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Freenet 0.5.1 Released, P2P Network Stabilizing
mids writes "With version 0.5.1, Freenet isn't only the most secure & anonymous P2P network, but also getting pretty fast!
Reliable downloading of files as large as 700MB from Freenet at average download rates as high as 100k/sec on a broadband internet connection are sighted (which compares quite favorably to more conventional P2P applications)."
The problem is whether the users can use it as easily as other comparable software. i.e. if you want to get more users, you have to have more files in your network, if you want more files, you need to get more simple-minded users, and if you want to get more simple-minded users, keep the interface easy and clean.
my 0.02
Wouldn't combining Project Gutenberg's freely available texts with Freenet's distributed storage be a great enhancement for both projects? Especially now that Freenet is stable enough to be considered viable for Gutenberg's purposes...
For geek dads: Contraction Timer
People can joke all they want about downloading their porn or grabbing music and videos anonymously. The biggest boon of Freenet, not to mention other efforts an anonymous P2P, is for people in countries with oppressive regimes. Information may want to be free, but so do people. What's more important, downloading the latest pop music in MP3 format, or free (as in 'I won't get shot for this') speech?
What? As the dreamchaser said before, the last thing that will save the world is free speech and the associated benefits of surviving opposal against a regime. And be sure, even though the Europeans aren't being shot for being against Bush, they certainly didn't like being called "old". So, oppose WW III by promoting openness!!!
But this is a secure P2P unlike most p2p apps which are completely open. The transmissions on this net are encrypted. Also it doesn't seem to function like most p2p apps, which let you share only what you want and get whatever you want, the only cost being bandwidth. Freenet takes part of your storage and donates it to the network, that's the way it works, you have to donate some. I couldn't find out how to share things on the network though, and I'm not sure I like the idea of keeping the most popular items on the harddrives of multiple people and letting unpopular things just dissappear...
More flamebait...
Why do we need software to teach our children?
Wouldn't teaching them in person be better, or are we all too busy?
find ~your -name '*base* | xargs chown
What the hell is the point in defining an acronym, and then never using it in the rest of your text? Why even bother doing it? It's completely pointless, and really annoying. Stop it for fuck sake.
</rant>
Because on freenet you can find things or post things yourself 100% free from censorship. This probably doesn't seem like a big deal when you just want to grow your music and video collection, but in countries where basic news services are banned, and freedom of speech is limited (ie: everywhere) then Freenet provides a safe forum to exchange views.
If you are looking to just another filesharing network like edonkey/kazaa/gnutella, freenet is not for you.
Freenet is different.
For content to be available on freenet someone must upload it to the network. The advantage is that once something is on the network nobody can delete it and it don't matter if the original owner is online or not, but "publisher have to make an effort if they want content to be available. Freenet is not really like other P2P filesharing, it's more like a distributed anonymous storage.
Let me adjust my tinfoil hat before I answer. ;)
The way that I see it, ISP's are heading the way of cable companies. In the future you will have one state covered by, say, AOL and a local teleco ISP; another state covered by MSN and a local teleco.
Once matters reach that point, it will be fairly trivial for them to block whatever ports are being used by freenet, etc (or maybe block all ports but port 80), and users who don't like it are SOL.
Who else finds this a disturbing arguement:
" I don't want my node to be used to harbor kiddie porn, offensive content or terrorism. What can I do?
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."
From the freenet.org documentation page. I find it hard to believe that "the true test" of Freedom of Speech means tolerating child porn. You can be sure as hell that I will take their advice and not run a Freenet node.
I think people are missing the point. AFAIK, Freenet is not supposed to be an alternative whizzy network for general use from which people should expect fast downloads and response times, and be able to download MP3s or warez or whatever. It's mostly to support free speech. I'm sure that activist in China is not just going to give up because it took them 10 seconds to upload instead of 1...when the alternative is not being able to speak at all.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
>> The curious thing is that if you have a fairly static IP and are contributing space to the net, you have no idea what is stored on your machine. It could be human rights info, it could be copyright material, it could be very illegal pornography. You just don't know
And regardless of if you know or not, you're still responsible, legally and/or criminally.
I personally wouldnt touch freenet with a 10 foot pole because of this. How would you like to have your home raided at 3 AM because NAMBLA is now hosting its web forums on your PC?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
[freenet@freenet freenet]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
...
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 5 model : 4
model name : Pentium MMX
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 200.456
This is an old system that I had lying around doing nothing. All I contribute is the power to run it and a little BW. The lack of power of the processor self throttles the bandwidth :-)
Is yet another P2P solution really what we need as a society? ... How about development of teaching software for our children?
What good is teaching software for our children if governments, media companies, and others in power have the technological power to suppress dissenting or objectionable material by locking it out of everyone's DRM-enabled hardware?
Freedom, especially the free exchange of ideas, is essential for education. Teaching our children about freedom and enabling the free exchange of ideas are pretty damn important. Then again, people don't seem to care much about freedom these days, so maybe you're right - maybe we should forget about it.
Freenet is finally becoming mature and stable, this is very very good news.
Now its time for people like us to go to freenet and put linux sites, slashdot type sites, and maybe some hacker/geek culture to freenet.
Freenet shouldnt be just about porn and warez because it will be very easy to outlaw it, what we need to do is fill freenet up with useful content for the masses, maybe put WikiPedia type stuff in freenet.
Its time to make some sites, specifically its time to bring back the hacker/geek culture that was lost, I'd like to see some hacker sites return, some chatrooms, etc etc
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The gun can be used for bad things too, whats your point? The internet is here, deal with it.
As long as we build alot of useful good sites into freenet, freenet will do fine, when we let the warez and mp3 guys make all the popular sites freenet might be attacked.
So what you have to do is build sites which people want to see besides mp3, porn and warez.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I hope your kidding. Central control killed napster. There was only one switch that needed to be turned off, and the RIAA went after that one switch. With Freenet storage is totaly distributed, there is not one place that you can turn the switch off. And that is the point. No one organization can control it.
Freenet search engines do exist, Freenet is like the early world wide web and it might someday replace the world wide web, if our gov censors the web to death.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Well, I can understand your paranoia but I think the risks of you getting in trouble for having child porn stashed on your computer is very remote. From what I understand about Freenet, the anonymous nature of it makes it incredibly unlikely they could actually track individual files and find out who is hosting what.
IANAL, but a good lawyer could probably successfully argue you have no way of knowing what's being stored on your computer as it is part of an anonymous network. It would be like a bank being held liable for criminals stashing money from the drug trade in it. The bank doesn't know where the money comes from, do they? But I guess you can only afford a good lawyer if you've got lots of money. I'm pretty sure Pete Townsend won't do any jail time for his having viewed and/or possessed child pornography.
Theres always going to be child porn on freenet, at least the people arent profiting from it, you cant stop child porn being shared the only thing you can do is remove incentive to make the porn.
Porn thats on freenet is porn thats not sold, which means the porn industry loses money and has less incentive to make it.
I dont see how freenet is doing any harm, child porn was on the web making pedophiles and molestors millions of dollars, and now its on kazaa and freenet, they wont make a dime.
By removing it from freenet and kazaa what you are doing is saving the child porn industry, this allows more kids to get hurt and abused for profit.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Yes and what do you think they would find on your machine? Encrypted data that's what.
Choose. If you want to censor the KKK you dont support free speech.
I cant stand the KKK, and I cant stand kiddie porn, but they do have the right to talk about hate and kiddie porn.
As long as this never turns into action, its just a bunch of 1s and 0s, speech.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The "true test" isnt tolerating kiddie porn per se, it is tolerating speech you disagree with. There is a quote, often misattributed to Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." I doubt I, or anyone else, would put their life on the line for a kiddie pornographer, but I truly believe it is a symptom of a greater problem, like drug addiction.
So don't run a node, like you said. Frankly, I acknowledge that kiddie porn exists, and I agree that it is awful, but I have to imagine that it gets exaggerated by the popular media just like the few child abductions related to the internet have.
And regardless of if you know or not, you're still responsible, legally and/or criminally.
Really? I thought crimes required mens rea.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Whlie the concept is great, and the true reasons behind freenet is good, its future is susepct.
Its really easy just to block its usage by isps..
IE: dont rely on it as your only outlet for speech.. use it to supplement only.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Strong encryption: people were able to be arrested as terrorists for publishing encryption algorithms or moving through customs with one printed on their t-shirts. Fucking terrorists - how dare they comprehend mathmatics!
Apple computers - weapons because their CPUs are too fast.
CSS - don't put that on your site or even link to a site with it on - those seven lines of Perl come direct from Satan
Adobe e-books - don't even think about talking to your neighboor about how weak the encryption is because you are in serious danger of revealing the algorithm to him without even thinking about it. Prison for you - you evil terrorist!
Reverse Engineering - DMCA says you can't talk about it, can't do it, can't even buy the results of it. Certainly don't try and do anything to that Playstation you *bought* because it's not your machine. Prison for you.
Slander - don't even think of calling the US president a stupid rascist monkey faced war mongering butcher or you might be getting a visit from lawyers or the FBI.
You had freedom over there once, and even still have a reasonable amount compared to some countries, but watch out, it's all moving away from the common man and into the hands of your government and big business. Be vigilant - your freedom is disappearing a thread at a time.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to burn some karma.
You, sir, are a sick fuck. You said "No one gets hurt when you share child porn" ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? What about the child? Have you considered that? So, because no-one 'bought' the child-porn, no money is lost, so noone is harmed? I call BULLSHIT. Oh, its just a picture you say? What about the childs emotions - or what about more graphic child porn? That child is scarred FOREVER, but no harm done, as no money was made?
You need to get your head checked. I sincerely hope you are sterile.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
It looks like freenet is coming along very nicely. One of the items high on my wishlist is the ability to run a node that is behind a firewall. Various p2p packages do this (e.g. kazaa, winmx). Perhaps the implementation of such would require the participation of a non-firewalled freenet node to route sessions, but that doesn't strike me as so bad. Having the ability to run from behind a firewall could dramatically increase the number of participating nodes.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Replace references to "anonymous medium" with "encryption" and "PGP" (or "GPG") and you'll see how stupid that statement really is.
The more porn people can get for free the less porn they will pay for,
If you'd said this on a thread debating the morality of mp3 trading, you would have been modded down.
grep -ri 'should work'
Er, unless by propagating the stuff for free then you actually give people a method of developing their appetite. Then once they run out of, or just don't feel like searching for, the free stuff they turn to PPV.
Bad analogy I know, but would handing out free drugs make people buy less and put the pushers out of business? It's a thought I had myself some time ago, but in the long run I don't think so. there's just be more addicts out there.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
I find it hard to believe that "the true test" of Freedom of Speech means tolerating child porn.
I think it's pretty reasonable. They take an absolute position of freedom of speech, including allowing things like libel to be placed on Freenet.
And it's technically silly to even care. The point of Freenet is that it treats all data the same, and only cares about popularity. Is chunk of data id # af325a15b7791fc13b really popular? Then regardless of the content, it's going to spread around. Freenet tries to reduce network load, and ignores artifical attempts to prevent it from doing so.
In essence, it enforces the much-talked-about common carrier status on everyone. No one knows what's passing through their computer, because it just doesn't matter. It's data, someone wants it, and caching it gets it to them more efficiently.
I find it vaguely odd that you, a network engineer, are unable to isolate the transmission of data from attempts to censor it. Do you believe that the networks you build aren't used for things that you would consider immoral?
Freenet, by virtue of some features of it and its popularity, provide some services that are unavailable elsewhere. There are few other places that you can get really truly anonymous email that you can *trust* to be anonymous.
Actually, I find Freenet a good example of the simple impracticality of attempting to censor data today, with the ease of transmission and storage available. I'll be amazed if any broad class of data can be censored.
Finally, a comment on your morality complaint. You find child pornography distasteful, and want to choose not to serve it. That's fine. However, the common condemnation of child pornography is based more upon attempts to prevent violation of a particular social code than out of interest for children's welfare (contrast this with actual sex with children, which certainly does have potentially severe negative physical effects). There are some tribes in New Zealand and Africa that do not wear clothing (well, aside from some ornamentation). If a photographer went there and took pictures (ignoring for a moment whether the tribals would have any issues with the picture-taking itself), these people wouldn't really think anything of being seen in the nude. The photographer may well have been producing material designed to "incite lust", which would make said material pornography. However, to argue that there is any form of damage being caused to the subject is ludicrous. Now, in the United States and much of the world, Victorian ethics have had an enormous impact. There's a general nudity taboo, and the concept of child pornography is generally unaccepted. However, that is very much a product of the society, an artifact of religious and social pressures, not an obviously beneficial thing.
Actually, while I'm complaining about common views of child pornography, how well do your views on it approximate the actual, legally enforced definition used in the United States? People very frequently claim that they find child pornography utterly repulsive. And yet, legally, "child pornography" includes people that most would hardly consider children. Would a nude seventeen year old be repulsive, whereas suddenly an eighteen year old not be?
I really shouldn't have to put this disclaimer here, but child pornography is so commonly disliked that it's necessary to be taken seriously. I don't find child pornography appealing, though I don't have this ridiculously overblown hatred of it and the people involved in its production that many people culture. There's also a not unreasonable chance that I'd find a nude seventeen-year-old to be attractive, so I'd enjoy some of the material that the US has made illegal.
Essentially, I'd say that someone taking nude pictures of an American child is doing about the same thing as feeding beef to a Hindu child or pork to a Jewish child. They're violating social norms, and probably piss off some people, but I don't see a
May we never see th
Quote #2:
It's hurting the children, you fool!
Honestly, your argument seems to be that it's okay to hurt people as long as you're not making money. You are saying that it's acceptable to abduct or illegally buy children, beat them, rape them, photograph/film it, and distribute it to other sick pervs as long as you're not doing it for cash.
What is this, some kind of inverted public service? Is economic damage truly the only sort of harm you recognize? That's reprehensible! Congratulations buddy, you're the first one on my Slashdot "enemies" list.
Besides, if I wrote crypto education software for children, the Chinese would just say "screw CPUs, in 10 years we can have a beowurf cruster of crypto cracking kids". They draft 2 million 5-year olds and in 10 years they have more crypto theorems than they know what to do with. Falungong and the democracy movement can't keep any communications secret and the world is a worse place.
You know what? By your logic, everyone in the world should drop what they're doing and go work on a cure for cancer. Let's see. I've got some Windex. I'll start out testing Windex on oncomice! No? What's wrong? I'm an MIT student and most people think I'm pretty smart, but very few people want me doing cancer/ebola/HIV/SARS research.
What about those guys that keep writing yet another Sawfish theme? Do you think they should be helping Apache run faster instead? I don't think so. They have graphics talent and enjoy the work. To get them to work where they have little talent or interest would make crappy sftware and sad programmers. I say even if not one person uses their next Sawfish theme, they've still made the world a better place by making themselves happy with honest endevours.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
"We support free speach." sounds a lot better than "We support free speach, except when it comes to pedophiles. Oh, and Neo-Nazis. No mp3s either, since most of those are illegally posted. Oh, and we also don't put up links to sites that think women should be allowed outside without their faces hidden because that might also offend some people in certain cultures." If you only support free speach on your own terms, you don't support free speach. Stop kidding yourself.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
I figured I may as well use that as the subject line, since that's all that's really being discussed.
Freenet, according to their website, works somewhat like this. I want file XYZ. I search for file XYZ. Freenet brings all 68 parts of X from node 1, 13 parts of Y from node two, the other 13 parts of Y from node three, and the rest of the file comes from node four, five, six, seven, and twelve.
The guilty party is the person that's got file XYZ. The guilty party is the person who *requested* file XYZ. You may or may not have had part of file Z, You don't know, the people up and down stream from you don't know, and the person requesting the file doesn't know.
Child Pornongraphy is reprehensable. Duh. But using it as an argument against freenet is like using the "it's for the children" to ban guns and remove them from every house that owns one.
Anonymity comes with a cost. So does freedom. The price of being able to write a letter to the editor about the 2000 election is seeing that the letter next to yours is from the Grand Wizard of the KKK. The price of seeing the Rodney King video on a cheesy fox special is the knowledge that someone, somewhere is being exploited and it's on video tape.
1984 isn't worth fearing in this society. Farenheit 451 is.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.