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Ian Clarke of Freenet Intereview
abe1x writes "Ian Clarke of Freenet is interviewed at Feed by Christopher Locke of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Pretty interesting, can't wait for Freenet to actually function smoothly on a large scale."
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Have you registered the trademark in Ireland or at the EU trademark office? If not, I suspect you are SOL.
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
Freenet rocks.
I wish someone would write a client that speaks both Freenet and Mojo Nation protocols...
There should be "bridge nodes" that speak at least two protocols and that link the various distributed networks together.
And I hate to point this part out, too, but not only are we not nearly as controversial; we got there first. I'm pretty certain there's actually even a trademark on the name.
[ looks ]
Yep. 1986.
And for the anal-retentives in the audience, yeah, I think a court would accept a dilution argument, given the close association of the problem spaces.
Cheers,
-- jra
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Of course I have a choice about whether to install a freenet node. Thats not the question. The question is: Freenet, and other technologies, if used widely, have consequences even for those who do not use it, in that, for instance, copyright will become untenable. Is it therefore OK that those who introduce such things do so unhindered by social constraints ?
Spouting naive egoism doesn't answer every (or possibly any) question. People don't live in hermetically sealed boxes, and therefore don't always get a choice when the "rules" start changing.
The problem with deleting via a key is that it's vulnerable to attack from a single source. Deleting old data is a distributed action and thus not vulnerable to an attack from a single source.
I suppose it could be made pseudonymous, like slashdot. If you want the +2 bonus you need to establish a reputation.
Pseudonymous communication is possible in an otherwise anonymous network through digital signatures. For example, if all slashdot posts were Anonymous Coward, someone could come along and create a client-side thing to automatically GPG sign posts and verify GPG signatures, hilighting posts from known-good GPG keys.
This sort of thing has been discussed on the cypherpunks sewer^H^H^H^H^Hmailing list for years.
What are you talking about? It runs fine on Windows 98!
Now imagine if you were to think of a band you used to like, musically similar to Foo Fighters. You could browse Freenet looking in Media/Music/Alternative/Rock then finding a few songs by Nirvana and realizing that was the band you were looking for.
OK, perhaps that isn't the best analogy to draw, but I think with Freenet you will be able to find a lot of information on a general category, as opposed to finding a specific piece of information.
So, Jimmy hacks a nanobot that turns everything into the world into chocolate cake. Jimmy likes chocolate cake!
Jimmy's gonna let it go, too, because he says that "anyone who hasn't climbed up onto the new rung that's just been built on the ol' ladder" and built an anti-chocolate cake nanobot deserves to get "stepped on".
Whee! Now the Mona Lisa, The Hoover Dam, and your house have all been turned into chocolate cake!
This can't be what you want.
The Bill Joy Point is that we have to stop thinking about technology as simply a liberating mechanism, and start reckoning with the unprecidented menace to freedom the New Technology offers. Freenet isn't even one of the New Technologies. But I think it's a premonition of them, and a good chance for us to ask ourselves the hard questions. What if there was a Jimmy with a chocolate cake nanobot? What should we be doing now to limit the kind of control of damage any one person can have through technology?
This is the biggest hack out there, and it's one all true geeks should be interested in.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
I'm not sure you really can, in a totally anonymous system you must allow everything or nothing because you can't filter it reliably.
-- iCEBaLM
But you don't know who voted, this is a completely anonymous system, thats the point.
-- iCEBaLM
But then that leaves open the opprotunity for an organized effort to vote out legitimate content, I say don't impliment the voting system, make people work harder to kill the system, I mean, which is harder? Simply wasting little bandwidth to vote down legitimate information, or wasting a lot uploading bogus stuff? Not to mention if you allow people to vote off legitimate information then you have the possibility of no legitimate information remaining, with the organized effort to insert bogus information you still have both legitimate and bogus, so that raises the chances of finding actual legitimate info, when you know this kind of abuse will go on.
-- iCEBaLM
- the number of requests there will be for porn vids and Britney Spears MP3s, and the number of directions those requests originate from, especially relative to requests for other material
- the amount of relative space required per item for porn vids and Britney Spears MP3s, vs. that for fascinating treatises on the human condition.
As a past (and somewhat present) Usenet administrator, I've seen this effect in action before, where I've had to mark down expiry times on binaries groups again and again, and where newer caching news servers still spend nearly all of their time keeping track of binaries groups because that's where the reader demand is. Freenet will take over this task itself and automate it completely, but that will make the effect even more pronounced because just as the designer notes, it can't tell the difference. It only judges on one dimension - demand.The system can be tweaked, certainly - large objects can be penalised for instance - but in the end I suspect we'll find that 90% of the demand and 99.9% of the storage requirement is for recordings of Ms. Spears music and pictures of her navel. Whether this is really a failing depends on your goals going in.
That said, the only way to find out if it works is to try it, and (as has been noted) there are other models being developed that you can inject your great novel into as well. So bring it on. :)
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
I get so sick and tired of hearing this line again and again! Let's think about it. Technology is a human-driven enterprise. All biological metaphors are just that: metaphors. Except in the case of, oh, bacterial research, new and interesting inventions do not just pop into existence. Inventors think about what exists, and make new things to improve their lives. Or at least their pocketbooks.
We all have a responsibility to examine those inventions -- all technology, really -- to monitor its effects and decide whether it's really a Good Thing. I mean, what if (and this is hypothetical! don't flame me for this part!) freenet ended up being used for ONLY passing peoples' credit card numbers around, becoming a major tool of international fraud and nothing else ? Then yes, we'd be better off stopping it!
The attitude that "technology can't be stopped" is just irresponsible. If you start with that attitude, you back yourself into situations where a technology gets to the point that it can't be stopped. Self-fulfilling prophecy, that's all it is.
I was on the mailing list and worked a little bit on Freenet early on. I didn't witness as much ego as you describe. Maybe that's happened since I left.
I think that what the Freenet developers are trying to accomplish is considerably more difficult that what Napster and/or Gnutella have done. We're talking distributed caching, anonymous uploading, encryption of stores (at least there was talk of such). They're certainly not insoluble, but they're not trivial, either.
These documents will probably be unpopular, and will be eventually dropped off Freenet. Also, with a rise in Freenet's popularity I expect to see a corresponding rise in the use of cryptography. I know I plan to GnuPG sign most documents I put onto Freenet.
This "Web of Trust" is common among many cryptographic solutions.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That said, I think the primary effect of FREENET, if it is successful, will not be the ability of minority ideas to evade censorship, but the de facto eradication of copyrights on digital media. (And that fact makes its success all that less probable, of course.)
Couldn't any motivated user could poll the FreeNet and build his/her own archive?
Deja News would seem to be a useful analogy: USENET stuff hangs around for a while and then expires, but nothing stops motivated users, like Deja News, from archiving for later use.
Whoever does the archiving becomes vulnerable to physical/legal attact, but that is the nature of any physical archive
"one treats others with courtesy not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are" --G. Henrichs
(Note that I didn't know about MojoNation when I wrote this, which also sounds very interesting, and does want to implement a rating system.)
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Freenet is actually much more efficient than the Web in the way it distributes information. With the Web, if a hundred people in Europe request the same document in America, that will travel under the Atlantic a hundred times. With Freenet it will only travel under once or twice. And then a copy will be stored locally in Europe, where it can be distributed to the other ninety-nine or ninety-eight people requesting it.
this would solve the slashdot effect for content access overload, because it could be cached all over.. So slightly offtopic, Has SlashDot ever considered caching, or mirroring sites they point to? At least the first page, until freenet takes over?
air and light and time and space
Assuming you meant dealing with a very large supply of information, there are any number of possible solutions. However, I think that most people aren't going to be willing to give up any more than a tiny fraction of their hard drive and communications in exchange for a guarantee of their rights. Most likely, you'll see a lot of folks giving Freenet a few hundred megs and using it primarily to find MP3's and porn which they'll then move to more permanent, local storage.
The more "dangerous" or "subversive" content that finds its way out there will only stick around so long as its subject matter is popular. While this could be an interesting phenomenon to watch in and of itself, (like publishing a monthly count of the number of times various 'keyowrds' appear in a Freenet search each month) the end effect will still be far from perfect.
I'm not saying that Freenet won't serve a valuable purpose until a better solution comes along. I just want to debunk the statements that I keep seeing that it will be a perfect and complete means of protecting the right to free expression.
Humanity is fickle and emotional, and as a group, we have very short attention spans and poor memories. The same tragedies occur time after time, and no one ever knows about it, because it's just one voice lost in the noise. Free speech won't do you a damn bit of good if no one can hear you over all the people shouting, and it will do you even less good if you only have a relatively short time to make your message heard, after which it might as well have never existed.
So, can you have a completely anonymous system in which there is still at least a semblence of accountability? Or, will any channel of communication which completely seperates data from the identity of its creator be overwhelmed with raw noise?
If you don't want to accept the new "rules", then don't. If you don't ever log on to Freenet, then you've cast your vote against it. At least give others the freedom to cast their vote as they see fit.
If this old order has to be thrown into a temporary state of upheaval to return the power of free speech and choice to individuals. We cannot put the genie of technology back into the bottle, so we have to attempt to shape it in such a way as to insure the world remains as free as possible for us and our children. You, sir or madam, are a preservationist, which is noble, but unrealistic. Accept the fact that progress will continue, and start doing what you can to support its more benevolent forms.
Okay, I guess I don't make it up a rung -- the second-to-last sentence should have read: "...potential for constructive or dangerous applications..."
Although it's not quite as simple as that, I guess there must be hundreds of cases like this all around the world. Just because something is made into a law, doesn't mean its perfect or even fair.
I understand that, but his answer makes it seem like he is against copyright only because people are taking offense to Freenet because it allows unauthorized copying. (Its this which has made Freenet so popular in the first place)
Let's face it: laws are made by governments, not by the common people. Laws should be made in order to help / protect / take care of the people, but they usually are not.
I believe in a lot of cases the government has overstepped it bounds... but you have to admit, 99.5% of laws are in place to "help / protect / take care of the people"
Take the copyright laws, for instance. They were made in order to protect the creators of works of music, art, etc. but in reality they're used to protect the big corporations who make money out of them.
Big Corporations who spend millions (mostly on peoples pay) shouldn't have the right to protect their creations?? Come on now....
And then, the RIAA/MPAA/anti-piracy-goons will be able to flood the system with anti-votes for copyrighted material.
...". I think the RIAA would have its hands full fielding a large enough force to overcome the millions of people and millions of files involved. If I recall how Freenet works (anyone who wants to chime in here with better info, feel free), it boils down to a 'one-IP-one-vote' sort of system, so any attempt at an automated attack would require a Class A address segment for the RIAA to use (which I wouldn't put past them). And if they really tried this sort of attack, perhaps something like the MAPS 'blackhole list' could be used to thwart them. (Anyone else notice how this measure/countermeasure scenario starts to resemble actual warfare? Hmmm. Wonder what a surplus Nike missile sells for these days. :-)
Surely a danger. But, as the old 60's song says, "they have the guns, but we've got the numbers
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
One of the areas of vulnerability Freenet has (one which it shares with Gnutella) is that it's possible to post bogus stuff (like fake MP3s containing anti-piracy messages, for example) in an effort to pollute the stream, so to speak. Clarke has said that he wants to eventually implement an 'anti-vote' (my terminology - I've forgotten his term for it) so that users who discover one of these files can demote it and cause it to eventually disappear. I hope that he can get that mechanism working before Freenet gets too widely used. Otherwise, I'm afraid that an organized effort to gum it up will result in a lot of bogus files with high 'popularity', causing them to persist for quite a while.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Freenet works on Windows 98. I needed some help myself and found it at http://freenet.netunify.com/13 At its current stage this is the help you need. :)
Napster
Gnutella
But Freenet has several unique features that distinguish it from Napster and Gnutella. I especially like the fact that content can be uploaded anonymously which is great for banned intellectual assets like DeCSS.
Ultimatly, Freenet will probably be good for the internet if it takes off with success - the idea of unrestricted, free and anonymous content publishing will encourage Web diversity without the fear of lawsuits or just plan technical limitations.
--
Kiro
The freenet developers just can't decide what they want this tool to be. Is this a tool for violating copyright, or is it a tool for the real propagation of free speech?
People have said many unpopular ideas, and written unpopular essays, that over time American citizens grew to accept. No, it didn't happen overnight, and it may have taken several decades for us to accept something as true. "Citizen Kane" was plagued with bad reviews when it first came out, and is now considered one of the best films of last century.
I also find it interesting, that the developers believe in deleting documents that are unpopular, but won't let people who enter keys delete their own documents.
I appreciated the value of unrestricted resource and information sharing about 5 years ago, when arranging a simple trade of a couple sweatshirts across international boundaries.
Some may think nothing of this, but since I have conducted far more commerce around the world via the internet. Upon examination I, and my trading partners, are probably violating any number of trade, tarriff, informational or customs restrictions for either end of the transaction. Multiply this by a few thousand people and governments will sit up and take notice. Iran is already struggling with the internet. No doubt if a student is reading this post the government knows about it, and has evaluated this post for Evil Western Influence(TM)
A Free internet is vital, not just for my selfish purposes, but to bring down barriers, not erect them. I'm actually pretty thrilled, in a Berlin-Wall-Coming-Down way, when I think of how easy it has been to communicate and exchange around the world.
Worry when the only way you can communicate is through commercial enterprises (AOL, YAHOO, MSN, etc.) which may fall under goverment regulation.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Windows client
Linux client
Source code
--
Kiro
You are using a subtly different definition of "popular" than Ian Clarke is.
Your definition of popular seems to be "stuff that people like and agree with".
Ian Clarke's is "stuff that people download".
Take an example: "Mein Kampf". That's an "unpopular" work, in the sense that few people agree with it. But it might be "popular" in that many people will download it.
In fact, many of the people who download it probably disagree with it. Me, for instance. I know I disagree with Hitler's view on Jews, but I'm still interested in finding out exactly what he wrote, so I can decide why, exactly, I think he was wrong.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
The big challenge here is to respond to Freenet's antagonism of copyright in a way that lays the groundwork for responding to similar technological threats. To set up the mechanisms which insure democratic governance of Humanity by Humanity instead of Technology.
Highfalutin' words, but these is highfalutin' times. I reckon.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Dropping "unpopular information" from the system is not intended to be a form of censorship, merely a way to save disk space by eliminating seldom-requested or never-requested data. As the author indicates, as disk space gets cheaper and as more freenet servers come on line, the need to drop data will diminish.
--
www.scorbett.ca
goosh.. you mean what I wrote can be used to break the law.. I didn't think of it like that.. Well, I guess that law sucks and shouldn't be a law then..
Although it's not quite as simple as that, I guess there must be hundreds of cases like this all around the world. Just because something is made into a law, doesn't mean its perfect or even fair.
Let's face it: laws are made by governments, not by the common people. Laws should be made in order to help / protect / take care of the people, but they usually are not.
Take the copyright laws, for instance. They were made in order to protect the creators of works of music, art, etc. but in reality they're used to protect the big corporations who make money out of them.
Just my 2 pesos worth...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Does Freenet have similar capabilities for spamming as Gnutella does? I know Gnotella has spam filters for things like FlatPlanet, but there (seems to be nothing) from stopping someone from posting a useful looking file only to really be an advertisement. If Freenet is completely anonymous, then there won't be any real way to block spammers, is there?
Unpopular information is dropped from the system.
The real flaw of Freenet, IMHO, isn't the potential for revisionism, it's the idea that only popular information is valuable. That might make sense in a market context, but it doesn't really have any place in an intellectual context if by "intellectual" you mean to imply a search for truth instead just popularity. Moreover, it is often the most revolutionary, cutting-edge, ahead-of-their-time ideas that are the most unpopular.
At one time, the ideas of democracy and freedom of speech were extremely unpopular ideas. In some places, they still are. Freenet-like systems would not have helped the rise of democracy very much. Mind you, it's great to see that popular ideas will be more resistant to government/corporate suppression, but they already were. It is ideas held by small minorities that are the most vulnerable.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
"Intellectual property" is the term for a creator's rights to a valuable idea, right? Show me a single company that is capable of thought, and therefore entitled to protection of its "intellectual property", and I will show you an employee who actually did the work, and no longer has the right to use their own ideas.
Think of it this way: If you were trying to build a library, would you only stock periodicals? True, they are updated regularly, and are often a dense source of current information, but they are, by design, transient. Also, assuming you have finite space in which to store them, you will have to start throwing out the ones no one has checked out when the shelves are all full. Some of the old editions might cover popular events or figures, and would therefore stay popular and in cirulation, but the obscure or unknown stories of the past issues would be wiped away without a trace.