Learn About FreeNet Straight From The Source

We've been hearing plenty of discussion about FreeNet lately. Instead of speculating in the dark, we might as well talk directly to the project's founder, Ian Clarke. Obviously, before posting a question, you'll want to read the FreeNet FAQs. We'll send Ian 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated questions tomorrow and post his answers sometime within the next week.

Comments

Wireless Freenet

[john187]

I think Freenet would dovetail nicely with wireless network technology. I system of Freenet servers 1-2 km apart could blanket metropolitan areas and eliminate dependancy on ISP's for network service.

What are your thoughts on this? Are any hardware people interested in looking at this problem? Building some prototypes?

Why the name FreeNet?

[K8Fan]

Maybe I'm just showing my ago, but to me a "FreeNet" is a local free Picospan/shell account. Maybe it's a bad idea to take the name of an existing and quite venerable free service?

Here is part of the Detroit Freenet FAQ:

* What is a Free-Net? A Free-Net is a free, public-access community computer system. Free-Nets can serve populations of any size, from large metropolitan areas to small cities and towns. They offer a wide spectrum of on-line information services to the public, including community and government databases and worldwide electronic messaging. They don't charge for their services, so everything on them is free. Free-Nets also have an interactive aspect, in that users can dialogue with information providers. While there are many Free-Nets around the world, each Free-Net is tailored to meet the needs of the local community, so no two Free-Nets are identical.

Seems like the existing Freenet is already a very good and useful thing, and it really doesn't need the confusion.

some technical questions..

[Cuthalion]

Once something is put on freenet it cannot be removed. What does this mean? No censorship, but also misinformation stays in the system just as long as correct information, so long as it can 'trick' people into requesting it (by seeming to be relevant, for instance). This can be exploited intentionally to censor (some things are nearly unfindable on search engines because of 'key' collisions - the band 'Reload', for instance), or unintentionally - I write something, post it, and five minutes later learn that I was mistaken. Oh well! People will just have to decide for themselves what is truth. Even if I DO post a retraction, there is no way to verify that a trusted entity (such as the original author) retracted it.

As a medium for sharing artistic works (eg, music, essays, images) this is not as important, but to carry actual facts (eg, hardware specs, controvertial news items, etc) this seems a major shortcoming. Is there any solution to this problem in place or in progress? I ask because I feel that this is not adequately discussed in the FAQ.

Re:Why compete?

[TheCarp]

Actually....the Freenet Has a huge technical
advantage over http protocols. The thing is...
its not just hard to track down who wrote it
(unless they sign their name...its only anonymous
if you want it to be) and where its stored...

It has cacheing built in. When you request
something, it propagates. Thi smeans more
copies exist. So if a document is REALLY popular,
then no one server is bogged down with
distributing it.

Imagine some really popular band that believes in
mp3 distribution puts out a new mp3. Now everyone
80% of colledge students go to download it.

WHat happens? After the first few downloads at
each colledge...the local university freenet
server will have a copy of the mp3 and will
be serving it to that university.

None of the requests for it will be going outside
the local university network. Its the basic
equivalent of everyone in the world being behind
multiple layers of httpcacheing proxy, except
somewhat better (its built into the protocol)

What to do if you are worried about Net Freedom

[Bruce Perens]

With freedom comes responsibility. And the general public, at least those who have been using Napster, don't seem to be terribly responsible. Passing around of copyrighted music in violation of its license terms is rampant. Because of this, we face severe restrictions in our net freedom driven by the music and media companies.

Most Open Source folks aren't the offenders here. They created their Open Source software so that they'd not have to bother with restrictive copyrights. But most of them are ethical enough not to engage in passing around music when they don't have the right to redistribute it.

My impression is that it's people who are entirely naive about copyright and intellectual property who are responsible for most of the passing around of music via Napster, and they are going to screw up the net for the rest of us.

So, if you are worried about net freedom, be a responsible net citizen. Don't pass around music when you don't have the right to redistribute it. Thanks

Bruce

Re:Why such bad press, what is being done to fix i

[Eric_Scheirer]

Eric Scheirer, a music technology researcher at MIT's Media Lab, said Freenet is an interesting experiment, but said it would likely be used only by a small community of pirates and "privacy nuts."

I stand by my quote in that article, although naturally it's a little short on context. Let me make clear that I am in favor of privacy, security, and anonymity when appropriate, and I despise the current attempts to make the WWW more corporate-controlled via both code and law. I don't think there's anything wrong with Freenet, I just don't think it will ever take off in the mainstream.

The fact is that most of the things that most people like to use the WWW for--such as e-commerce and Slashdot--cannot be built on Freenet, since it has no cookies and no memory. Given this, I can't see anything happening with Freenet except that it becomes a huge storehouse for illegal porn, pirated MP3s and 3l33t w8r3z.

It's a shame, because the potential political benefits that it raises, by allowing dissident speech in repressive countries, is great.

I guess my question for the Freenet developers would be: I am not a pirate, a privacy nut, a political dissident, or someone trying to spread illegal trade secrets. What does Freenet offer me? And are these benefits broad enough to a broad enough segment of the world population to create the momentum needed for Freenet to work sociologically as well as technically?

-- Eric Scheirer
MIT Media Laboratory

Why such bad press, what is being done to fix it?

[griffjon]

It's pretty scary when Wired slams you with the headline, "Alternative Net Protects Pirates", which contained in the story gems such as:

"
Eric Scheirer, a music technology researcher at MIT's Media Lab, said Freenet is an interesting experiment, but said it would likely be
used only by a small community of pirates and "privacy nuts."
"

And, failing Monday's piece in the Nando Times(http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/bod y/0,1096,500188504-500253045-501284316-0 ,00.html) , that's actually been the best article so far. The New Scientist
is running "Out of control: The Internet is about to get even harder to police" in their current issue at
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news_223135.htm l , and ABCNews.com
did a one-paragraph style summary of this article at
http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/dailyne ws/freenet000322.html
, with the lead of "An Internet system designed to guarantee anonymous free speech on the Web could be used by child pornographers and terrorists, according to New Scientist magazine, " which then
proceeds to all but call You and the other programmers pedophiles in a grammatical burp.

My question is, if this is to be successful (which I for one am all in favor of, I'm in close contact with Brandon and Steven, two of the FreeNet programmers, and am very much in support of the existence of this), FreeNet can't come off as a tool for criminals and miscreants, lest you attract more attention than you'd like from the Fed-types. Now, you may say that because it's open-source and already available etc. that the Feds can't put it down, but if it is branded as an evil tool for child pornographers (like it is currently), it will never gain the popularity and user-base needed to make it sufficiently robust against machine removals.

To get something called a tool for privacy nuts by Wired is pretty bad--and the rest of the press has been worse; is there any plan to get this project out of the gutter?

Poisoning the waters

[Mike Schiraldi]

What protection is there against someone poisoning the system with malicious data? For example, let's say MPAASoftRIAAOL Corp. sets up a system of computers all over the place with wildly different IPs, and they feed either random or specially crafted bogus data into the system.

This is sort of analogous to renaming Barry_Manilow.mp3 to DaveMatthewsBand.mp3 and putting it on Napster. How do we prevent it? Some sort of decentralized, everyone-is-created-equal moderation system?
--

Bandwidth and Piracy

[Valdrax]

In your own FAQ, you pretty much sidestep the entire issue that FreeNet would become a humongous "warez" distribution system by saying that it's merely a more efficient means of doing what others have been doing before. Ignoring the seeming subtle endorsement of piracy through the system, I'll raise an important question for adminstrators of FreeNet nodes.

In your FAQ, you say that it is very hard for FreeNet node admins to know what is on their site. With the inevitable proliferation of "warez" on the site, how will the system avoid getting bogged down with hundreds of illegal copies of popular pieces of software?

For example, when Diablo 2 finally comes out in the stores, what would prevent servers from being overloaded with:

• /software/games/Diablo2.iso
  
• /software/games/RPGs/Diablo2.iso
  
• /software/games/rpg/Diablo2.iso
  
• /warez/l337gam3z/Diablo2.iso
  
• /fr33gam3z/war3z/rpg/diabloII.crack.iso
  
• /mywarez/ObfuscatedDistributionKey/Diablo2.image
  
• ...etc.?
  

'
You could literally have hundreds of 650 Mb images of games floating around jamming up everyone's nodes. With the lack of searchability, no one would know what keys hook into what files. Without this knowledge, warez people might keep uploading copies to different keys, thus flooding the system. In essence, does not the lack of protection against piracy and the seemingly intentional goal of keeping admins from controlling their system threaten to bring down the entire network under the burden of warez and junk?

Reversed priorities?

[mattr]

If files live longer the more they are thrashed, will this not just breed thrasher bots and crowd out data from clients with less connectivity? How about a voting system for one or more directories which does not add files easily but they are there for good. If it is that good a resource it deserves a champion to protect it.

Also, I take it you are comfortable with already having divulged the identities of the entire first wave of sysadmins of FreeNet nodes? Seems like your most vulnerable time is now.

I've long considered the value of a peer to peer system for countries underdeveloped in the areas of infrastructure and rights. Unfortunately it seems that social engineering is steadily on the side of repression. Wouldn't the best way to get FreeNet into such environments be to make it a source of economic strength? In other words, your growth metric might look much better if you include authorship, copyright, and microcashpayment management. I can't see the Declaration of Independence sticking in the current system for long.. but it is in both a good library and a good bookstore.

Basically you have built a distribution system which in its optimal configuration has no delivery time since you already have the commodity on your hard drive.. make it work for business as well and it may reduce prices and take on a life of its own.

Kiddy porn, rape movies, snuff films.

[Jinker]

No matter what zealots tell you, no freedom is absolute. Your freedoms end when they infringe on the rights of others. This includes your freedom of speech.

My thoughts when I first heard about this project were extremely positive for the first 5 seconds or so. I was going to set up a server, and suggest all my other bandwidth-rich friends do the same. Then I thought about what would be going to and from my server.

Anonymity has it's place from time to time, but usually in the cases of an abuse by a higher power against an individual. But in the general case, I feel that freedom of speech entails the responsability of accountability.

If I'm going to say that I hate Virgos, and all Virgos should be locked up and treated as the inhuman beasts that they are, I should have the conviction to do so without a pointy hood over my head.

If I'm going to be distributing porn, I should be able to do it with a clean conscience. If I wanted to post naked pictures on a website, I'd be in some way traceable. And if I wasn't identifiable, there at least would be a mechanism in place (an email to my upstream provider) to curb my freedom of speech if I was posting vile material.

The ideal of individual freedom falls apart in the environment of actual individuals who abuse it.

I'm not saying in any way that this should be a legal matter, or that the product should be banned, just that in the case that it turns out like I expect it to (the majority of traffic for illicit files, both violating copyright and basic human decency) I will have no respect, even a measure of contempt for the people that do run the servers. THEY will be the ones I will hold accountable for the 'free speech' being exercised on the network. And if they were to be sued off the net by the RIAA, church of Scientology and MPAA, I can't say I'll be surprised, or all that upset.

What arguments can you make FOR free, anonymous access to kiddie porn, snuff films and rape/torture erotica? Why should *I*, a server operator, nurture these sorts of activities in an ideal environment?

Who is liable?

[tcd004]

You said that this:
allows information to be published and read without fear of censorship because individual documents cannot be traced to their source...

I'm all for an open forum for free speech, but this seems almost reckless. In most venues of speech, accountability for someone's words is fundamental. The internet has opened up the possiblity of free speech without accountability to a small degree, and look at what has happened. Do you fear any legal reprocussions to your group for creating this forum based on this fact?

tcd004
LostBrain