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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)."

34 of 629 comments (clear)

  1. Terrorism by sokkelih · · Score: 5, Funny

    This allows fast and anonymous terrorism! ;) (Check out that Microsoft Says piracy is Terrorism -thingie.)

    1. Re:Terrorism by peterjhill2002 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. The problem isn't speed. by ketamine-bp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  3. Freenet + Gutenberg by Judebert · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Freenet + Gutenberg by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. Furthermore, I think now is the time for Freenet to gain a reputation as an "online repository useful for the distribution out of print books and/or books in the public domain" before it gains a stigma for "anonymous sharing of pirated software and child porn."

    2. Re:Freenet + Gutenberg by warpSpeed · · Score: 4, Informative
      That is a nice idea, as long as you have some one willing to put forth the resources for continious reinserts of the data.

      Freenets model is that data is transient. If some data is not used frequently, or used widely, it gets dropped eventualy. To insure avaiablilty you would need to constantly reinsert the data. Running a freenet node and inserting large quantities of data are two different things.

      I run a node, because I can, and there is little effort involved in keeping it up and running. The quality of the software has improved dramaticaly. For a while it was a pain to run due to the java VMs sucking up all avaiable ram and frequent crashes. Now I check that is is running once every few days or so.

      If more people start to setup nodes, and the software is idiot proof, this thing could take off.

  4. Joke all you want by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  5. Slashdotted, heh. by DarklordJonnyDigital · · Score: 5, Funny

    File sharing clients don't get Slashdotted... they just give an error saying "More download sources required".

  6. Speed/Content/Searchable by Geekbot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  7. How does this compare to Edonkey/Emule? by NoDoZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:How does this compare to Edonkey/Emule? by Manwe's+Herald · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:How does this compare to Edonkey/Emule? by warpSpeed · · Score: 4, Insightful
      So, they store the files on the server? How dumb. That killed napster, you know?

      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.

  8. The REALLY nice thing about freenet by James_Duncan8181 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Note: IAHFU (I Am a Happy Freenet User)

    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."
    1. Re:The REALLY nice thing about freenet by 42forty-two42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, it could be vulnerable to the slashdot effect - sort of. The freenet distribution comes with (iirc) 100 'seed' nodes. These are exported periodically from the hawk.freenetproject.org node. Your node picks 50 of them and uses them as peers. It soon migrates off the seed nodes and onto other nodes. But those first 50 could well be slashdotted.

  9. The problem is... by benjiboo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Even though there are many legitimite uses of file sharing apps, P2P will be forever linked with copyright infringement and misuse. If the holy grail of a fast, anonymous, reliable and completely distributed P2P apps was ever reached, it would inevitably attract the mp3 sharing masses.

    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.
    1. Re:The problem is... by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Informative
      FreeNet isn't really a P2P network as you are probably thinking - for instance, it doesn't have built in searching (or didn't last time I checked). It's not like Kazaa where you type in the files you want and get it, it's more like the web, where you have to find those files and locate them.

      Plus, it's not a sharing model, it's a publish model. You have to upload files to the network, a process that used to be a total PITA anyway, if you wanted it to propogate enough to be useful.

      So FreeNet isn't useful for pirates. Which is cool. What it is useful for is things like load balancing - if you've ever been slashdotted, or ever found it hard to pay the bandwidth bills, freenet offers a way out. They were even playing with streaming radio over it a while ago, though I think really IPv6 multicast is a better solution there.

      So freenet is about freedom of speech, load balancing, cool P2P experiments, lots of things - but not MP3 swapping.

    2. Re:The problem is... by praedor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Does this mean that if I am downloading the latest distro release from (distro) that I get screwed because I was downloading a whole lot of "stuff" and thus must be "pirating"?


      Heavy downloading cannot be the switch that cuts off a user or set of users. Also, what if you are in on a collaborative project of some kind? Into multimedia development? You could end up with lots of back-and-forth file swapping.


      Any flag setoff for cutting off a user at the ISP had better be pretty robust so that it doesn't nail innocent net users (who are using the net for its INTENDED PURPOSE afterall). How do you do that? Ban mp3 downloads/transfers? What if they are MY mp3s? Or MY videos? Maybe I'm an amateur film maker or in a garage band.


      P2P cannot be killed without gutting one of the primary reasons for the internet's very existence. It was NOT designed just to distribute commercial products properly paid for. That is a tack-on that came well AFTER file sharing/data sharing.

      --
      In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
  10. Re:Is this needed? by Deth_Master · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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 :us
  11. Perfect timing. by Limburgher · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Freenet is the perfect medium for journalism, because it is anonymous and cannot be taken down by any governmental entity.

    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.

  12. Re:[OT] Re:The REALLY nice thing about freenet by arvindn · · Score: 4, Funny
    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.
    TIAFC,AICDATAIW (This Is A Free Country, And I Can Define All The Acronyms I Want).

    Ha!

  13. Unlike other people, I tried this.... by anonymous+cupboard · · Score: 5, Informative
    In a most unslashdot way, I actually d/led and tried it out before the article was posted here. Freenet is not the same as the other P2P programs, Freenet is about distributed anonymous storage with the ability to store different kinds of data with encrypted and anonymous access.

    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.

    1. Re:Unlike other people, I tried this.... by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Informative

      Note IP address which is sending the results.

      Bzzzt, wrong answer.

      Files are transmitted node-to-node in reverse of the search path. Everything you get comes from the upstream node you asked for it from, not directly from the hosting system.

      Now, if you compromised 99.9999% of the nodes on the network, you could be *somewhat* certain that if your childporn request was answered by an IP you hadn't compromised, that it *might* be on that server. (In which case you compromise it and search again). If it came from one of your own servers, check its connection logs to see where it got its answer from, and repeat.

      I'm still waiting for the day when people use banning software that might be used to commit a crime as a precedent to start banning guns. I can't believe the NRA is so short-sighted that it can't see this day approaching.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  14. Re:Child Porn by stratjakt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You can be arrested and charged for posessing child porn. I knew a guy online who was in the military, and ran a ftp server from his home. People would basically come and go trading files, mostly porn pics.

    Someone stuck a bunch of kiddie porn on the site, and the short story is he's serving 5 years in military prison, and the fact that he had no idea that it was there didn't make a difference.

    The same thing would happen to you if you let some friend store a bunch of his boxes in your garage, and they were full of child porn.

    Now, since freenet distributes all of the "published" stuff across everyone elses machines basically, are you criminially responsible if someones kiddie porn is partially stored on your hard drive?

    The answer is probably yes, though IANAL.

    How can individual users claim that they have no responsiblity for what's being served by their machines?

    --
    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  15. too risky for me by elohim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:too risky for me by kramer · · Score: 4, Informative

      They can't find out who initially contributed what, but it's quite easy to find out who is hosting what. Just look at the IP address of whoever is connecting to you.

      Not true. For any particular freenet request you cannot be sure if the node contacting you is requesting the file, or is just passing along a request from a previous node.

      The reverse is also true. For any particular file you're requesting, you can't tell if the file you're getting is from the node you're contacting or if it's passing on your request to another node.

      It's a double blind. You MAY be getting the files from that node, then again by the very nature of freenet, and the large amount of information in it it is extremely unlikely that the information you recieved was actually on the node you requested it from.

      Further, if the goverment finds something unsavory, and manages to somehow prove (don't ask me how) it was on your computer the caching nature of Freenet allows you to say "There's a damn good chance that file wasn't on my computer until the government requested it". At that point you have the dual defenses of reasonable doubt and entrapment.

  16. The problem now is, it needs sites like slashdot. by HanzoSan · · Score: 5, Insightful



    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
  17. Not yet anyway by HanzoSan · · Score: 4, Insightful



    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
  18. Why bother to look? by HanzoSan · · Score: 4, Insightful



    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
  19. It is faster by CaptainAx · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm getting 40 Mbit/sec to someone at 127.0.0.1...

  20. Re:because people can compile the source code. by BlackHawk-666 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    These are all good examples of speech that might be considered harmful. Now let's talk about speech that is in serious danger from your government.

    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.
  21. Child Pornography by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Child Pornography by Blue+Stone · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think your argument has many merits, but your definition of what constitutes "child pornography" is flawed.

      As far as I'm aware, and I speak as merely a member of the human race here, and not a lawyer (are the two mutually exclusive?... I don't know) a photograph of a naked child is not "child pornography," "kiddie porn" or whatever.
      If that were true, then there would be parents who've taken photographs of their children in the bath, naked on the beach or running around in the garden who were by that definition child pronographers.

      H&M, an old (now defunct?) naturist magazine regularly showed pictures of persons under the age of 18 in a state of undress, and was on sale, legally, in British newsagents up and down the country, for many years.
      If this was seen by the law as KP (as I believe it is sometimes quaintly known) then you can bet there would have been dawn raids on every newspaper shop in the UK. This didn't happen.

      Also artists such as Balthus, would have found themselves in court, for creating works that could perhaps, at least, be called "child erotica" (there is no actual sexual activity in his paintings, but frequently "suggestive" poses, and allusions to sexuality.)

      Child Pornography involves children engaging in sexual activity with other children or adults, which is then recorded. It's not just a 3 year old runing up the garden, naked as the day he was born, to his mother's camera, grinning like a maniac, on a summer's day.

      Real Child pornography is not about a social norm being transgressed, although some hard-liners like the people in Kidscape, I believe, define child abuse as having sex with someone under the age of 16, here in the UK; a declaration that certain countries and cultures on the continent and elsewhere throughout the world, are populated by child abusers because of their lower ages of consent.
      Of course such a position is somewhat fanatical and isn't worth much of a second thought.

      Real child abuse involves events that are traumatic and have an immense impact on people's lives. It always involves the abuse of power, the taking advantage of and manipulation of someone who is less informed, and less able to understand that they are not acting in their own interests.
      These people are called children.
      This is why there are laws concerning the age of consent, both in sexual activity, and appearing in pornography: to protect the vulnerable.

      That in The Netherlands, a 16 year old can be shown involved in a gangband with a dozen men, and the same is illegal in the US, is not the issue.

      That a four year old is shown being raped in it's anus, is. I do not believe that this is a cultural issue; it is a humanitarian one.

      --
      Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
  22. Re:Exactly by Selanit · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Quote #1:
    It makes plenty of since to go after porn sites on the web because they SELL kiddie porn, someones earning money to abuse kids and then selling the photos and movies, this SHOULD be illegal because someone is being harmed for cash.


    Quote #2:

    Now, if these pictures are stolen from the site and placed on freenet and all over the P2Ps and people download and view it without payinng a dime, who is this hurting?


    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.