cross-posted from [email protected] : https://slrpnk.net/post/30020824

FTP servers always just worked. No bullshit, garbage, or hoops to go through. Governments are now distributing documents that should be public access to everyone, but just like the private sector web-distributed docs bring in an infinite number of enshitification possibilities which make document access limited and exclusive.

For example, see the 1st item on this post. HTML PDFs are sometimes not even real PDFs anymore.

Some people have lost access to legal statutes because some foolish backroom jackass working for the gov decided to proxy gov websites via Cloudflare.

The EU has an “open data” law and an “accessibility” law. It’s a good start but these laws are vague and easy to disregard and weasel-word out of enforcement. It’s likely impossible to define a law that captures all possible varieties of enshitification, dark patterns, and exclusivity of access.

I do not think there are many ways to fuckup anonymous FTP. An IP firewall is perhaps the only variety of shenanigan we might expect.

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So new rule:

All government distributed docs must have an FTP distribution. Outsourced distribution still carries with it the FTP requirement. If the gov wants to also do an HTTP distro, fine. They can do whatever Cloudflare enshitified shenanigans they want and exploit the fact that countless pushovers will dance and solve CAPTCHAs. But there still must be an FTP pathway to all docs.

Future review:

Three years after enactment of this policy we will review and possibly consider allowing Gemini to be used in lieu of FTP.