Slashdot Mirror

This is exactly the reason that I think that Slashdot should put up some Freenet mirrors. At least then, when there's a big rush of requests, the little site's servers wouldn't get the big hits, and the bandwidth would distribute itself out like BitTorrent.

Right now, much of the justification for the FCC censoring radio and television is based on assertion that the Public owns the airwaves (and therefore allows the majority to determine what gets banned).

Obvsiously, the next logical step in regulation - after tv and radio - will be the Internet. And I'm not thinking about obvious targets like pornography here. No, I think they will sart with Salon.com articles that use the "F word," health sites that depict women's health issues (in 4-color graphic detail), web sites showing the uncensored Janet boobie incident video (SHOCKING!) or any number of the flash animations that we know and love.

But there's a problem here (which obviously has been discussed many times in many venues - but is no less applicable here):

"The Internet" is not owned by the Public.

Sure, they can prosecute people that run servers in US territory. But I wonder: will the US government start blocking "indecent" and "profane" web pages located on servers in other countries? And what will they do about people accessing banned sites though distribued networks like Free Net?

How will the "Public" react when they discover that they don't "own" the Internet - that they Government can't "protect" them - that the only way not see "indecent" images or ideas will be to exercise a little personal choice?

It's not going to be pretty.

There are a variety of Warez websites on Freenet which, while operated anonymously, have established a trustworthy reputation (which is cryptographically enforced by Freenet's "subspaces" mechanism). The operators of those sites value the reputations they have established, which provides a strong disincentive for them to distribute trustworthy software.

I think the problem is not so much with the wiretapping itself, which they can already do by installing a packet sniffer onto any of the systems between client and host, but with the requirement that ISPs bend over backwards to provide the FBI with easy access to people's communications. According to this story, the law could go so far as to require software makers to build back doors into server software. Can you imagine what would happen to P2P apps like Freenet if developers were required to introduce back doors into the code?

"what do you do about HTTP, FTP, IRC, and all the other protocols which are completely built around unencrypted transmission?"

Freenet.

Just a clarification - Freenet supports swarming.

Big files (>1 meg) are broken into several blocks (of 1 meg size each), with redundant blocks added to decrease the chance of one missing block making the whole file useless, and these block are treated as independent files by the network, allowing them to be up- and downloaded separately.

This technology is called splitfiles, or FEC splitfiles, where FEC stands for Forward Error Correction (redundancy).

three of the fastest distributed hash table implementations out there (logarithmic time)

Why haven't I seen any comments about using Freenet for this yet? Where's Ian hiding today?

Here's some cool darknets being developed:

Invisible IRC Proxy
Its a seperate IRC network that hides the IP of the users and encrypts all the traffic coming in and out. semi-centralized, not totally anon due to small size

Freenet Project
Kinda like a decentralized encrypted RAID + Usenet. High latency, high bandwith. More for publishing than interactivity, although there is a cool BBS prog for it.

Invisible Internet Project
You heard it hear first! I2P, the next generation of anonymous communication, not yet publiclly announced. Its in pre-alpha, but functional and needing good coders. Low latency, high bandwith. Any internet prog should run over it, currently got IRC, NNTP (usenet), HTTP, chessd, Jabber, and experimental Bittorrent. We meet on IIP (above) in chan #i2p

"DRM turns computers against their owners. I don't want a Disney security guard sitting in my living room watching my every move."
- Ian Clarke, creator of Freenet

FreeNet I think is the most important example. They overcame their design problems lately and now it may be well on its way to mass usage.

So please everyone support freeing Java!

In the past couple of weeks, the anonymous Freenet has started working like gangbusters. Freenetters have been seeing incredible speeds.

From a previous article on this topic:

File: windows_2000_source_code.zip
Key: CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoEMG Kv54~o6A
Bytes: 213748207

CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoEMG Kv54~o6A/windows_2000_source_code.zip

Of course if you don't have Freenet yet (what are you waiting for?) you'd do good to visit http://www.freenetproject.org

... freenet.

Read Clark's paper on Next Generation Routing.. then click the link for instructions on using Unstable. Unstable is much nicer for browsing, in my experience. Just install the stable version, then replace freenet.jar and seednodes.ref with the appropriate "unstable" files.

I still have problems using the "stable" branch. I frequently get horribly slow access.. and very little content seems to be available. Go to the Next Generation Routing page for instructions on getting the Unstable branch. Browse this. First, install the normal, stable Freenet then replace Freenet.jar and seednodes.ref with the appropriate "unstable" files.

Browsing common pages is much more reasonable. If you're behind NAT, make sure to read this

see if you can request this:
SSK@l4Kq8dXYucgTzJlhEHOiBWj~A~sPAgM,WvqLp6tz7psphr 79zB30tA/

Make sure to remove the inserted space.

p

I still have problems using the "stable" branch. I frequently get horribly slow access.. and very little content seems to be available. Go to the Next Generation Routing page for instructions on getting the Unstable branch. Browse this. First, install the normal, stable Freenet then replace Freenet.jar and seednodes.ref with the appropriate "unstable" files.

Browsing common pages is much more reasonable. If you're behind NAT, make sure to read this

see if you can request this:
SSK@l4Kq8dXYucgTzJlhEHOiBWj~A~sPAgM,WvqLp6tz7psphr 79zB30tA/

Make sure to remove the inserted space.

p

I still have problems using the "stable" branch. I frequently get horribly slow access.. and very little content seems to be available. Go to the Next Generation Routing page for instructions on getting the Unstable branch. Browse this. First, install the normal, stable Freenet then replace Freenet.jar and seednodes.ref with the appropriate "unstable" files.

Browsing common pages is much more reasonable. If you're behind NAT, make sure to read this

see if you can request this:
SSK@l4Kq8dXYucgTzJlhEHOiBWj~A~sPAgM,WvqLp6tz7psphr 79zB30tA/

Make sure to remove the inserted space.

p

Personally, I think the only way to stop kiddie porn is at the source. Removing the transport medium will only lead to those involved seeking another medium, and there's always SneakerNet.

If you are running Freenet's unstable branch, you can download it from here. Its about 200MB and will take a few hours to download (Freenet is averaging about 30k/sec these days). I grabbed it and it looks like the real thing.

Among other things, the zip contains the source code to Notepad (you always wanted that!) along with an intriguing bugcodes.txt file that explains a lot of bluescreen/stop errors in more detail than you'll find anywhere else.

File: windows_2000_source_code.zip
Key: CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoEMG Kv54~o6A
Bytes: 213748207

CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoE MG Kv54~o6A/windows_2000_source_code.zip

Of course if you don't have Freenet yet (what are you waiting for?) you'd do good to visit http://www.freenetproject.org.

File: windows_2000_source_code.zip
Key: CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoEMG Kv54~o6A
Bytes: 213748207

CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoE MG Kv54~o6A/windows_2000_source_code.zip

Of course if you don't have Freenet yet (wtf are you waiting for?) you'd do good to visit http://www.freenetproject.org.

A little birdie told me that you can now download the windows 2000 source from freenet using the key CHK@JANQuMJMYGNWPVWyfwBwyXPsgBwPAwI,LeWue01uUKoEMG Kv54~o6A. Make sure to remove the space (after "MG" in the key) that slashcode adds automatically. Or, if you have Frost, it's posted in the 'warez' category under content. Or so I've heard...

As it gets more and more insecure to use P2P filesharing services, the users should consider switching to a filesharing network which fully respects privacy and completely disables censorship (achieved by encryption)

For details see the Freenet Project homepage.

BTW there is another interesting (though by far not as widely used) filesharing network, called GNUnet.

I'm talking about a completely decentralized network with no central body allocating addresses, with strong encryption at the link level and end-to-end, guaranteeing privacy and freedom of speech to anyone who can connect to it.

Freenet and the Freehaven project's second-generation onion router have laid a lot of the groundwork, but they're designed to be internet overlays. What we need is a truly decentralized packet-switching network, independent of the internet, capable of operating over an ad hoc collection of wireless, leased line, modem and (for the moment) internet connections. The internet can function as scaffolding but nothing in the new network's design should be internet-specific.

It's already possible to build small networks of this kind - see Mute, for example. Each machine's address is derived from its public key, and you find routes by broadcasting. But broadcasting every query isn't scalable, so in my PhD research I'm looking for scalable ways to route packets across a large, untrusted network with no address aggregation. If you have any ideas, please reply and I'll send you my email address. :-)

You forgot:

Freenet

For those who have tried Freenet in the past and been put off, you might want to check out the unstable branch right now. It's kicking ass, 25KB+/sec downloads on my end, which might not sound like much to the KaZaA crowd, but when you consider that the network is totally anonymous, things are working damn spiffy right now.

Let's hope it improves even more, but it can only do so with more users (== more storage and more bandwidth).

If you haven't tried Freenet, please do so!!

You forgot:

Freenet

For those who have tried Freenet in the past and been put off, you might want to check out the unstable branch right now. It's kicking ass, 25KB+/sec downloads on my end, which might not sound like much to the KaZaA crowd, but when you consider that the network is totally anonymous, things are working damn spiffy right now.

Let's hope it improves even more, but it can only do so with more users (== more storage and more bandwidth).

If you haven't tried Freenet, please do so!!

A few months ago a friend gave me a CD which contained a version of Linux that you could put in your CD drive, and reboot your computer, and when it came up your computer became a Freenet node, and you could surf Freenet. The main site was called "China News On Freenet" which is mirrored on the web here. Most stuff on Freenet is either pornography, or in English, but there is an increasing amount of Chinese information, some of which is of quite good quality. Freenet-China is a modified version of Freenet, but translated to Chinese. They also use an earlier version of Freenet since Freenet itself is still quite experimental and recent versions have been unreliable.

It is possible to use proxies to access information from outside China, but most people are fearful of these since you never really know whether you are being monitored. With Freenet-China at least you konw that the worst they can find is that you have a Freenet-China CD, which even in China isn't really enough to get you in trouble.

Software like Freenet-China is important because it gives a sense of comfort. Being able to access censored information is useful, but being able to access it without worrying about going to jail is important if is really going to have an impact.

It is possible only according to the suits in the government. The p2p traffic accounts for ~2/3rds of the internet traffic nowadays, so unless you have an echelon-type system good luck!

(and that is not counting all the anonimity-protecting nets such as freenet, MUTE, and the new i2p (don't remember link, sorry).

How is this system different from Freenet in it's design?
Both seem to use a system of specilization for data, so that a specific node carries a series of data is one specific area, more than others. This is VERY useful, in that nodes can learn about what each one carries.
It also seems similiar in that routing is intelligent enough that nodes can hint to each other about a specilization, and share routing information..

I'm not knocking either project, I'm just not informed enough. What is the major differences? Wouldn't it be equally do-able to just replace the routing engine in Freenet, if that is the design goal?

The pacakage seems to be a very Freenet/Frost like utility, passing messages about the locations of keys around the anonymous ether.

-Colin

Just use Freenet. Bill's Big Giveaway at SSK@0XfsEtY77bacbBwMIYQNvxbI8y8PAgM/Bills_Giveaway /3/ will have you all set up with Win98 or WinXP. Even MS Office if you want it.

Not a Freenet user? What are you waiting for? Go to freenetproject.org, download the latest stable, run it awhile and find utopia.

If the UN starts arguing about the net, it'll be a good ten years before any one nation can do anything definite with the net. Hopefully by that time freenet will be fast and stable, and greedy politicians won't be a problem for the net anymore.

LimeWire (and other Gnutella clients)

Emule

Soulseek

Blubster

Elf

SuprNova (and other BitTorrent indicies)

Freenet

Earthstation 5

And many others, as well.

A freenet-like model might be worthwhile for this kind of stuff. Data is referenced by keys that can't change, hence your link will point to the right piece of data for ever. Of course, unpopular content disappears over time, but basing this on popularity rather than the author's efforts seems like a vast improvement.

There is (at least) one already: freenet

You mean like using Freenet?

Oh, and as soon as Freenet gets N.G Routing working nicely, BitTorrent will be obsolete [/flamebait] ;-)

At protecting your identity ? Autonomous filesharing.

earthstation5

Slashdot article on Kazaalite

Yahoo filesharing directory. list of p2p clients

freenetproject

Rant - I hope freenet gets faster. But probably never will because of its design. And java is difficult to run on my pII 266 32 meg comp.

New filesharing programs may be needed . Keep an eye out.

Freenet's next-gen routing algorithm does detailed analysis of node performance and incorporates this into its routing decisions. In effect, Freenet already implements their proposal, neatly integrating it into the Freenet routing algorithm.

a freenet link to diebolds software and some other goodies.....

CHK@kvumSmm1F-YjvRSMzh3rtFpehUQNAwI,OfEFlnXz7r4Z ZH 9CVJbDzg/diebold_software.html

or

Diebold Software [FREENET LINK]

Learn More about Freenet

a freenet link to diebolds software and some other goodies.....

CHK@kvumSmm1F-YjvRSMzh3rtFpehUQNAwI,OfEFlnXz7r4Z ZH 9CVJbDzg/diebold_software.html

or

Freenet link: Diebold software

More information about freenet

...he had used Freenet.

Content can't be deleted from the freenet as long as it continues to be requested.

From the Freenet site: "Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is used for the distribution of censored information all over the world, including countries such as China and the Middle East."

Yes, it's being inserted into the Freenet "production" network as I type this. The production network is an older stable build running a smaller network, and performs remarkably well. It'll definitely be retrievable. Set up a production node and try it for yourself:

http://www.frontier.eclipse.com/freenet

When it's all in, I'll switch to the "development" network and insert it again. Depending on whether the routing algorithms are happy today, it may or may not be retrievable there. Keep trying and you'll probably get it. (Development is the regular freenet network.)

No matter where you look for it, the key is

CHK@fsatUAqLqJP91UTrCoReT3qciVYNAwI,whenOQbgnMLS o8 4zg1~~aA/lists.tar.bz2

You are displaying your ignorance of how the court system is abused. Any idiot can file a lawsuit against anyone for any reason. The RIAA will just file lawsuits random people because their Freenet node happened to transmit a mp3 file. Even though their case may have no merit, they will offer to settle out of court for less than their victim's lawyer fees with an "easy" payment plan, and many people will take the offer because they can't afford the lawyers in the first place.

The ones who don't settle, the RIAA sue and drag out the court case as long as possible--perhaps winning on some minor technicality or because their victim ran out of money for lawyers. All the while saying in the press "we'll sue every 'pirate' Freenet user because their nodes transmit music files." Have you not been paying any attention for the past few years? They want to harrass every P2P network out of operation. They don't even care if a P2P user isn't breaking the law, they'll label the bloke a criminal anyway.

The RIAA can't track down the users of freenet or various other anonymous P2P networks. Too bad! You're shit out of luck!

Ummmm....do you know anything about how the internet and Freenet works? There is this thing called an IP address. Others need to have it so they can send you packets. In fact, last time I checked, Freenet uses TCP which guarantees the IP address can't be spoofed for an active connnection, and you have to have an active connection to send data. So at bare minimum they can find out who is running nodes.

It shouldn't be too hard to find out if a node is routing unlicensed mp3s. All they have to do is figure out which keys apply to the cartel's music, and start requesting those keys. The RIAA will then attempt to sue anyone who routes the crap, and the average user won't be able to keep their node from routing such content.

Firewall blocks against RIAA and known collaborators may work some, but it's not as if they're going to reveal what IP addresses they're using to investigate. They can just run a connection through a residential cable modem or DSL line.

I doubt a case against a Freenet user assisting copyright infringement in this manner would be thrown out immediately. The RIAA may even win. The Aimster case was similar, and they lost.

There are also potential holes in the anonymity of Freenet users. From their FAQ:

Freenet does not offer true anonymity in the way that the Mixmaster and cypherpunk remailers do. Most of the non-trivial attacks (advanced traffic analysis, compromising any given majority of the nodes, etc.) that these were designed to counter would probably be successful in identifying someone making requests on Freenet.

On Freenet, whatever you do, your identity is still revealed to the first Freenet Node you talk to, and even if you limit yourself to talk only to trusted nodes (a feature that will be implemented in the future), they will have to talk to the rest of the network at some time or another. The anonymity that Freenet offers is really just obscurity in the fact that it is hard to prove that your node wasn't proxying the request for or insert of data on behalf of somebody else (who might also just have been proxying it).

The problem is that the only way that you can offer true anonymity is if the client can directly control the routing of data, and thus encrypt it with a series of keys of the nodes it will pass through (a la Mixmaster). Freenet's dynamic routing cannot offer that, so to attain true anonymity you have to send the message through an external network of anonymous remailers first (a future SMTP->Freenet bridge would make this possible). There are also plans for doing mixmaster-style injection of requests over the "standard" protocol, however this probably won't be implemented

Freenet allows you to post things others might not want you to post, anonymously, securely, and if your computer is turned off, that information can still be stored over the network in a nodes 'cache'... the more popular the file, the easier, faster, and more distributed the file gets....

Freenet
Freeweb - easy way to post websites(freesites)
Frost - a message board frontend for downloading/searching freenet, very neat!

Methinks the Freenet Project is a much better solution for anonymous, distributed publishing.

Hopefully they'll adopt this protocol and give Freenet the recognition it has deserved for so long.

This could work out for the very best.

the Freenet developers are currently working through some teething pains of the new Freenet routing protocol. When this settles (and this seems to be happening quicker than expected), Freenet should be ready for the really big time, especially with all the new Freenet client programs coming up for release.

With KaZaa 'phasing in' this billing, there's every chance that Freenet will be ready in time for the millions of KaZaa refugees.

Let's just see the RIAA/MPAA/BSA try to sue Freenet users. Would be easier to persuade Microsoft to release all their products under the GPL.

Congratulations, you have just re-invented Freenet.

The person who posted this advisory is definitely not a Joe Schmoe.

This is Random Nut. THE Random Nut. You may have heard of him? No? Does KaZaA Lite K++ ring any bells at all? That's him. He knows what he's talking about. If you don't, try the exploit for yourself. Works as he says it does. Or decompile ES5 on a sacrificial machine.

Warning: ES5 is very obviously a crock of shit and I've been saying so since release; alarm bells were ringing for me, frankly, as soon as I saw the website, especially the amusing comments (I'd link, but it's Flash) about Freenet, which is anonymous - ES5's "anonymity"? Well, you can download using overloaded, possibly monitored public web proxies. Streaming movies? From a Dutch web server via mms. Free porn? Thumbnail pages. Notice, though, no special features regarding music. Odd, that. Odd, isn't it?

The alarm bells rang loudly enough for me that when I tried it out, I tried it out on a sacrificial machine. About thirty minutes later I dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda'd the machine from a LiveCD - I'd seen enough.

I'll say again now what I said then, only with the hunches of the K++ creator backing it up as well as my own hunches: EarthStation5 is probably an RIAA-linked sting operation.

Plus, it doesn't even fucking work. :)