Some of you May Have Heard From Various Sources that the anonymous whistle blowing site Wikileaks.org (Mirror, main URL offline)
has been served a legal injunction, the result of which is that it's main domain name has been withdrawn.

This was done because of Certain published documents that indict the Bank Julius Baer of extreme amounts of money laundering and tax evasion by the ultra rich (Re: drug kingpins, arms dealers, governments). The documents are still available, and in fact are being mirrored and torrent-seeded at an even larger rate due to the publicity. This little drama will be interesting to watch.

That being said, how do data havens such as Shadowland, Denver, the Helix, and the rest of the Nexus survive in the political world, without pissing off the wrong folks?
I realize for the most part the admins can defend themselves pro-actively, (re-routing police to the wrong address, moving the hardware), but they've broken some seriously large stories more or less before anyone else, Bug City and the Arcology disasters, just to name a few. Both Threats files and Corporate Download to name few more.

The descriptions given in Target:Matrix gives something of an idea (old US military fiber and facilities) on how they operate, but not on how they survive passing out dirt on all 8 megas, and every high-power magical mover on the face of the planet.

As by 2070+, I guess with the new wireless matrix, the very highly capable commlink-matrix access devices, the virtually unlimited data storage thanks to the advanced microchips and other data devices (your underwear has tons of data stored on it), mobility, net security and data backup will surely have improved tremendously to a point where it's impossible to wipe the illegal data network havens out anymore, even if all the Megacorps and other powerful nations tried their earnest in doing so.

here's my theory:

let's pretend you're, oh, i dunno, aztechnology. and shadowlands tells everyone that you're a bunch of crazy wackos who like to kill people to power magic rituals. now, understandably, you don't want people to know you do that (talk about bad PR!) so you decide you want to take out the shadowlands network.

well, first off, whoever takes it out in a permanent way would probably also be able to take it over. so as soon as the slightest hint of the azzies wanting to do anything rears it's ugly head, every other megacorp, nation, etc is going to want to do everything in their power to keep you from getting your hands on the data found on shadowlands. for lack of a better way to put it, try to imagine all the stuff that might *not* be posted (or at least, not posted in the parts that just anyone can get to) and imagine someone else getting their hands on all that information. because you can bet that data havens are going to have records of everything that happens on them, and the only thing keeping a private meeting conducted there private is the fact that captain chaos (or whoever) don't have the time (or the interest?) to dig through a virtually endless supply of data to squeeze it for every last drop of information that could tell them about what a given megacorp might be planning in the future, future shadowruns you may or may not be planning, etc.

in other words, while none of the big players are happy with a given data haven being independant, they feel a lot better about it compared to how they feel about one of their competitors controlling it. so sure, Renraku would have loved to shut them up about the archology shutdown... unfortunately, there's the fact that if they tried to do anything, they would have stretched their already thin resources even further, and so not only would all the other big players have stopped it, but they would have gone further and taken a huge bite out of Renraku.

of course, there's also the fact that a lot of people, virtually every single one of them at least moderately skilled in the matrix, have a vested interest in keeping those data havens running. in point of fact, it is highly probable that a number of corporate personnel are assigned to monitor those data havens (both to look for an opportunity to take it over themselves as well as to keep an eye on everyone else who might try to take it over) and that they would use it to try to close off leaks at the source (ie if they know someone is talking about their super-secret labs, they can try to find the breach in their own security and shut that person up much more easily than they could take over a data haven).

but that's just my take on it.

Shadowland's been attacked by megacorps, the Tir, Deus, Bugs, damn near everyone. It's had the buildings hiding the physical servers destroyed. And that's just in Seattle.

How does Shadowland survive? It does exactly what Wikileaks did: As soon as it gets info, it broadcasts it across the world as fast as possible. They back it up in the Denver Data Haven, which was the largest and most secure (physically and electronically) data haven in the world. They broke Bug City to the world. They broke the Shutdown to the world.

It's a little side benefit of being run by neo-anarchists who believe information wants to be free, combined with some of the best deckers on Earth being users and admins of the Shadowland darknet and the DDH itself.

But it's also because for every Aztechnology that wants its secrets to remain, there are seven or nine others that want that intel for themselves. The beauty of wideband open-source intelligence is that while the distributor tends to piss people off, it also proves to be very useful for a lot more people. Shadowland is, in a way, the New York Times of Shadowrun.

That doesn't stop people from trying to stop them. The Tir tried. Aztechnology tried. The UB actually succeeded. Deus and the Whites tried. But the Beppu Data Haven was physically destroyed and the survivors chased out of Japan. The Frankfurt Helix node was physically destroyed. It happens, but it's not easy.

You have to remember that Shadowland has existed in Shadowrun since the days of dial-up BBSes. It survived the Crash of '29 and Crash 2.0. It will always survive because people have spent a century ensuring that it does. I'd really suggest trying to find the Denver boxed set if you want to know, because that's where it's all described.

I think there is also a little bit of "Ignorance is Bliss" factor involved. Your average citizen doesn't know about these data havens and (truth be told) probably doesn't care. Joe Average the Aztechnology wageslave loves the company because they tell him to and because they provide everything he needs. Even if he did hear some wild matrix rumor about blood magic he's likely to dismiss it because 1.) you can never trust wild matrix rumors, and 2.) even if he has some subconscious inkling that it might be true his life literally depends on his disbelief. Big Brother is watching after all. No thought-crimes are tolerated, etc.

The average citizen probably scrutinizes these rumors in the same way we scrutinize 9/11 conspiracies or (my personal favorite) Serpo.org. The difference is that in SR the rumors can be (and often are) true.

I think the corps would tolerate the Data Havens because it would be a helluva lot easier to control their minions that it would be to root out the people behind them. They would however go to great lengths to silence any media outlets that had proof of their wrongdoings.

The answer friends, is simple. Phreaking. Shadowland took advantage of the long-lost but extraordinarily beautiful art of Phreaking.

Phreaking, for those who are unaware of the term, is the art of illegally obtaining free access to a telecommunications system. Back in the the 70s and the 80s this was accomplished by mimicking the tones used by the telephone system using something called a Captain Crunch box, named so because a toy whistle distributed in Captain Crunch cereal could produce these tones perfectly. In today's digitally switched systems, these tones don't work. It is substantially more difficult to obtain free access, though it is possible to do so if you have physical access to the telephone company's central office.

Shadowland is based on the same principal. It was connected to the matrix illegally without the knowledge of any telecommunications provider. Thus, there were no records of it. Only a few elites know about it; the general public was totally oblivious.

Jackpoint, I imagine, also uses secret illegal access to keep itself going, possibly by using trojan anonymous distributed darknets, similar to Freenet with the exception that the nodes hosting the distributed data are usually unaware of the fact that they are

The answer friends, is simple. Phreaking. Shadowland took advantage of the long-lost but extraordinarily beautiful art of Phreaking.

Phreaking, for those who are unaware of the term, is the art of illegally obtaining free access to a telecommunications system. Back in the the 70s and the 80s this was accomplished by mimicking the tones used by the telephone system using something called a Captain Crunch box, named so because a toy whistle distributed in Captain Crunch cereal could produce these tones perfectly. In today's digitally switched systems, these tones don't work. It is substantially more difficult to obtain free access, though it is possible to do so if you have physical access to the telephone company's central office. It is still possible to crack toll-free call forwarding services that many corporations use to give their employees free long distance, though this usually just requires social engineering to steal access codes.

Shadowland is based on the same principal. It was connected to the matrix illegally without the knowledge of any telecommunications provider. Thus, there were no records of it. Only a few elites know about it; the general public was totally oblivious. Communications were almost certainly routed through multiple networks and forwarding services making tracing it all but impossible. It also had many mirror servers worldwide and it was nearly impossible to track them all down.

Jackpoint, I imagine, also uses secret illegal access to keep itself going, possibly by using trojan anonymous distributed darknets, similar to Freenet with the exception that the nodes hosting the distributed data are usually unaware of the fact that they are

My point of view is that it's a free data haven. Meaning almost anyone can post there. That makes nearly everything that's posted suspect. Lets just take your average Joe Citizen on the street and the big A for example. He sees Aztek logos all the time, buys Aztek coffee, and maybe even knows some people who works for them. He probably won't believe that his friendly coffee growers power magic by ripping out the hearts of people and probably has never even heard of Shadowlands. Now if A blows up the servers and makes a big mess of things all of a sudden it's all over the news. Joe Citizen all of a sudden starts thinking maybe there was something that the big A wanted to hide. So by seeming to ignore Shadowland any Corp or government lessens the havens plausibility and at the same time can probably drop some bad information on the site.

As written? Fiat and plot devices.

The reason you get creatures like the Russian Business Network and similar Chinese outfits surviving is because the government and them have a symbiotic (as in big bucks) relationship and invading Russia or China to get them is painful. Not so much in the 6th world. As written, I just don't see anyone who would stand up to the corporate court to protect a bunch of hackers.

Of course it would be. They were there when phreaking began. They were there when the Internet arose. And they were there on the ground floor when the Matrix was created, and when Matrix 2.0 went online.

From what I gathered, the Jackpoint nodes are each user's commlinks in which Jackpoint is installed.


Well...

Yeah. That was pretty clear pre-Jackpoint.


You don't need to have someone stand up for it. The Court doesn't need a reason to keep it up. They need a reason to go after the shadow community in which they all exploit all the time.

Oh look, you answered before you asked

The world is no less hostile to such things currently, yet the information still leaks. It is currently decentralized, though -- SR was around when BBSs were all the rage, and they didn't update to the current P2P trend when they updated the matrix to wireless in SR4. That asside for a moment, look at the net currently -- top level centralized name registrars and country-wide master DNS servers. Many of the current big corps own a chunk of the 'net backbone as well (which has turned out to not be nearly as redundant as people thought.) Add to that the fact that servers, bandwidth, and possibly even storage are somewhat expensive, easily tracked, and easily monitored, and you've got a pretty tight lockdown situation.

And yet... things still leak. The NSA actually issued new digital redaction guidelines in 2005, because a wave of improperly redacted files (with metadata and undo information that revealed "state secrets" -- specifically, state screwups) had hit the web, revealing everything from crappy checkpoint procedures that lead to shootings to "proof" about our pre-ordained plans to invade Iraq. They were freely downloadable from a number of sources, and if any were shut down two more popped up in their place. Such is the nature of the net. Picture that, except that every trashcan, stoplight, and MP3-playing jacket can host the entire hub from anywhere in the world, and the host can change every few minutes. Even with only today's technology, large firewall and shutdown efforts fail. Just look at the "great firewall of China" -- there are no less than a half dozen one-click firefox plugins to circumvent it.

Secondly, with that information I mentioned above freely available, absolutely nothing changed. There was no media riot, no one was arrested or impeached. Essentially, nothing happened because so few went looking, or cared even about the few that appeared in "mainstream" print.

So really, the answer to your question is two-fold. One, in the world of shadowrun -- hell, even in today's world -- squelching information sources on the net is practically impossible and only creates major publicity. Two, there isnt' a real need to shut them down. Sure, the information is out there for anyone who wants to find it bad enough -- but that number of people is so small as to be insignificant to the major players -- especially if the major players have their own media and dirt on any mainstream outlet that picks up the story.

I can just see the Azzi editorials now. "All this talk of waterboard--er, blood sacrifice -- and there isn't any proof that's even happening yet! -- ignores the important issue at hand. We are at war with ____, and if the evil people who attacked us get hurt in order for us to survive, that's the way it has to be!"

Holy repetition, Batman!

Shadowland exists for the same reason shadowrunners do - because the megacorporations that dislike having hackers air their dirty laundry monitor Shadowland regularly for dirty laundry on their rivals. As individual companies, they will get more benefit from Shadowland's information than they suffer from the occasional loss of their own information. The corporate court won't go after Shadowland, because none of its members will give up Shadowland's information flow. Like shadowrunners, Shadowland creates kind of a prisoner's dilemma for the corporations.

Plus, they are not above using Shadowland, to disseminate secrets of their rivals and misinformation about their own projects. The best way to keep something a secret is to drown it in a sea of other information. If a runner scans a rumor that Ares is developing a new micro-missile launcher that will make conventional min-grenades obsolete, he will likely remember the bio-plague that Alamos 20,000 was supposedly going to infect the Ork Underground with, which never wound up happening, and roll his eyes. Only a few people scanning that information will realize its importance, and even they will be cautious about its veracity.

They wouldn't deny blood sacrifices. It is an integral part of the Aztec religion, which Aztlan and Aztechnology are extremely proud of. Blood sacrifices are a public family event. And they should be, because its part of their religion. Only evil neo-Nazi bigots would complain about it. Freedom of religion is an integral part of modern democratic philosophy.

Mmmm... Nothing makes a dystopian world tastier than healthy portion of apathy...

Evil Nazi Catholics. And God knows the Roman Catholic Church isn't a hard target to smear when you can dump billions into the campaign.

Cool. I've never seen an echo on a message board before.

Also how can Joe Blow hate the wonderful people who bring him the illegal too-the-death bloodsports that are a huge hit with him and all of his friends? Hell, he probably tried to sign up for one of them thinking that he could walk away with the prize hands down if he had access to the training facility and the cocktail of drugs contestants get to guzzle before the matches.