Rant: Let there be light

Trading in the online currency Bitcoin has just gone the way of most things the central government doesn't understand (they're not the only ones) and been banned in the mainland. By chance, the news came fast on the heels of reports that the so-called Great Firewall of China is under attack from a new software programme that allows users to get round web censorship.

By the time you read this Lantern may well have had Beijing's water cannons turned on it, but its emergence demonstrates that rearguard attempts to wage war on internet activity are likely doomed to failure. Because the thing about the web is that there's always a new workaround. The technology it has put at the world's disposal already outstrips the might of governments to control it. It's about time China, Iran and Russia - all of whom appear to believe closed, intranet-like models of the web are sustainable - realised this.

There are of course others who don't quite get it either. British Prime Minister David Cameron likes to talk about turning off the tap of online porn. Does he really believe any "fix" his taxpayer-funded IT chaps can come up with will be any match for internetland's plumbers? If governments can't control things like porn or copyright online, what hope have they of reining in alternative currencies, or thought?

East and West alike seem to fear "the dark web". We learn that it's a nasty place, one where people sell drugs and plan terror attacks and eat babies. But actually it's just a way of connecting to the world with anonymity. No wonder it's the new bogey man.

As the efforts of the National Security Agency to be the world's listening post (its priest, if you will) have shown, at considerable cost to America's soft power, attempting to master the web is a losing game. If there's a war going on, the geeks have already won.