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Freenet 0.5 Released
An anonymous reader submits "After over a year in the making, Freenet 0.5 stable has been released. This new version is far superior to previous versions of Freenet."
The announcement specifically thanks Matthew Toseland, "without whom this release would still be vaporware," noting "On the 11th of November, Matthew will no longer be able to work full-time unless more people donate, so please give whatever you can spare at our Donations page."
I just would like to be the first to say a big "Thank you!" to the entire FreeNet team.
When I first heard of FreeNet, I thought, "I live in America, what would I need of this?" No, this isn't a troll. I was happy and complacent and slightly distrustful of the Big Bad Brother. Now the purpose of a network like FreeNet has become quite clear, as I'm neither happy nor complacent and I'm more distrustful of Big Brother with each passing day, as he takes further swipes at the freedoms my Constitution tells me I'm supposed to have.
Thanks, FreeNet, for standing up. More importantly, thanks for the foresight. Imagine if they'd waited until it was really necessary.
Isn't this the nightmare of all anti-freedom lobbyist organisations: Any one can publish anything, while still being anonymous.
IMHO there are three optional futures:
* It is deemed illegal and shut down.
* It is stopped by Palladium and shut down.
* All developers and users are sued and it is shut down.
I still wounder why everything good has to go.
Ugh! Bad time to be asking for donations via Paypal!
I know I'm going to get moderated back to the stone age for saying this, but I suspect that I'm not the only one thinking it. I'm having a very hard time imagining any nontrivial legitimate use for this technology.
Consider for just a minute that given a situation in which one individual distributes material to which another individual or group objects, most of the time there's a good reason for the objection. Maybe the material being distributed is copyrighted (like movies or music), maybe it's dangerous (like blueprints to a nuclear reactor), maybe it's offensive (like child pornography). Most of the time when the distribution of material is opposed, there's a good-- or at least understandable-- reason for it.
Now, it's possible to imagine a scenario in which it might be justifiable, or even imperative, to distribute certain pieces of information. "Soylent Green is people" is a silly example, but a more realistic one might be distributing news of the outside world to a society whose media is heavily controlled. But in that sort of scenario, is the Internet really going to be a useful communication pathway? Assuming the people who need the media have access to the Internet at all, what are the chances that they're going to have unrestricted access to the network of Freenet servers? If you think about it, I think you'll agree that it sounds pretty unlikely.
What I'm saying is this: it sounds to me like there's no realistic, nontrivial, legitimate use for this software. The idea sounds cool on the surface, but I have some serious doubts about its practicality.
I write in my journal
The whole point of freenet is that all speech is free. Your first point goes against those ideals by judging what should and should not be on freenet. By allowing people to filter their content, you would break the system. Doing so would limit material from ever even getting the chance to spread, which according to you would be good in this case, but how could you limit it to just kiddie porn? Can't happen.
Will they take a cheque, do you think? :)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
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.
I do not see how placing the code makes the product 'go down the drain'.
Linus code is al over the net, and does't really makes it unsellable (look at Redhat).
What it would do was making some insanely rich companies become a little bit poorer.
What is new? I don't want to download it just to find out that it is just as slow as before. _How_ is it "far superior"?
"'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.
One of the interesting things is nobody knows what data is being stored on there (sic) computer
The one thing that always makes me wonder with Freenet is the potential liability for hosting 'questionable' content. If for instance, my node is used for storing some part of some kiddy pr0n and the authorities decide for whatever reason to inspect my PCs, how am I to prove that I didn't source the file myself. In fact, by hosting a node, it could be argued that I am soliciting for files of that nature.
Whilst the files are presumably encrypted in transit and on disk, its still an illegal file stored on my system.
Makes you think anyway....
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
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?
The FreeNet principles are a good things, but I'm concerned about the possible wrong uses of freedom.
I'm not worried about nazi propaganda, I think is a good thing that the normal citizen have access to this information in order to study it. But pedophilia images and personal information can also be published through this channel with no ways to remove it. My only hope in this case is that these crimes can be pursued by police through other normal ways.
On the other hand, the fact is that the more popular information is better found, and the marginal info is hard to obtain.
Moreover, the control of the net is in the hands of users. If this technology became a widely used criminal tool, people would decide to turn off their servers and the proyect would die. The purpose of the FreeNet will be decided by the majority.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I'm sorry, but its not beyond the realms of possibility to decrypt an encrypted file.
What algorithms do they use? Do you know for sure that there aren't backdoors in those algorithms? I mean personally I dont think that the NSA permitted 128 bit encryption to be exported outside the states if they didnt have some backdoor to decrypt without brute-forcing.
Add to this that there are some legislatures in the world who arent keen on people having ANY form of encrypted file on their systems. The existence of anything encrypted thus points a finger of guilt regardless of the content.
Take for instance China, where Freenet's benefits would me most keenly appreciated. They arent even permitted to download the thing under export restrictions. So someone who _did_ download and use it would be easily detected; just follow the encrypted traffic flow.
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
Getting source code doesn't mean that entire product goes down the drain. I legally cannot start to sell my own WinXP clone compiled from original source code. There're laws and other measures that prevents such practices.
Information (knowledge) itself isn't good or bad. It's just that: human knowledge. It's entirely upon human being what he does with the knowledge. Man should be held accountable for his deeds not for what he knows.
I know how to make explosives and yet I don't make them. Almost every high school student knows how to make nuke and (surprise, surprise) almost nobody is trying to make one. Just because I possess the information (in your case the source code) it doesn't mean I'm criminal. Nobody has the right to tell me what I'm allowed to know. And that's exactly what Big Brother is trying to do - prevent people from having the information he doesn't want them to know, and to criminalize people who possess such kind of information. Freenet is designed to fight this information slavery.
I wouldn't mind using it if they removed the anonymity from the system. Then people can publish what they want (which is good) but are still held accountable for their writings.
Don't they already have such a system called the World Wide Web?
This observation is inevitable. Let's do some basic business logic:
- [Assume] Businesses need recurring revenue (i.e. you can only burn VC $ for so long)
- [Assume] As long as your hardware doesn't crap out, software lifetime is infinite
- [Assume] You have a finite customer base
- [Assume] If you keep improving your software, eventually it will do everything your customers want
- [Therefore] You can only sell so many copies of software to your customers before they don't need you any more
- [Therefore] Software as a product is only good for a limited amount of money, and that isn't recurring
- [Conclusion] Software as a product is not a viable business model in the long-run
Microsoft is having this problem right now with their operating systems. See, Windows 95 is good enough for most people. It runs AOL/MSN, Word, Outlook Express, Solitaire, and their printer. What more do they need? The MS solution has been to release a new OS every 2 years and hype the hell out of it, as well as purposely not provide patches for their older versions to support newer hardware, thus forcing software upgrades when old boxes die (since the older hardware isn't sold any more). The problem is, people are catching on, and new OS sales are fewer and fewer these days. The same could probably be said for purchases of Office. Who needs more Excel or Powerpoint templates? Anyone?The product business is fine if the product has a finite lifetime. Take housing, for instance. People will always need to repair and build houses, because they weather. Software doesn't, which means the only money to be made long-term on software is in support. The same argument applies to patents and other 'intellectual property'. Dolby has the right idea: come up with an idea, and license it until the end of time.
Companies that sell a product that doesn't break have already signed up for their death blow. Distributing the software online only speeds it up.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Why don't you do the same if you care about free speech? Freenet is already used by the chinese opposition. Some european countries like france, greece and germany already censor the internet, so freenet is also important for western "democracies".
Some day soon something like freenet will be nessecary even in the US if you want to say something critical about bush or ashcroft without getting on some list of potential terrorists.
regards,
mrright
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
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.
Hosting kiddie porn is not a freedom of speech issue, it is a legal one. (and etchical one, and moral one). Criminal activity is not protected speech under the 1st Amendment.
It sounds like they should replace Freedom of Speech with Anarchy in the FAQ.
The first amendment isn't authorative everywhere. Part of why freenet exists is to provide a means of communication which is purely free and protected, so as to be unstoppable by authority, in part because authority can become corrupted. It is a safeguard on the political system. Could freenet be abused? Well yes it could. Do we need something like this? God willing we never will, but then whoever hopes they need a fire extinguisher. Freenet is just an experiment until someone manages to dissolve the constitution. Then it becomes a necessary tool. At which point it becomes illegal. It would seem that the only societies that would allow freenet are those free enough not to need it yet. So perhaps its most useful time frame would be immediately after a coup, but before the regime has consolidated power.
The problem with freenet is that its ideology gets in the way of any
practical use anyone might want to put it to. You can agree with the
ideology all you like, but fundamentally freenet is so concerned about
providing free anonymous speech that in practice what it's going to
provide is the ability to shout in the forest where nobody hears.
I'll explain. Because they want everything to be anonymous, they
made sure content gets spread across all nodes (flooding) and can
not be (easily) traced to the given originating node. Consequently,
there's no reliable addressing mechanism. You cannot, therefore,
create content and make it available at a certain address all the
time. All you can do is create the content and watch it get mixed
with all the other content.
Survivable? Sure, if you mean by that that as long as people run
nodes they'll be sharing _something_, but if you want a particular
piece of content to remain available, the only way to ensure that
is to keep injecting it again and again and again -- like the way
spammers use email. Otherwise, it goes through each node once,
in the midst of whatever other content is being injected, and soon
is gone. That model is _anything but_ survivable in practice.
Sure, it may work now, when everyone running a freenet node is
genuinely concerned about free speech and wants the system to work,
but if it ever catches on, it will rapidly devolve into a shouting
match, where injecting your content only a few times will ensure no
one can find it in the sea of _stuff_ that gets repeatedly injected.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
By allowing child pornography to circulate over it.
As I understand it, freesites proliferate based on usage; the more people who look at something, the more widely it gets distributed.
The main "portal" freesite contain several links to kiddie porn, and thus supports the distribution of it.
I would love to run a machine or two as a freenet node, but am afraid that supporting that filth and subjecting myself to 20+ years in prision because I cannot control the cache on my computer is not acceptable.
And before you say "it anonymous, nobody can see your encrypted cache"... I call bullshit. There are plenty of bugs out there, and I'm sure that governments have found flaws in encryption algorithms that the public doesn't know about.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Umm... you would be referring to the extent to which the U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech. Don't confuse that with free speech itself. How would you classify a communist pamphlet?
Your viewpoint is also very U.S.-centric. Mathew Toesland is in Britain, btw.
If your definition of free speach is legal speech, what will you do if your government outlawed criticism of its policies, or makes it illegal to greet anyone with anthing besides "Heil Hitler"? Do you think the U.S. will never go through another period of McCarthyism?
Don't get me wrong... I can see where you're comming from. Personally, I think think there's no lower form of human being than one who takes pleasure at the expense of a child. I would not be at all opposed to life sentances for producers of child pornography. However, when you step back and look at all of the things they would like to make it illegal to say, (talk to Emanuel Goldstein, Eeeeeed Felton, Dmitry Sklyarov, et. al.) you begin to wonder what fundamentally makes us different from the Taliban.
Look at all the crap Phil Zimmerman went through to bring you PGP. That was legal speech, yet the U.S. Government harassed the hell out of him. Let's not forget what happened to Communist and even suspectedCommunists durrin the Red Scare. Don't forget that Communist propeganda was outlawed then too.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
The freenet fund paid for a month of full-time development. This was enough to take it from a relatively unstable 0.4 to a nearly rock-solid 0.5. I think this is a great example of putting together some donations and giving them to someone who can spend eight hours a day looking at the code.
I think this is similar in some ways to the street performer protocol.
æeee!
The FreeNet principles are a good things, but I'm concerned about the possible wrong uses of freedom.
.
"Wrong" as defined by whom?
The Bush family thinks it is wrong to leak information emberrassing to the family out to the press, and they punish people severely (within their power) when they do so, yet what they do is clearly constitutional.
Supporters of Clinton felt it was severely wrong to have private, political groups fund and possibly incite lawsuits by private citizens for poltical ends, but clearly that was within the bounds of the constitution.
I'm not worried about nazi propaganda, I think is a good thing that the normal citizen have access to this information in order to study it.
Ah. So are you the person who gets to tell us what is "right" and what is "wrong?"
But pedophilia images and personal information can also be published through this channel with no ways to remove it. My only hope in this case is that these crimes can be pursued by police through other normal way.
Pedophilia is an illness, and people who act on those feelings are criminals. It was never necessary, nor smart, to subvert the first amendment by making information (child pornography) illegal to possess. Illegal to sell, yes (that falls under the commerce clause), but making the possession of child pornography illegal was a serious mistake.
Why? Two reasons I can think of off hand
1) Possession doesn't imply any intent or even desire. Ever get child porno SPAM in your mailbox? How about child porno popups when surfing completely unrelated adult pornography, or perusing newsgroups some looser has spammed with their vile crap? Most people have, and have immediately become guilty under the law for possessing child pornography (it is copied to your machine's memory). Worse still, that crap is cached on people's hard drives, often without their knowledge, for extended periods of time.
2) Any photographs are by definition evidence of a crime. Instead of banning information, such evidence could be routinely siezed, to be returned to its owner only after the crime (child molestation) has been solved. That would have had the twin benefit of not eroding the 1st amendment and building a strong incentive to squeel on the seller into the entire process.
The "dark side" of freedom is a red herring. If we are free, we are free to do things others disagree with. The only limits should be when those freedoms reduce the freedoms of others (that was what the founding fathers intended, after all). IN other words, in the case of pedophelia, the crime is the molestation and harm to the child (and the selling of a regulated, in this case banned, product), not the mere possession of the photographs. However, the police can and should seize any such photographic or video evidence, and keep it on hand in a file, until the case is solved and the child raping perpetrators convicted and put in prison. Of course, such evidence couldn't be returned until said perps had exhausted all appeal opportunities
A little clear thinking would go a long way toward solving many of the 'problems' that come out of people's misuse of their liberties, without eliminating those liberties altogether. And those downsides which can't be eliminated through intelligent application of the law, within the bounds of the constitution, should be viewed as the price we are obligated to pay for liberty.
A price, by the way, which is laughably small compared to that which our forfathers paid in establishing and protecting those freedoms in times past.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
(Offtopic: Children playing naked on the beach is not pedophilia -- it's just pictures of children playing naked on the beach. It's not even illegal in the US. If you get turned on by it, see a psychiatrist.)
The GPL is there to prevent OTHERS from restricting my freedoms to access my own code.
If I publish my code under the BSDL, companies can use my code in their own products, then PREVENT ME from giving a copy of their product to other people.
Copyrights are a deliberate restriction on freedom; the GPL is simply a license that defangs that restriction.
I'd guess there will be some much improved builds comming out within the next couple of weeks as they learn more about today's stress test.
In other news, supposedly the great firewall of China started filtering out http packets with "freenet" in them today. (Source is questionable.)
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.