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I have - it's called Freenet.

What do you think the legal (or appropriate) uses of MP3 technology should be?
MP3 technology is technology to compress digital sound files to a size more easily manageable by current hardware (especially portable music players and) and current bandwith capacities (internet but also the USB bus often used for portable music players). As far as I know any use of MP3 technology is legal and appropriate. What can possibly be wrong with compressing a sound file? As far as I'm concerned MP3 technology (or any other technology solely used for audio or video compression has nothing to do with the other parts of the debate named (DMCA,CBDTPA,DeCSS,etc).

We all know the RIAA complains about the illegitimate uses of P2P technology. Since its most prevalent usage is (by the RIAA's definition) illegal use, what are some applications of the technology that the P2P crowd can use to swing the tide in its favor?
Well, I'm on slippery legal ground here, but one of the legal uses of the audio I buy (here in the Netherlands at least) is giving that audio (the original) to a friend either for a while (so he can listen to it for a few days) or forever (as a gift). In my Opinion it would (or maybe should) be perfectly legal to make MP3 versions of my audio, and share(through P2P) this mp3 version to the world. As long as I made sure only one person in the entire world was listening to that piece of music at any one time, including the original I bought then this would be a legal use. After all, having an MP3 file on your disc of material you don't own isn't illegal as long as you don't listen to it (again, under dutch law), so the P2P system would just be used to allow others to download music they might want to listen to in the future to their disc for storage (for example to make more efficient use of available bandwidth) until they have the opportunity to listen to that music (that is, it is their "turn" to listen to the song). Apart from that I think freenet and locstworld are good examples of legal use of P2P technology and these guys are searching for more. Basically P2P is a way to make a network less dependent on specific nodes so there are tons of legal uses (darpa net is a good one too)

The DMCA ...
I'm not familiar enough with the exact contents of this law to react to this question.

An argument frequently levied at the RIAA and MPAA is that they are more than content to label the large majority of consumers as thieves and pirates. What can the RIAA and MPAA do to change this? How can these organizations polish this image up?
The main interest of these bodies at this time seems to be to limit the value of their products to close to nothing. DVD's I cannot watch on my linux box (without "illegal" DeCSS) CD's that will not play on my PC (my only CD player currently) etc. The image of these bodies is directly related to the precieved value of the products they sell. So currently it appears customers (or at least this customer) and RIAA/MPAA see each other as thieves and pirates and both act as thieves and pirates would act towards thieves and pirates (a lack of mutual trust comes to mind....)

With laws such as the DMCA and possible future legislation such as the CBDTPA, many consumers feel that their freedoms to enjoy the entertainment they purchase are being slowly eroded away by content companies. What rights (other than the right to listen or view) do you feel that consumers should have with media they purchase?
Right to change the format of said media to suit the users needs. (portable MP3 players, (future) portable video players, even place the media on a (non public) internet server to be able to enjoy the media all over the world without having to lug several suitcases of media carriers and equipment around.)
Right to enjoy the media in the company of family, friends, etc.
Right to sell the media to whoever you please once you don't need or want it anymore.

Tunnelling does not imply a direction in which a connection is initiated.

Take for example, SSH--port forwarding is possible both from the "server" and the "client" sides. All the client has to do is accept inbound connections across the SSH tunnel. This can even be configured so the "server" accepts incoming connections from third hosts, which are then forwarded to the client.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, what I could see is a virtual IP stack residing on top of some application; maybe a packet forwarding equivalent of FreeNet. Applying the principle that you can tunnel anything across anything else, even a single TCP port open anywhere would sort of negate all this silly talk of packet filtering.

Proxies aren't an issue either, as anyone who's ever used something like this can attest.

As a matter of fact, Java's not that great on Linux, either. Take a look at the Freenet Java compat table.

Write once, test everywhere...

This right here is where the heart of my feelings on this issue rest:

"any HTTP GET request is exactly that, a request. "May I have that resource, Server Sir?"."

At that point, when the server fulfills the request (in essence, a 'yes'), it is rendering consent that you may possess whatever it's sending. How can an inanimate object render consent? Simple; those who maintain the web server allowed it to do so. A computer may only ever do what it is told to do by a human being (at least at this point). In this case, a human being had to move said files onto the web server, and then moved them into the published folder, essentially ordering the server to give that resource to whomever requests it. The web server is little more than an extension of the employee or employees who maintain it. It's no different than having those same employees answering telephone calls from people requesting resources, and then either denying the request or fulfilling it.

There was no trickery, nor any deceit. There was a "may I have that?" from Reuters, and a "yes you may" from the web server. Fire the employee(s) who maintain the server; trash the server; cut the internet connection - but don't sue Reuters. Your problem is in-house folks, and this action only ensures that your employees will continue to handle your most sensitive data in a reckless manner.

As for Reuters, I'd have to say this is about as far as they can go. Obviously, trying passwords and such to access hidden data is evidence of fraud, in that you're trying to pass yourself off as the person who has rightful access to the account. Ask Kevin Mitnick about requests for data, as he did that plenty. The difference between what Mitnick was doing and what Reuters did was that Mitnick said anything and everything to get simple-minded folks to send him what he wanted, whereas Reuters simply asked politely and had their request granted on the spot. If I call you on the phone and ask you for the source code for a new product your company is developing - saying something like, "may I please have the source code to project xyz emailed to me@somewhere.com?", and never make any fraudulent claims, or even say another word, whose fault is it when the source arrives in my inbox?

As for the argument about Reuters publishing the report, I could make a joke about fair use allowing you to time-shift things (never says you can't "shift it to the future" ;) ), but that might be in poor taste. The company has to publish the information at some point anyway, and in the current climate of scandals and such, it's probably better to do so sooner rather than later - but this doesn't really address what Reuters did. Did they have a right to publish a financial report which had no yet been made public? I think that depends on how it was obtained. If it were a case of an informant inside the company, I would have to say they have no right to publish that information, unless the company expressly allowed for the employee/informant to disclose company information. In this case, however, one or more employees for this company openly published the information on the company web server. Unless Reuters had good reason to believe the information was confidential and was given to them without the authorization and/or consent of the company in question, then I don't see where they've done anything wrong. This wasn't an informant, this was a web server publishing to hundreds of millions of people. The fact that it wasn't right out in the open is irrelevent. If anyone remembers, there wasn't much on the internet 10 years ago that was easy to find. If anyone wants to see what it's like, check out freenet 0.5. Does this make everyone who used the net in the 80's and early 90's criminals? You usually had to scour the landscape to find anything, yet all Reuters did was type in a URL. Reuters requested something which was handed over on the spot; did anyone even tell them it wasn't supposed to be published? I'm not saying Reuters didn't know that publishing the report would piss off that company; simply that they had a reasonable expectation of the ability to publish that which had already been made available to anyone with an internet connection by that company.

Either say what the problem is, or keep reading. C'mon, you didn't even say what operating system you're running! (Must be a Windows user.)

In general, the procedure is as follows:

0) Download Java.
1) Download Freenet software.
2) Configure it (generate freenet.ini or freenet.conf).
3) Start the node.
4) Wait for it to initialize (usually takes less than a minute).
5) Go to http://127.0.0.1:8888/.

Now, you can go yell at the Freenet developers if you wish, but all of the documentation linked to from freenetproject.org is badly out of date and incomplete. There is a much better Freenet user FAQ at The Freenet Wiki. It's not perfect, either, but it's much closer.

Unlike most open-source projects, Freenet could be considered extremely controversial and once they reach the "easy-to-use worldwide-popular Windows-client" level it looks like they'll probably have a lot of explaining to do. They're just explaining it in advance.

And, as you said, they are doing a fine job on prioritizing philosophy over technology. You see how everyone knows the general idea/intention of it ("new paradigm", "no liability for data", "copyright issues", etc.) but nobody here can explain clearly how it actually works? :)

Unlike most open-source projects, Freenet could be considered extremely controversial and once they reach the "easy-to-use worldwide-popular Windows-client" level it looks like they'll probably have a lot of explaining to do. They're just explaining it in advance.

And, as you said, they are doing a fine job on prioritizing philosophy over technology. You see how everyone knows the general idea/intention of it ("new paradigm", "no liability for data", "copyright issues", etc.) but nobody here can explain clearly how it actually works? :)

The true test of someone who claims to believe in Freedom of Speech is whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting. If this is not acceptable to you, you should not run a Freenet node.

There is another thing you can do. Since content in Freenet is available as long as its popular, you can help limit the popularity of whatever information you do not like. For example, if you do not want a file to spread you should not request it and tell everyone you know not to request that specific key.

It is nice to see that one can get +5 Informative by simply copying the What is Freenet? page and saying that it is a bit like Kazza.

It is not like Kazza! This is because it is not spyware and has/will never be accused of being. It is an open source (GPLed) reaction to the growing restrictions of the on-line rights of expression. The point is not that you can copy your warez and p0rn, the point is that you can express yourself anonymously.

Dear moderators, if you haven't read the article and followed at least some of the link, do not moderate! Does "...some kind of a cross between Kazza..." and "...provide efficient service and minimal bandwidth..." sound like something written by the same author in the same message?

"'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"

"Daddy, where were you when they took pictures of me playing naked on the beach when I was five, and when they posted me to the pedophilia board."

The concept of free speech/press is not so simple.

From the philosophy page:

in some European countries propagating information deemed to be racist is illegal.

I often hear how US citicens have a constitutional right of free speech. This i not so.

On the contrary the legal system in the US poses a number of restrictions on free speech. This includes libel, porn, patent and copyright laws. These laws all in some ways limit your right of free speech. So don't tell me that the US has free speech - because you don't.

Besides I personally think it makes sense for racist propaganda to be illegal. Look at it as a sort of class action libel case. Also rasism is one of the key points governed by the UN Human Rights declaration.

You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law

From the explorers area of the freenet pages:
6. Isn't censorship sometimes necessary? ..Governments seek to prevent people from advocating ideas which are deemed damaging to society....The second argument is that this "good" censorship is counter-productive even when it does not leak into other areas. For example, it is generally more effective when trying to persuade someone of something to present them with the arguments against it, and then answer those arguments....

But what about questions that are not answerable? For instance, some anonymous person "places" a file containing the source codes for all the windows operating systems+MATHEMATICA source code+xyz corporations major software. The software companies attitude could be bad, and mainly oriented towards profit and monopoly. But do even such companies deserve such a death blow? At one stroke, their entire product goes down the drain.
While I am not against freenet, it is not without its disadvantages. Taken to its limits, nobody can control us, yah, but nobody can control this "network" either!

Unlike most open-source projects, the Freenet website seems to spend more time evangelizing than talking about the technology. Check out their architecture page, and compare with their philosophy page.

Unlike most open-source projects, the Freenet website seems to spend more time evangelizing than talking about the technology. Check out their architecture page, and compare with their philosophy page.

I'd be interested where/how they figured this. A p2p network should disperse very little information about actual distribution of copyrighted works.

Alec French: Also, see Freenet

Yep.. Indeed, everyone keeps saying the XBox is a test for Palladium. I think perhaps they are correct. In fact, all evidence supports this rationalization. MS has patents in the works for their DRM operating system. Intel's working on the hardware, and AMD is playing follow the leader.

That's precicely why I'm scared; once all new computers are hardware secure*, open source will have to relegate itself to older platforms (or ones that have no hope to run software designed to be run on a secure platform). It's a sad state of affairs, and a future I think could come about.

*As the XBox has illustrated, hardware security is a laughable--unless one is willing to take extreme (and expensive) measures. Anything short of strapping a small block of C4 on the motherboard, and rigging it such that any attempt to circumvent the hardware causes it to blow the thing to hell, will fail. Hardware will be cracked; it's a function of how badly it needs to be done, and how many people are working on it. Though, in all practicality, draconian legislation like the DMCA will criminalize anyone attempting to distribute that knowledge. Freenet may be our savior after all.

No native JDK 1.4.

Ridiculous claim since Linux binaries are supported at the kernel level.

DISCLAIMER: My experience is with OpenBSD, not FreeBSD. (However, FreeBSD users have confirmed my findings in considerable detail.)

DISCLAIMER: I hate Java's bloated reeking guts. Java's only purpose in life is to run Freenet until someone rewrites the Freenet reference node into a portable language like C.

My experience with Java and Freenet on OpenBSD is that the Linux native JDK does not work. Freenet will appear to start up and run, but once you actually start using it, it fails miserably. Specifically, the Freenet node listens for connections on two or more TCP/IP sockets. Connections made to any port that Freenet is listening to will be silently dropped if no data are waiting on the socket (e.g., if you telnet localhost 8888 it will drop the connection after accepting it). However, if data are actually waiting in the buffer, the connection may work, at least sometimes (e.g., if you echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.0\n" | nc localhost 8888 it will work most of the time).

As you can imagine, this makes running the software a fool's mission. Things just break and there's no rhyme or reason to it, because there's at least one case where the behavior is nondeterministically broken. And that's just the case that I happened to discover -- who knows what else is lurking in those murky proprietary-Sun-code depths?

Fortunately, Kaffe 1.0.7 seems to work at least acceptably for running Freenet on OpenBSD. (Don't use Kaffe from the ports tree, which is 1.0.6. Kaffe 1.0.6 has serious bugs, at least one of which is in big number handling, which is essential to many of Freenet's encryption algorithms.) Kaffe 1.0.7 has some bugs of its own -- for example, it tended to crash and core dump on me, at least until I commented out one assertion that the Kaffe mailing list said was probably spurious. (And you don't want to see how big a Kaffe/Freenet core file is.)

Get freenet, Freenet Message Board (which is available inside freenet) and something other then windows to run it all on. You can use FMB (freenet message board) to play chess with someone else with complete anonymity and privacy. You can also use the same for communicating with anyone in the same mannor.

Someone already mentioned multiproxy. Also check out Java Anonymous Proxy and Peekabooty. You seem kind of new to the game of paranoia. Why not just start here and do some reading.

It's important to understand exactly what these anonymous services get you and who and what they are protecting against so take some time and realistically educate yourself to the risks and threats.

Oh, and don't forget to check out Freenet

Freenet searches do not work like Gnutella, as you would know if you knew anything about Freenet.

Freenet's search has, through multiple independent simulation-based studies (cited in the link I give above), been demonstrated to have logarithmic scalability, not the linear scalability you claim.

To inject some facts into this conversation - Freenet isn't exactly the same as a distributed hashtable, as it doesn't guarantee retrievability of information, but this is probably an inevitable consequence of achieving Freenet's goals, and Freenet's developers aren't shy about it.

The claims you have made about Freenet are total FUD.

Can anyone explain to me how this is different from Freenet?

Freenet has a Decentralized Architecture, which is specifically designed to resist DOS attacks, by making each client that views the page into a possible server..

With freenet, any DDOS attempt would actually make the content MORE accessable, as it spread it to more and more nodes..

And used by nearly 7 people.

Seriously, if you're going to go with a free, open source, slow p2p network with nobody on it, try freenet. At least if you get caught they can't prove anything.

freenet can be used as a truly distributed DNS system. Only problem is that conflicts can arise. But then `democracy' wins out; whichever name has more submissions will get it's IP returned; in the end a content-based searching/index system will win out regardless.

Doesn't this sound like the freenet project? An encrypted and decentralized system where everything is P2P, no-one can re-construct your data, and everyone trusts everyone else?

Like in peer-to-peer networks, there is no central server in the system that contains a list of where all the data, or files in the cabinet, are located. Instead, each server has a partial list of where data is stored in the system. The trick for the researchers is creating a "lookup" algorithm that allows the location of data to be found in a short series of steps.

One important difference is that Freenet doesn't guarantee retrievability of data, rather the more popular and recent the data, the more chance there is that it can be retrieved. This makes it more like a publication system (think radio or TV) than a distributed file-system.

Find information about scientology at

freenet:SSK@Zl388MATYv0Ah8GY6I2GuuNJapYPAgM/borg /2 //
freenet:SSK@WRhGF3h0ijFh1eVJnFu~H9OyIpAPAgM/an tisc ient/5//
freenet:SSK@jbf~W~x49RjZfyJwplqwurpNmg0P AgM/xenu2/ /

on freenet.

What about anonymous sharing of information? Like Freenet.

There's already one out there that's designed (almost entirely) with these kinds of attacks in mind.

Thank-you for putting this in terms other than "I am too lazy to setup IP addresses". What you describe could have interesting consequences for something like FreeNet running on a community wireless network.

For those not in the know, visit the Freenet project. It's a secure, distributed network where, from what I understand, anything goes. The problem with this so far is, like the first days of the web, there isn't a good search capability available.

But, in reading your post, it hasn't been touched by politicians and definately doesn't restrict based on content.

I've been thinking about this problem for quite some time. My thoughts aren't quite ready for publishing, but I did get quite a bit of information first.

Some links:
GNUNet
This is aimed at a being an anonymous backbone, of sorts, but is currently being developed more towards the P2P file sharing aspect. That said, the papers on their website are fascinating.

Freenet
This is more of an anonymous content publishing network. A partial solution.

Please reply to tell me if these are what you're looking for.

I'm not really sure exactly what they are talking about here.

I am trying to get a new career started doing animation (wishful thinking, probably) since I can't find employment in the Uber-geek field anymore.....

Anyway, here is the link to a tripod page with 2 of my animations on it; the first listed is 3 minutes, and took me about 3 weeks to do; It takes a AMD XP1700+ about 6 hours to render 180 frames at 704x480 res, and any decent animation is going to be at that level or better.

I've worked with professional rendering farms, that employ multiple network linked PC's each doing a little bit of the job...and you get a direct linear reduction in time for each CPU involved. How is it possible that a single graphic processor can do all this work?

and if it IS possible, where do I get one?

P.S. if you think the animations are decent, I would love the feedback. If you think they suck, well, shut the fuck up, ok?

Enjoy Freenet & Frost while you can.

You went to all that trouble and didn't install Master of Magic?

Enjoy Freenet & Frost while you can.

My Brother, who is an Insane Genius©, Has been using Atari systems, mainly the 800's and the Mega ST, since around '87 I think; He's got them hacked all to hell, built a scanner head into a printer, Parallel processing with random mutated code, good stuff like that.

These machines are incredible for their era, which is not surprising considering they pretty much lost all the best talent in the company to Amiga.

Enjoy Freenet & Frost while you can.

I will be giving a talk on The Freenet Project at 5pm next Friday at DEFCON. If anyone would like a high-speed warts 'n all introduction to what's interesting about Freenet, past, present, and future, feel free to stop-by.
</Shameless Self-promotion>

Freenet. Maybe someday it'll be ready for that.

This is not really that scary; the guy apparently expected a little common sense, and that's usually a mistake in dealing with the government

What's scary is the recent corporate crime bill recently passed by the house of representatives, which would make it illegal to attempt a federal crime, not just to commit it.

As attempt is obviously pretty subjective, this is awful scary. War Driving would be illegal. As someone else pointed out, just running a auto-discovery tool would be illegal, or could be made to appear as illegal.

I was looking for a quote from Orwell on the subject, something on the lines of make everyone a criminal, if you want control, but I'm sick of the whole subject.

Enjoy Freenet & Frost while you can.

Freenet already has this feature. Large files are split into 256KB chunks and they can optionally be encoded with extra redundancy using FEC, so one does not have to download all chunks of the file to get the complete file.

Ah, but Salon has writers. Here, we're going to ask the users to do the writing, and charge them? No go. Perhaps a P2P solution over Freenet is the answer--see Freenet Message Board toward the middle of this page. All it would need is some tweaks to allow people to selectively view content signed with certain keys (editors?) and a mechanism for posters to have submissions signed and voila'--a /. replacement without the bandwidth costs.

A directory is good though. Freshmeat or the like would be the obvious place home for it, just another field or so attached to each project's record.

All the technology -- and the software, too -- is out there. People just need to start using it.

It's the lack of source anonymity that makes me hold off on hosting the files I've acquired.

Want anonymity? Try Freenet.

Freenet provides anonymous uploads and anonymous downloads. I'm wondering how will MPAA stop that. At this moment Freenet already has some MP3. So if you want to join, I suggest you check the Freenet and Frost websites.

One thing I think Freenet desperately needs is good content. I don't think it will get very far if people use it only to distribute MP3, warez and other illegal content. It needs lots gaming, news, geek, and those typical "This is me and this is my dog" websites to avoid looking as a system only made to distribute illegal content without being caught.

www.freenetproject.org

Walkers in an intellient routing setup would be the most optimial way of doing p2p, hopefully this would loose up some of on the congestion on the current p2p networks and let people with less bandwidth access to the shared files with the least sacrifice on bandwitdh for searches.

this paper (PDF) gives a great overview.

Walkers in an intellient routing setup would be the most optimial way of doing p2p, hopefully this would loose up some of on the congestion on the current p2p networks and let people with less bandwidth access to the shared files with the least sacrifice on bandwitdh for searches.

this paper (PDF) gives a great overview.

freenetproject.org can help you out. It was designed from the ground up with plauable deniability in mind. It's really really hard to track down, much less prove in a court of law, who is putting what on freenet.

This is being done. Its called Freenet.