Slashdot Mirror
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)."
This allows fast and anonymous terrorism! ;)
(Check out that Microsoft Says piracy is Terrorism -thingie.)
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
'ta
Seems to me that a secure, distributed, encrypted P2P system could be used by (insert dramatic music) terrorists!
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
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?
File sharing clients don't get Slashdotted... they just give an error saying "More download sources required".
I think there are really only 3 pivotal factors for any P2P.
1)Speed: If you have a gazillion files but it take 4 hours to get an mp3, no one will use it.
2)Content: I can go to kazaa and find music, software, video's, pictures, basically, everything. If a user has to use 3 different P2P engines to get what they want, it wont last.
3)Searchable: If it's a pain to find the files you are looking for then you wont use it, and so fewer files will be available, and more people will end up dropping it due to content.
Speeds seem to be terrible on all of the services I've used. Kazaa (Kazaalite) has the ability to download from multiple users, making up for that a little bit. I'm curious what speeds freenet can pull down from individual users. I've been thinking that those terrible speeds might just be from restrictive caps that ISP's might be placing on the P2P popular ports.
I know I see 300k/sec downloads on emule, and I find just about anything I'm looking for on it.
Why is freenet better than edonkey?
As it is fundamentally web based, freenet represents the a system where being able to publish is not dependedent on being able to buy server space. This represents a very real democratisation of the net ($10 a month is a lot more in Asia), and the totally anonimous nature of the ntwork allows for much freer political speech.
It is also worth noting that it automatically spreads frequently requested data across the network, meaning no more slashdot effect. This also makes for a more effecient network, as data is stored near to you.
You want to support the freedom of code? Get freenet and do your bit.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Distruibuted Mirror Project
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
There are copies of every Enterprise episode released on Freenet as well as sites about magic.
I have left it running for weeks and never notice the hits on it from other users. As for downloading files, it is very efficient as long as you have a large upstream. Remember that you are sending data out while downloading because the overhead with communications is very high.
Page insertions are the biggest problems now. Frost has taken care of this problem, but it is still slow to get anything on the network.
This is the type of setup we need for the future. I use it everyday.
The bandwagon rolls on though. The only way to stop P2P IMO is go after the ISP's. I'm no sysadmin, but I'm sure it would be possible for block certain ports, report heavy downloaders etc. At the moment nobody dare do this for fear of a mass exodus of customers, but if the law made sure that all of these ISP's had to comply, I'm sure they alone would be able to stop the spread. How feasible is it for the ISP's to put barriers in place?
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
You can jump straight to the fast SourceForge download site here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=978&release_id=147101
Orange
Class, can anyone think of why this might be helpful RIGHT NOW?
Also, check out Freeweb. Easy Freenet Web publishing. Servereless. Beautiful. Windoze-only, but nice for daily news sites. Used to run one back in Freenet 0.3.9.
You are not the customer.
The reason I haven't tried it yet is that it's written fully in Java. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except I can't afford to overload my Pentium II 333 Mhz box anymore. Already running a webserver on it. But I'll be sure to give it a go when I get more hardware.
Ha!
The most up to date version of the Java FEC library can be found here.
I wonder if anyone has done a survey to see how much child porn is on freenet? I am not game to, because AFAIK you can be thrown in jail just for possesing child porn!
But freenet is not alone. I know that there is some child porn on KaZaA. Heh, don't you love porn that will not allow previews(.avi files), you have to wait until the entire file is downloaded, that turn out to be child porn. Quick view and then delete is their fate.
What it is about is the ability to store anything, particularly items that may give the holder problems, like the film of a cop selling drugs to kids.
It isn't eDonkey, it isnt Kazzaa. With both of these systems you know what you are sharing, with Freenet you don't. With traditional P2P, MPAA can go round logging who is sharing LOTR and send them DMCA cease and desist notices. If you are living in Farkistan, you can publish your videos of police executions without fear that the police can track you down. Once you have loaded a file on the net with freenet, you don't know where it is, and neither does anyone else until they are given a hash key.
You just have some file storage assigned to the network which is browsable by a hash key through your local web browser. Freenet appears as localhost:8888 to your browser so you can access with a locked-down Mozilla or even IE (less wise because of the holes). People can know that you are running Freenet, but that is all (assuming you clear browser caches and so on).
The downside is because you can share anything anonymously, people do. However, unless someone is prepared to publish a reference to young Britney and her dog, nobody is going to find it.
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.
Also it seems to take a long time to get into the network. It is painfully slow to start and until it starts caching information locally, a letter may be faster.
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?
I'd like to use freenet, but I can't. I can't risk the possibility, however remote, of having child porn cached on my computer. I have too much to lose.
You have to run a Freenet node for some time before the speed starts to pick up. The longer you run your node, then better it gets integrated into the network.
I've been using Freenet for a month now, and the performance has been growing steadily. Try downloading Freenet from my server to get a different set of seed-nodes than the ones distributed from SourceForge.
Martin Geisler --- Visit http://www.gimpster.com/
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
"that somehow restricts the content shared to legitimate project material" - that is precisely what freenet is set up *against*. It is a necessary condition of its usefulness that it be able to store information that is illegal in at least some jurisdictions. Critiques of repressive governments and child pornography are both illegal in some areas of the world and legal in others. It would be good if I could decide which of those I host on my machine - here in the US, possession of child porn is a crime, and a host could theoretically be prosecuted even if the content was unknown to the host.
Steve Cline http://www.clines.org, http://www.objectbap.com
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
Try posting the source code to microsoft windows on the regular internet, see what happens. Hell just post an exploit for Microsoft windows and see what happens.
News? our news is limited, we cant talk about certain questionable subjects without being labaled communist, socialist, liberal, or something, you cant talk about hacking anymore, when I was growing up on the net, I remember hacker sites were everywhere, we had chatrooms and everything, a whole culture, and now its gone.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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
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
It has NEVER EVER been the case, nor the INTENDED case with the US Constitution and Bill of Rights that ALL speech be protected. Freedom of Speech comes from the start with restrictions. It has never been, nor ever will, nor ever should be OK to yell "Fire" in a crowded movie house, etc. Child porn is NOT protected speech nor should it EVER be, under no banner about Rights is it legitimate. Advocating murder is not protected speech, inciting riots with "speech" is also not protected (nor has it ever been).
Me thinks what you want is anarchy, which cannot work and doesn't work. It is a state that people as a whole will not tolerate for long. Free speech is great until you get into black areas (advocating murder, inciting riots/violence, inducing panic vis a vis "Fire!" in a movie theater, etc). Then it is rightly punishable and not protected in any way, shape, or form. Never has been, never will be.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
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
I'm getting 40 Mbit/sec to someone at 127.0.0.1...
called GNUnet
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?
The most popular P2P application in Japan is called Winny and is built around Freenet. There's some english information about it here, as well as a translated client. The last time I tried, though, the translated client was an older version and I couldn't get it to connect, but the latest Japanese binary worked for me.
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 ----
"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[...]"
... is cited ..."
The verb should be IS because it is referring to 'downloading.' You wouldn't say "Reliable downloading are..."
And also, the term is "cited".
End result:
"Reliable downloading
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.
"...rates as high as 100k/sec on a broadband internet connection are sighted..."
Cited, not sighted. Think "Works Cited" versus "we sighted a boat off our stern".
Want to talk? ashaver AT pdx DOT edu
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.
If you think we don't need an anonymous publishing methods then, clearly, you haven't tried driving across Texas with a "I support gun control and gay rights" bumper sticker on your car. Publicly advocating unpopular ideas, even if you're right, can get you killed.
Make an idiot proof software and they will make a better idiot.
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'
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....
Yeah. Not just for warez and porn. Freenet needs mp3's!
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
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.
Slashdotting? Not quite. But something similar, perhaps.
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
Dude, **ITS KIDDIE PORN**. It's **ILLEGAL**. Poeple are routinely tracked down and prosecuted for posessing it. You're required by Federal law to report it if you find it on any system you administer.
That means if I host a freenet node that contains said content and don't report it because it's freedom of speech, **I GO TO JAIL**. I'm all for free speech until speech that isn't mine lands me in the Federal penitentiary and gets me labeled forever as a pedophile.
I can totally see how mw going to jail will help stop it getting out there and cease being a financially viable venture.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
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.
That was a clueless answer, I sincerely hope you're only pretending to be a lawyer. I dont know what the full position is under the medieval criminal laws of the US but under most other common law jurisdiction mens rea remains pivotal, mercifully.
The reason for criminal intent being introduced in criminal jurisprudence is precisely to avoid the horrifying consequences people have mentioned in this thread. At one time men rea was not a legal requirement - in the middle ages appropriately. It was introduced when people started getting hung for eating venison they had unwittingly bought from others who had poached it from the king. It was said there needed to be a moral failure also: a guilty intention as well as a guilty act (the actus reus).
Because it makes criminal convictions harder to obtain it is a principle that is the subject of erosion where there are countervailing issues of moral panic such as, well, KP drugs (and soon terrorism no doubt). At the other extreme where the consequences of a conviction are not serious - such as safe food handling in restaurants - there is also a trend to reduce the need for mens reas and create so called strict liability offences since these become easier to prosecute without making convictions offensive.
In most parts of the World, including the US I suspect, you would need to demonstrate a knowing sharing of KP . Unwitting participation in sharing KP merely by running a freenet node not would not make one guilty.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
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.