The new net could catch us some very dodgy fish

The publicity SOPA has received over the last few months has brought the issue of internet security to the forefront of the global consciousness, and in the wake of the news that the, er, ‘entire internet’ is undergoing an update from IPv4 to IPv6 (do we really need to go into the details?), a number of commentators have been suggesting that rather than just making the changeover to the new IP system, we should start constructing an entirely new World Wide Web using this more secure update, leaving the older branches of the internet to wither and die.

This logic has been justified by citing ‘hacktivists’ such as Anonymous using the current system to their own ends, and by suggesting the majority of online illegal activity takes advantage of security issues within the current system. But would such an action really stunt the growth of illegality online?

Firstly, a large number of identity thefts and other such fraudulent activity are the fault of human error – all it takes is one click on that “Asian Babes” button and your card is being used to buy dildos in Mexico – so this sort of security update might prove entirely ineffective on that front.

Furthermore, this sort of action is akin to gifting the, quite frankly, numerous legally dubious internet users with a platform on which to go about their suspect activity. The IPv4 internet space would become a construct akin to the Deep Web (look it up), which hacktivists, drug dealers and other dodgy internet types could inhabit – and this would lead to an entirely new series of problems surrounding the issue of internet policing.

Imagine if there was an entire sphere of websites dedicated to illegal activity of all kinds – to hacking, to drugs, to illegal pornography, to identity theft and credit card fraud and any other dubious activity you can think of. How could you possibly police an entire online culture of illegality without compromising the basic principles that our society is based on?