrality?

If you're not comfortable about the Net Neutrality, it is the defining concept of the internet. Simply put, it can be summed by this sentence:

Each packet is created equal in right and duty.

This is it. A packet is an atomic part of a communication between computers, it is a fragment of the data exchanged between you and the rest of the world. It's like a word in a sentence.

This axiom grants the fact that all the packets will be managed independently of their content, sender and receiver, and then it removes the possibility of censorship.

However, this is not what's important now. What is important is that ISP wants to sold you net neutrality. What they call premium. And you should opposes the idea.

What is a premium?

The premium the ISP wants to sold you is the fact that not everybody can access the internet the same way. They want to create a first class internet, which you will pay for.

The premium will gives you unlimited access at high speed to whatever you want. Music, pictures, videos, search engines. You name it. Sounds cool? Well, yeah, it sounds cool.

But it just a sound,a bit like the beautiful songs of the siren that lures sailors in the darkness of the seas. And you should not listen to them.

And here is why.

Internet is made by and for users

The internet (not only the web, but the whole interconnection of network) is made of what people put on it. From the time I started using it, back to the 56kbps connexion, to the modern age of social networks, most of the things available on the internet has been created by users of the internet.

Internet is a read/write media, not like the press or the TV. If it is so awesome, it's only because everyone who can access the internet can also write on the internet. Even facebook, google and twitter have understand that, it is the User Generated Content.

The ISP, and most of the companies on the internet, aren't building content. They are sometimes building tools (search engines, micro bloging platform, social network management tools, etc.) that are amazing, but they are not creating content.

http://youtube.com is not producing videos. They collect them, gives you tool to browse them and gives you tool to upload them.

So, you find internet so useful because everyone can write on it. Keep this in mind, because this is important.

Internet is a connexion of network

Another thing is that internet is only an interconnection of networks. Military and university ones at first, and now governmental or company owned network. Google and Facebook are two different networks (and they do a lot of effort to keep each other out of their network). Apple is building is own and, yes, ISP have their own network.

So, if you give ISP the possibility to prioritize traffic and content, the ISP will give a higher priority to the contents that will grants them more money (hey, they are mostly companies after all). And it means that you will access advertisements before anything else. You won't access the content you were looking for, but the content they want you to access.

What does it mean? It mean that if, for instance, Orange earn no money from Facebook, they will build their own social network and will hinder your access to Facebook. If you have only 1kbps of bandwidth for Facebook.com, you will need several minutes to just load the home page or any pictures. And I'm not speaking about uplodaing pictures. Facebook will basically becomes unusable. But do not worry, after all Orange will build you a social network that will be usable for you.

And yes, they're already doing it. Orange has interest in dailymotion.com, a direct concurrent to youtube.com. And Orange is an ISP (and even a Content Delivery Netowrk), so they can hinder youtube.com to favor dailymotion. See this link (in FR) for more details.

So, granting the network operator to do whatever they want will destroy the interconnection of the network (hence, the internet).

I want to be special

And then, enter the premium. You are special, operators wants you to be special. They will sell you a full access to the internet. You will be able to be over the top and access everything you want.

Except there is a problem. Not everyone will be able to do so, because only special people are premium. So, only special people will have a decent connexion to all the internet and to the tools that grants people the possibility to create.

So, all this content, all those cats videos, all the pictures of your friends, all those things that are the reasons you like the internet will disappear. You will have access to everything, but all the other people won't. The not special enough people, the one that were, in fact, producing the petabytes of content you were accessing will be enclosed in a world of advertisement and partitioned network without the possibility of going on another network.

They will be stuck in a world where google can take dozens of seconds to load, and I'm not speaking about making a search, where the search engine powered by the ISP will starting by a page or two of results for which companies have paid a premium, not the results that could be interesting.

So, only special people will be granted with the full possibility of the internet. Only a few fraction of the users and creators will be granted the possibility to fill the internet with content.

The premium will be a special pass to the emptiness of the dead internet. You will pay more for less. This is what a premium is.

The non-premium people will have access to an enclosed, ad-powered internet without the real possibility of creating content (because the ISP will have no interest for it), while the special ones will access to the content that nobody can now upload.

A facebook without people, a youtube without cats, an internet without content.

Everybody should be special

So, the next arguments ISP will use is that everyone should take the premium. But if everyone pays for it, it's not a premium anymore, it' a raise of prices. And since everyone will have access to the full internet, the technical problems they claims to be the source of their need for premium will still be there. Except you'll then pay a bonus of 10€ per month.

And they won't work on building a bigger network, they will just continue what they're doing until now: earning more money and doing less. And lying to you.

Those are the reason why you should refuses the premium and endorse the net neutrality. Not because it's better for the humanity, or because respecting the net neutrality assures equals means of communication for anyone. No, you should stand for net neutrality, because premiums will destroy the internet you want.

Context

It's always important to have context. And the why I wrote things is probably more important than what I wrote. So, here is the context. Frédéric Bardeau, founder of an ethic communication agency directed to NGO (Agence Limite) is gravitating around the problematics of collaboration between Hackers and NGO and he gave an interview to Reflets.info: Hacktivists must change their stance [FR] which started a sort of flame war inside the so-called hacker scene.

Basically, he's stating that the hackers are wrapped around their ego claiming that they don't care about people issues. He also pretend that hackers must go further along the political process and grow a political consciousness.

I won't answer point by point to his interview. You should read it (and goes beyond the sometime aggressive tone he uses), the comments and grow yourself an idea. I will try to put what Politics and Hacking means to me and, frankly, at this time, I do not know where I'll land.

Politics and motivations

You do politics when you're working on things that will impact life of the others. So you're doing politics when people are saying it. So, when media asks the hackers if hacking is a political act the answer is necessarily yes. Even if you're not conscious of this fact and especially if you're not doing it for a political motivation. And yes hacking is politics (since you subvert things to do other thing with it than their initial purposes).

The question is not if hacking is a political act in fact. The question is the motivation of this act. And this is, I think, where hackers differs from activists. Activists act for a cause, hackers hack for their personal interest.

Yeah, it hurt. But this is the truth. The only reason I'm hacking things is because I want to either understand how they work, because I need to achieve something and I have nothing ready at hand and I will twist something to achieve my goal or because it's fun. I'm not hacking things for the only purpose of helping people and help them to change their life.

Frack, who the hell I am for that? It would be insanely pretentious to tell you how you must change your life.

Activists, on the other hand, acts following a political agenda on purpose. If an activist is doing something it is because they think it will help them to achieve their political motivations. NGO are, by essence, groups of activists. They have a political agenda and all the things they're doing is related to this agenda.

And for this reasons, NGO are quite effective in their field of specialisation. But you cannot asks Green Peace to send medical supplies to Syrians. This is the main problem with entities and people who have an agenda. They can't spend a lot of resources on non related things.

While hackers, and the doocratic system, can. It is the cathedral versus the bazaar. One reason I do like working in clusters of hackers is that I can do just that: What I want, what interests me.

Politics unconsciousness

People, and Frédéric Bardeau among them, says that hackers lacks of politic consciousness. I second that. But I do not think it's important. Most of the people who says that you do not have politics consciousness generally means that they do not share your ethics.

Politics consciousness means that you are aware (or you try to) of the impact of your actions on other people. Not that you have a political minded message nor that you fully understand two hundred years of political history. It means that you've think about the impact on the society of your actions.

Hackers, as weird social animals, tends to dodge discussion they think are unnecessary.Mainly because you can talk or do, but not both at the same time.And if you want to hack, you can't talk about it while you're hacking, mainly because it is like trying to solve a puzzle in the dark. You know what you want to achieve (more or less), but you do not know how you'll get there and you have to think about it, not to speak about it.

So yeah, sometimes (who said most of the time?) hackers looks like freaky monster that will eat your soul because they haven't slept for two days and are dosed with caffeine (may the Spaghetti Monster be blessed for the caffeine) because they are doing things that matters to them.

They do not care if it's a democratic or republican issue, or if it's a left or right one. What hackers tend to care about is how. You can blame us for being political unconscious. But you know what? Maybe it's the basic principle of political consciousness which need to be changed. I mean, politics should be done by people. Not by a political cast or system that place itself above the others.

Political consciousness haven't change much things those thirty years. At least in France. Not in the same order of magnitude that internet and counter-culture have changed. And I'm not sure the beatniks had a political agenda when they build internet. They needed it, so they built it it's quite simple.

Thinking about how your actions will change the world instead of doing them will result in a lot of text, but not that mush things done. I do not care hackers should acts without thinking, but that's why ethics is for.

I claim the freedom of acting without being questioned on my politics agenda for I have none. You can question my ethics (after all ethics exist to be discussed and confronted) or the way I'm doing things, in fact,you must question ethics and the actions of people.

Hackers are closed on themselves

People blame hackers for not helping them on various topics. Let's get some things sorted first. Imagine you're a mechanics. You like fixing and improving engines of famous cars and you do that on your spare time. And people came at you asking you to change their tires, check their oil level, or change a light bulb. All of them being trivial operation that can be achieved by simply reading the manual and actually trying to understand how things works.

Imagine that those annoying people came to see you several times a day. Asking for your time for no compensation while this engines is just waiting for you to take care of it. And those non-skilled operations, operation you're already doing for a leaving, takes you time.

You can be the good guy. And losing your time hour after hour. Or you can, after having patiently helped three people who do not understand anything about mechanics, send the other to hell.

And yeah, the guy will looks like a bastard who do not want to help people. It is the same thing with hackers. Someone saying me they do not know how to use the mail system without a webmail is someone that did not even tried. I can do it for my pay-job, but I'm paid for it. I won't do it on my free time.

If you want help, then you need to invest yourself and you need to understand how things works. The fact that you're a computer illiterate is your fault, not mine. However it's not a fatality. I mean, I know Syrians that had a computer culture of almost nothing a year ago and who are now able to teach to other how GNU/Linux works, how to set-up a VPN, to understand some weird network problematics and to work around the censorship issue they have there.

And they do not even speaks a good english. So if they can, you can understand how it works. You just need to accept that computer tech is not black magic. You must helps me to helps you. And you must abandon the idea that fail is something bad. Fail harder fail better as we say.

So, if you come to see us without this in mind, yeah, you will be called a fucktards, a noob, an asshole. It's not because we are closed on ourselves or imbued by our ego (ok, it might be),it's because you do not make the necessary effort of trying to understand.

But I'm moving out of my original topic. We are not building a hacker world, if we are building a world at all, we are building a free and open world. Most of the hackers are adept of the sharing of knowledge across the world. We need to access the knowledge we're going to need to do things. People tends to think that internet is our private playground. It is not. Internet is not a place, it does not belong to anyone.

Cats, tubes, computers

Internet is now a part of the society. It's a fantastic multi directional read/write media available to anyone. Internet is used by activists to carry on their message, and by government to spy on their people. Internet is a political act by essence. And a lot of hackers will stand and fight for it as it was when Osni Moubarak shat down the tubes in Egypt.

And the internet is the media of datalove. It has been built for exchanging data across long distance at a reasonable rate. If you want to restrict the sharing of data, you're then interfering with the internet. The fact that some might be shocked by the fact that their personal data are found online must not blame the datalove and the hackers for that, but rather the entities that have built those files, collecting their personal data.

Conclusion

Yeah, I think it's time. I'm getting lost. Hackers are - mainly - humans. They are far from perfect and some of them do not care about politics. But I think that most of the things people blamed hackers for are the same you can blame most of the people.

Do not forget we have the doocracy. We have caffeine. But most important of anything, we have an unlimited imagination.

About the so-called Pirate Box

Everything started when I found not less than three pirate boxes running at the PSES 2012 conferences and all of them were unaware of the two other. Worse, you could connect to one piratebox or to the internet, but not both, because pirate box runs off-line.

And this is the main problem of this thing. I mean, if I want to download and share, I use the bittorent system, you shouldn't be afraid of the legal consequences of the act of sharing things you like.

But still, those wireless router are damn small (they literally fit in a hand), they need not much power to run and they have some interesting routing capabilities (multiple SSID, bridging, meshing, you name it) and I was thinking that, deploying this kind of hardware cold be a way to cover areas with poor connectivity and works collaboratively to route packets. This is pretty much how the internet works.

So, I was thinking about a meshed network of sharing content boxes that could access to the Intertubes and share this access. But accessing the clearternet is not interesting. With some Telecomix folks we think and works a lot around darknet and weird protocols, because they are fun. And right now, we are working with cjdns - which is not about DNS. Also, a box already configured offering to everyone an access through a VPN can remove the pain of configuring it for non tech-savvy users, and so to have more people using darknets and vpn.

And I have a TP-Link WR703N dedicated to this experimentation.

Flashing

Before everything, we need to flash a firmware onto the small router (there's only 4MB of disk to store everything, it's quite tight). I used the sysupgrade for Attitude adjustment image (and found my way through the Chinese menu). Nothing specific here,the device works perfectly fine

Routed AP

Then I wanted that my box connect to a LAN (connected to the clearternet), to set up an Access-Point and to route everything that come from the AP to get through the LAN and then to the darknet (configured to work over the clearternet as a darknet usually do)

Quite easy, since there's a recipe for it in the openwrt wiki. However, I did changed some things, so let's review the different files one after the other.

/etc/config/wireless

config wifi-device radio0 option type mac80211 option channel 11 option macaddr ec:17:2f:e0:44:52 option hwmode 11ng option htmode HT20 list ht_capab SHORT-GI-20 list ht_capab SHORT-GI-40 list ht_capab RX-STBC1 list ht_capab DSSS_CCK-40

Nothing specific here, the default are good and I don't need more.

config wifi-iface option device radio0 option network wifi option mode ap option ssid ChaosBox option encryption none

First interface, configured as an open AP in a dedicated network and without a key. I want everyone to be able to use my VPN without having to found a key.

config wifi-iface option device radio0 option network babel option mode adhoc option ssid ChaosBabel option encryption none

And since I can do multiple SSID on the box, I will use this later for meshing the ChaosBoxes together (and using babel, because it works out of the box). It works, but I haven't tested it, so it will be the subject of a different post.

/etc/config/network

config interface 'loopback' option ifname 'lo' option proto 'static' option ipaddr '127.0.0.1' option netmask '255.0.0.0'

Loop back interface.

config interface 'lan' option ifname 'eth0' option type 'bridge' option proto 'dhcp'

I move the default configuration (static) to a dynamic one. I will then benefit of what the LAN I'm connected onto will offer, notably a gateway to the internet. And probably some DNS cache.

config interface 'wifi' option proto 'static' option ipaddr '10.0.42.1' option netmask '255.255.255.0'

This is my wireless network, the interface corresponding to the wireless device configured in AP mode. I will use the 10.0.42.0/24 network, mostly because the 192.168 ones are over-common and I do not want to have a problem with that.

config interface 'tcxnet' option proto 'none' option ifname 'tun0'

This one is mainly here to define things that I'll later use in the firewall.

/etc/config/firewall

config defaults
option syn_flood 1
option input ACCEPT
option output ACCEPT
option forward REJECT

So, defaults. They are good and protect a little bit your box.

config zone
option name wifi
option network 'wifi' option input ACCEPT option output ACCEPT
option forward REJECT

The zone for all the traffic coming from the wifi network.

config zone
option name lan
option network 'lan'
option input ACCEPT
option output ACCEPT
option forward REJECT
option masq 1
option mtu_fix 1

The zone for all the traffic coming from the lan. Well, nothing will really come from it but you see what I meant. However we want to masquerade (after all, you can probably found things like a mpd or a nfs share on the lan).

config zone
option name tcxnet
option network 'tcxnet'
option input ACCEPT option output ACCEPT option forward REJECT
option masq 1
option mtu_fix 1

This zone is for everything going through the tcxnet interface (that will be our cjdns). As for the lan, and since we want to use services inside the darknet, we will masquerade.

config forwarding
option src wifi
option dest lan

config forwarding
option src wifi
option dest tcxnet

And now, let's forward the traffic through both the lan and the tcxnet zone.

/etc/config/dhcp

[...] config dhcp wifi option interface wifi option start 100 option limit 150 option leasetime 12h

This is the only dhcp pool I have. I want to address the wireless part. 50 address should be enough.

More info

For more info about those configurations, you should read the openwrt wiki

The fun parts

CJDNS

Now, the real fun begin. First, let's install CJDNS. Quite easy thanks to the build made by fremont:

opkg update && opkg install http://v4.seanode.meshwith.me/openwrt/ar71xx/packages/cjdns_0.4-SNAPSHOT_ar71xx.ipk --force-depen ds

I use the force-depends flag, for nacl and kernel version on attitude adjustment because they will raise some unneeded conflicts.

And then, following the instructions available in the cryptoanarchy wiki, generate a configuration, add peers and start cjdns:

cjdroute --genconf > /etc/cjdroute.conf

cjdroute < /etc/cjdroute.conf > /dev/null &

No logs, sorry, I haven't the room for that. Plus I do not likes it.

Proxy

I've tried a lot of things, and it appears that the way to have it working is to simply use a SOCKS proxy and to connect through it.

I've installed srelay because it appears to works simply. And to fit in the 4 MB space I have.

opkg install srelay

We need to configure it to get it working, edit the /etc/srelay.conf file delete everything and have it looking like that:

allow local subnet to access socks proxy

0.0.0.0 any

Then just start srelay using the automagick init.d script:

/etc/init.d/srelay enable /etc/init.d/srelay start

It will start on the 1080 port on your openWRT box.

Connect

Now, start a computer, activate wifi, connect to the 'ChaosBox' ESSID and ask for an IP via dhcp.

Start a browser and configures it to use a SOCKS 5 proxy and use the parameters used to start srelay. The proxy address is 10.0.42.1 and the port is 1080.

You have to disable the option to forward the DNS queries through the proxy for srelay can't understand them yet. Also, you have to check that your DNS resolver has been set-up by dhcp and is '10.0.42.1'. If it's not,edit your /etc/resolv.conf file and add this line on top:

nameserver 10.0.42.1

Now, you have two tests to run. First the plainternet, test to load the http://telecomix.org page. If it works, go on the second test.

Try to use the darknet. If you're connected to the Hyperboria darknet, you can test going on Nodeinfo.hype: http://[fc5d:baa5:61fc:6ffd:9554:67f0:e290:7535]/.

If it works, congratulations

Aftermath

Why don't you NAT?

Well, I tried. CJDNS address are in ipv6. So, I've choosed an ipv6 prefix, anounced it to be served in the wifi interface and tried to route through cjdns. However, the source IP mismatched.

And ipv6 NAT are out of the table for openWRT. So, I was unable to do it that way.

Why didn't use Tor?

Simple, openwrt + Tor (in fact the libcrypto) are overweighted and go beyong 4 MB. So, I'll had to use an external storage connected on the USB port. But then, the power consumption will go high. Also, I need an external devices connected, that can be separated from the router.

You spoke about mesh before?

And you didn't see it. Yep, I need to do that. But tunneling through cjdns was such a pain. But babel works quite easily.

---

EDITED 08/17/2012 I changed a little bit about the srelay configuration, did not work as expected at first.

EDITED 09/13/2012 I updated the client configuration part since srelay can't forward DNS queries. Also, we did some tests at Le Loop yesterday evening and meshing is quite advanced now, I'll do a post to that at a later time.

EDITED 26/11/2012 The URL for the ipk has changed

Context

For two or three days there is quite some agitation around a video about the ordinary sexism. The video has been made for national Belgium news report and is then in French, but you're favorite translators tool will give you some help to translate it.

So, since I have a lot of sociopaths, feminists and trolls in my inner circle there was quite some heat and animation. But that's not how I entered the pool. I entered it by mis-understanding a woman attacking gameone (Gamers TV chans) for under-evaluating the issue of sexual harassment in the gamers community. Things get wild and I then spend the day arguing and fighting, using some trash arguments but I finally learned things (hey, why the heck would I lose time if it is not for learning?) both in the way to argue, and to have some documentation for this kind of harassment.

And, even if I do not agree with the way some specifics person refuses to evolve (on both sides - either by establishing the facts that males are de facto members of a dominating caste and so they cannot change and all of them are necessary the enemy or by reducing the magnitude and importance of the issue), I think that I have to write things down.

But I'm not really a member of the gaming community - I do prefer playing alone or with friends, rather than playing online. Too much people there - and I've already wrote once or twice about it in the hackers/geek community.

So, I was looking for an angle to speak about it. I even thought about speaking of me - sorry folks, not gonna happen now - and I then stumble upon this interview of one of The Witcher creator in Rock paper Shotgun.

And, as I was talking torture on a role-playing game forum of mine and the sometimes free nature of it, I think I would speak about it.

But, just before that, two points that are important to clarify first.

• You are not your body, your body is just a part of you.
• No one should endure discrimination for what they are and what they look like.

Now, let's move on the topic.

Role-playing Games

I do like games. Really. Mainly because they faces me with a challenge and,in the case of role-playing games, gives me the possibility to live good stories and explore the mind of the games creators.

I enjoy going through a good story, even if it's nit a happy one. I enjoy when the narrator have spend a lot of energy on detailing the place and the characters that will support the plot. I like when I'm surprised by unpredictable things.

Avatar - there's no 3 meters tall Smurphs here

And to enjoy this story I have to choose an avatar. A projection of myself in the game universe. Well, not necessarily myself in fact. The characters I play are not me, neither they are something I want to be. They are something I build, with clay (the game universe) and that I could like or hate or think about.

I am an adept of exploring actions and the consequences. If I want to play a racist asshole that will assure the human supremacy over the galaxy (see Mass Effect 1) I should be able to play it and to see what's happening. How people will react, how they will throw stones at me. If I'm going to kill civilians for no reasons, something must happen. If there's kids, I must be able to enslave them and to kill them (it appears that kids in Fallout 3 can survive almost anything, including being shot with nuclear bombs) and the universe must react one way or another to those actions.

So, if I play a bastard it does not mean I'm one. It also does not mean the universe should just go with that for no reason. If I'm granted to harass people it must have an impact in the world or this 'liberty' is of no interests. I remember in Fallout / Fallout 2. You could be in the slave trade, but that was rewarded by most of the people in town throwing stones and shooting at you on sight.

And yes, discrimination, rape, diversity in sexual preferences and all those kind of things can be a thrilling engine for some fantastic plots or character. As long as it's not free. Video games is a good media for this kind of set-up. I mean, the game developers can build a lot of constraint to the freedom of a player because they are coding the universe. If they condemn sexual harassment and sexual abuse, they can perfectly build a world where it is not possible, if you have no possibility to say 'I would do you' to a NPC, then you can't. If it appears as an option then the developers have thought about this and they want you to be able to say that and so it is supposed to bring something to the story being told. If not, then why the hell did the developers spent some valuable time on it?

I mean, if they're adding sex to a game without any purposes (and no realism is not one. I do not want realistic games, I want enjoyable games, I'm perfectly fine with driving a chicken into an insane space race, so fuck the realism, life is realistic enough. I want consistency), it is because they think people will enjoy the game more. It also means that the story is not good enough to appeal the player. Paying something to watch sex is pornography (or eroticism whatever you call it). It has nothing to do with games.

The avatar building is also a fun thing. My first adventures online goes back to Anarchy Online. When I chose my avatar, besides the classic gender / phenotype choice, I could personalize the whole body not only the face. I could do a fat girl, or a tin guy, I could choose the size of it, the breast/waist ratio, etc. I wasn't bound to the game developer personal view of what's appealing to play.

It bring a lot of diversity in the world, with people of different size or proportions, and, strangely, disproportionate female character were far from common. Then enter Blizzard and it's World of Warcraft. They brag a lot about customisation of your characters but you can only customise the face (which is in most part hidden under a helmet or something equivalent). You cannot change your body. You cannot even choose your size. The good thing is that your avatar have no impact on the game. Being a female or a male in MMORPG does not gives you an edge, relatively to the game content.

However there is the problem about sexual dimorphism. Even if it exist in nature (that's how we can tell apart male and female with a high enough error rate), in video games the dimorphism is generally over exaggerated (go take a look at this page on TV Tropes, and go for video games). It appears that, at least in the Blizzard case, the over exaggeration came from a wish of players.

Well, I guess it's why a human wizard can probably defeat an Olympic weight lifter when he must have spend 90% of his life studying magic in a tower. While the warrior womens have shortest armour and, with a stripper body, can defeat a Tauren male at arm wrestling without any apparent muscle.

And this has been done due to the fan bases complaining about female being to weird or male not being strong enough. I think this is probably the bigger problem, and we're back to porn. If people want to see nudity, exploited and abused women without consequences, they should rather head at youporn instead of play games. And the games creator shouldn't focus on satisfying the fantasy of their fan - this is called fan services and it lead to crappy design and gameplay - they should rather focus on game content, story telling and game play.

Creating world

But yeah, that's easy to tell. Well, it happens that I play a lot of role-playing games. Not the kind on computers, the kind with pen, papers, books and dice. And I'm also a game master.

From my point of view, playing such a game is building a story with all the players (including me) involved. And it needs a good plot and interesting characters.

I won't talk about what I want as a player, I already spent a lot of words on that. I will rather talks about the responsibility of the game master. As a GM my goal is to animate the story and to do it in respect of my players wishes. And their main wish is, generally, to be excited and to spend an enjoyable moment (that can last between 4 and... 22h). And the trust me for that. They do not know where I'll lead them. They will discover part of the plots, improvise some of it, act and react accordingly to their characters when faced to event and so on. And, depending on the game, I can lead them in hell.

Really. We can share horror stories. Stories in which horrible things will happen to the characters - from rape to torture to losing the loved one to commit genocide. I will give my players choice to make, I will question their ethics, I will explore an imaginary world with as much details and coherence I can find. It means random violence. It also means action must have consequences.

And I do need my players to trust me for that. I also need to know what do they want to play and where are their limits. And we have stop words. We can stop and pause the game anytime when someone feels uncomfortable.

But I can do this only with people I know. When I do demonstration gaming, or when I play a casual game, I have to respect my audience. I do not want to shock them, we haven't established a trust link yet and so I cannot lead them in hell. Instead we're going to explore other parts of the universe. And I have to depict it in an enjoyable way for all my players and to myself.

If their is segregation in the world, they must feel it. If it's a world where the sexual practice is different, they have to feel it also. If it's a police world, when they'll shoot at strangers (and believe me, they will), I must use the police to strike them. If we're in an anarchist outpost, then the bystanders will grabs their guns and shot at the players. Non playable characters have their own motivations and lives, they do not exist only for the players will.

If one of the player want to play Casanova, so be it. That's not why all the woman in the world will fall for his sex appeal. Also, he can probably have some same-gender people that will start hitting on him.

Players can do whatever they want. I have to react to their actions, to anticipate them even, and to answer them with a reaction I feel is correct - not fair. They could play mafia boss with live or death power over each habitants of a district and they can decides to abuse their power and to get wild on the local population. To a point where the local population or other mafia bosses will take their chances and shot them down. Or worse.

See what I mean? You can use torture and rape in a game who tries to depict a world. You can even use racism, discrimination, oppression and all kind of things. You can even brings your players to have their characters acting in way that will question their players ethics. But if you do it, you have to do it on purposes.

Entertain the world

And I think it's the problem of most of the entertainment industry. They had a strong male basis and they wanted to please them. They use sex and discrimination in way that brings nothing to the story. And they forget something. And, for people who thrives for business, it's unforgettable. By doing this they can target, at bets, 50% of the population, the other one being female and won't be entertained by hyper-sexualized women getting raped then saved by a hero. If the entertainment industry really wanted to tackle the woman audience, they will have adapted their product to satisfy both audience.

Instead of that they'd fell for the easy thing to get more man to buy their entertaining products. They use the arguments that "It's what our fan base want". Well, then you won't grow bigger than your fan bases. Also, you will look like an asshole.

As a story teller, my responsibility is to bring my players in places they've never been. Not in places where they are comfortable. And the entertainment industry should do it. You do not need to have brainless boobs when you want to have mega robots fighting with huge explosions. You do not need to have brainless boobs rescuing the endangered hobbits, especially when it's not in the book your adapting your movie from. You do not need to have bad ass soldiers when you want a tactical FPS. It brings nothing to your story.

However, if you're story is about a strip club, prostitution, slavery and the like, then it's not a problem.

Morality?

Morality my ass. Stories aren't meant to have a moral. People should not have moral in fact if you ask me. People should have ethics and ethics is personal (and you can explain it). I do not want a story to tell me that slavery is bad. However, I want a story that show me what is slavery, what are the consequences and the like. If you have a message to pass through a story, people should find it by themselves. They're not stupid (and if they are, they do not care about your political views) and they'll find out and think about it.

So yes, I have no problem with sexism in stories. When it's justified by the stories, not by an advertisement need. If you can't build a women character without raping her, you have to stop telling stories because you're not even good at it.

If you want to depict a world where all women have been brain manipulated and are salved to all the male, go with it. Find an interesting story about it (and "boobs" is not a story) and assume it and do not try to find elusive justifications or blame your fan base.

If the gender of your character is of no interest of your story, so pick one at random (hey, that's what I do), you can flip a coin or roll a dice if you want. And then you will have disparity. If it's important because, in your world, women are not considered, then go with it (after all, that's how it's been dealt with in a Song of Fire and Ice). And that's not a reason to remove all th women from your story.

So tell stories you want to tell, not ones that people want to hear. And I strongly believe that then you will have more entertaining problem, and less accusation of discrimination.

AFK

And, well, what happens In Character stays In Character. Especially when you play with stranger. Harassing a player based on what they have played or based on what they are is stupid. And from my point of view it ends up with a ban from my life if I do not know you and a strong blame if I know you since more time than the last ten minutes.

Speaking to someone Out Of Character is entering their area of intimacy. And you should at least asks for permission to do so. That's how computers talks to each other (SYN,SYN/ACK,ACK) and that's why "Hello" exist. Use it. And accept that the other one do not want to bear with you.

I'm done with you

For now. That's quite a long post. Not sure if it is of some help, but at least I tried. Hope you enjoyed it. And you can reach me anywhere.

So long.

Addendum

Realism VS Consistency

SO, it appears that I made a mistake upper in this posts. I have no corrected it. I do not want realism in my entertainment. Realism is for reality not for imagination. I want consistency and coherence. If I'm driving a space cookie on a warp road through space to go faster than a squirrel, then I need the game universe to be consistent with that and so having "realistic" physics applied to this world is out of question.

However, if the law of physics in this world have told me that gravity is always in front of me, then I see no reason of having gravity suddenly switching for a earth like one.

Once you have set-up the rules that will bind your universe and your characters, then you have to stick with it. And you have to think about the implications. Having extremely thin female (in regards of the male) in a warrior world would probably imply that they cannot go on the front line in a battle. It does not mean they'll have to stick to domestic task, but rather to more cerebral activities (like strategy, magic and the like). But if you want to have a truly egalitarian world, then the women who'll go in battle will have more muscle and constitution than the one who will stay in more support roles (healers, casters, tacticians). And same goes for men. This is coherence, this is consistency. This is not realism (for this is not our world).

ACTA is dead

Just in case you've spent the last week celebrating the almost formal finding of the Higgs Boson's, citizens have bring ACTA to an end in the European parliament.

Yay, champaign for every one.

However, even if ACTA is now a political sinking ship and if I expect things to change in the so-called European democratic process, ACTA can still be ratified by other country. I do not think it will happen, at least not under this name.

So citizen groups and soft terrorism can actually have an influence on the representatives, and it is a good news.

But if you just step down and think they will stop trying those crappy legal hat tricks to enforce even more control over our daily lives you cannot be more wrong.

ACTA started as a secret plan that got leaked. And, now that the people behind ACTA know that if it get public it would not pass, I cannot see a reason why they would do a public negotiation again - I mean, they won't let that happen again.

They will try until one side leave the battlefield to let the other one wins.

Next generation

And they're already moving. After having try to use counterfeit goods as a pretext to control everything (even if it could kill people by outlawing necessity goods such as generic drugs) they're moving to something else.

I'm not speaking about INDECT - and good things can emerge from it - because it's a red flag and an easy prey. Something that exists only to exhaust the citizen mobilisation for the next battle.

I'm speaking about some G8 negociations. You have to spread this and to put it on the table, to bring some light and to have them abandon this ship faster than ACTA (four years of battle, this is too much).

In this G8 Initiative - a non-paper - they want (point 1) go further than ACTA (because ACTA was criminalizing importers and exporters, now they want to also criminalize trans-shippers of counterfeit goods - this is your RJ45 cable).

The worst part is that they want to « [Promote] voluntary cooperative efforts to tackle the proliferation of illegal Internet pharmacies. » It means they want a way to control the internet to fight the drug traffic.

It will be a hardest battle to win. I mean, everyone fully understood why ACTA was evil because they wanted to forbid sharing. They choose a different weapon this time (and a different horsemen of the Infocalypse) and it will be hard to have people fighting for illegal pharmacies.

Winter is coming

For now, celebrate, call your MEPS and thanks them for choosing democracy above anything else. It is important to tell to the people when they're doing good things. Take some rest, we're going to need more energy to fight this infamy.

You should support organisation such as La Quadrature du Net for they need funding to work and prepare the next fight. The EFF needs your support to, they're fighting TPP, a kind of Trans Pacific ACTA, and they could use some support.

And you need to wait for the next battle to start. Sharpening your arguments, waiving your tentikles in IRC chans, sharing datalove with all the intertubes, statying cute as the nyancat. Some epic battle are coming.