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)."

Comments

Terrorism

[sokkelih]

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

Re:Terrorism

[peterjhill2002]

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.

The problem isn't speed.

[ketamine-bp]

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

Joke all you want

[dreamchaser]

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?

Slashdotted, heh.

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

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

Re:Freenet + Gutenberg

[Rude Turnip]

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."

How does this compare to Edonkey/Emule?

[NoDoZ]

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?

Re:How does this compare to Edonkey/Emule?

[Manwe's Herald]

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.

The REALLY nice thing about freenet

[James_Duncan8181]

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.

Unlike other people, I tried this....

[anonymous cupboard]

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.

The problem now is, it needs sites like slashdot.

[HanzoSan]

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

It is faster

[CaptainAx]

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

Re:because people can compile the source code.

[BlackHawk-666]

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.

Child Pornography

[0x0d0a]

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

Re:Child Pornography

[Blue Stone]

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.