Freenet 0.5.2 Released

FurbyXL writes "With the RIAA roaring to grab peer-to-peer users by their IP addresses, Freenet - fully anonymized production and consumption of content - is gaining renewed attention. Articles in New Scientist, ZDNet UK, Wired and CNET (and here) set a somewhat typical context for Freenets major release 0.52. Significant performance improvements through NIO-based messaging, probabilistic caching etc. should provide increased rest to Chinese dissidents, but may finally wake-up the RIAA's Matt Oppenheim..." The announcement on the Freenet home page lists several improvements found in the new version: "a new NIO technology that brings improved performance using less CPU and system resources," "Individual nodes are now more efficient," "the speed and routing of the entire network have significantly improved," probabilistic caching, user interface improvements, and more.

Comments

Yay! Piracy here I come

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, I mean... PRIVACY. Yes, PRIVACY here I come!

Questions About Freenet

[ruhk]

Not ever having used it, how does it deal with hacked clients, etc?

Re:Questions About Freenet

[vadim_t]

What buffer overflows? It's written in Java.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[dasmegabyte]

Uh, no. Freenet wasn't designed to prevent this. Of COURSE Freenet lets you know what machines have connected to you, and what they've requested. Otherwise it couldn't send it to them -- it runs over TCP/IP, not magic! But this information -- the IP of the machine requesting an item from a datastore -- has absolutely no bearing on WHO did the intial request, or who will receive it in the end. Freenet clients make a request for a file, and the clients pass that request on as if it was there own.

So there's no difference between passing on a request, and making one yourself. Requesting a file becomes an anonymous activity, because you don't really have any idea how far this web goes. All you know is the requested "depth" cut off, so requests don't go more than N requests deep. And individual clients can (and do) rewrite this value. SO there's no way to tell if the client you've exploited is the first or a member on a chain of requests.

In fact, the best exploit for freenet would be a "sting," where you control all of the clients except for a handful. Then you know that these clients are doing all the dread. But it'd be really hard to establish this kind of "web of mistrust," considering that most freenet users populate their initial nodes either through the freenet website or through friends of theres. At that point, it's probably easier to get one of those friends to blab on you then it is to get evidence through technical means.

Data insertion works similar. If you have information in your datastore, there's no way to prove that you put it there. In fact, since you can explicitly exclude your own datastore from insertions, it's less likely that you'll have it if you inserted it. So if you have data in your store, it's equally likely that it was "pushed" to you to serve as it is that you downloaded it yourself. In fact, it's probably more likely, as freenet is receiving insert requests (more or less "uploads") all day, but only downloading when you're interacting with it.

Freenet's about PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY, which in a free (as in, bill of rights and supreme court) society should be enough to keep you out of prison. The difficulty of identifying computers is no different from regular peer to peer...the difficulty lies in IDENTIFYING them.

And as for buffer overflows...you don't know much about Java, do you? Individual applications can't become overfull due to automatic checking by the VM. So the unless the VM has bugs, the client is about as invulnerable as you can hope for. Plus, lots of us have looked at the key code for Freenet. I didn't trust it until I built it myself.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[illuvata]

I don't want my computer to be used to store somebody's kiddie porn.

pretty hypocritical, isn't it? i want free speech about issues i dont mind, but not for stuff i find offensive
if you would limit free speech, it wouldn't be very free, would it?

Re:Questions About Freenet

[dasmegabyte]

So don't use Freenet!

I don't get this argument. "I like the idea of freedom, but I also like the idea of controlling it." Whoa buddy. You can't CONTROL freedom, by definition. You also can't make somebody ELSE free -- freedom is a choice you make for yourself, a choice to mind your own fucking business and not expect somebody else to mind it for you. If want to be uncontrolled, you have to agree not to control anybody else, either.

My friend (who, ironically, is now in the marines) used to LOVE to tell us how the perfect communism utopia was also perfect anarchy, where people minded their own business because if they didn't, other people would put a stop to it. Freenet's got a slightly different take on this. The data it spreads cannot "hurt" anybody. Only its use can be construed as harmful. So if there's data on your computer, and you're not using it, it's not harming you.

If you're not ready for that, you're not ready to release your "sensitive information." Besides, that kind of information is begging to be controlled, and it's begging to be known. Freenet's anonymity and self-cleaning do not lend themselves to this.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[The Mgt]

It's not a problem, its a feature. You could only censor your node if you knew what was in it. If you could find out what your node contained then you lose deniability, which is kind of the whole point.
If you don't like it, dont run it.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[BitterOak]

Wouldn't it be funny, then, if a child predator stored pictures of your own children having sex on your own computer!

But the whole point is that the information is encrypted, so neither you, nor the "predator" would know that the images were stored on your computer. You might as well say "wouldn't it be ironic if a drunk driver someday used a car I sold to a used car dealer years ago to run my children down?"

Re:Questions About Freenet

[dasmegabyte]

Exactly wrong. If something you do contradicts a "freedom" of somebody else, neither of you were free to do that in the first place. Instead, you were imposing some control over something which infringed on somebody else's ability to control it. If I am able to own property, then somebody else is not free to own it. That's not freedom -- in the strictest sense of the word, that's robbing someone of their freedom to enjoy the bounty of the natural world. Hence the oft quoted line "property is theft."

Yeah, this is anarchy. No, it won't work in the real world because of what I like to call the "asshole factor." Greed stops it. But in the "computer" world, greed doesn't have to be a factor because there's no scarcity. No greed means no need to delegate your freedoms to a third party to insure "equity." No greed means no need for controls at all.

Freenet is an attempt at structured anarchy with the belief that only complete freedom can protect every freedom. There's no need for tension between conflicting freedoms because there's no conflict. Conflict is external to the system -- it's out here, in the world of pundits and attorneys. In there, it's just zeroes and ones.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[Anonymous Coward]

Grocery stories feed kiddie porn perps. Apparent buildings house them. They drive on roads built with your tax money. Collect UI, welfare, and old age security based on your tax dollars. You are part of the internet which is used to deliver their porn.

No matter what you do, you are supporting them, so kiddie porn is really a side issue.

The key issue is what can you do to safeguard your children's future? Freedom of speech (even if the government or corporations or popular groups in your area) is essential. Education to ensure that your kids aren't victims is another. (It's a big cruel world out there. If you shelter them too much, they *will* become victims).

And if you want a freenet-specific solution then why not use the freenet itself to define kiddie porn filters? Think outside the box. You can't search the Freenet so you have to rely on well known indexes that are floating around the freenet. Why not write a filter that automatically downloads these indexes and filters keys on you machine to ensure that you don't carry kiddie porn? Let the perps help you fight them, but don't hide your face in the sand and home that it will all go away, because it won't.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[stealthv]

If Freenet is at all helpful to those who distribute kiddie porn, then I do not wish to participate in it.

What about the internet, TCP/IP, image file formats, and computers? Or even cameras and artificial light? These all help the kiddie porn distributers. I'm willing to bet you use these. I'm not sure how else your comment would have gotten here.
Just about anything you do in life, that is of any public use, could be helping out someone you don't like. If you don't want to participate in anything that could remotely benefit a kiddie porn distributer then you better lock yourself up in a room somewhere.

Re:Questions About Freenet

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's more like saying "I won't deliver a truck full of goods across state lines without knowing what's in it, who sent it, or who's buying it."

Same problem there. Let's say a truck driver doesn't know exactly what's in all of the boxes, and can't break them all open to look. The truck driver has to take somebody else's word for it that the goods to be delivered are OK.

Most of us are not truck drivers, so I propose yet another analogy, that might be easier for everyone to relate to:

You know your tax money is collected to be used for purposes that you don't even know about. You know that you would probably disagree with some of the uses for it, if you knew what all of them were. You don't. You can't. However, you still contribute your tax money, because overall, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives.

It is even worse than this. Even if you could agree with every last expenditure in every budget, this year's money helps to pay for next year's. Therefore, if you have ever paid taxes, you are implicitly agreeing to pay for any future decisions too, and you know some of them will eventually be wrong!

Excellent build

[essdodson]

I've been running the 5000 series builds lately and they're considerably faster and more efficient. Hope everyone has a good experience freeneting.

Looking forward to trying it

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Freenet for years but except for the very most popular sites the speed and availability of the sites has made it little more than a toy. In theory, though, it is a great application.

Re:Looking forward to trying it

[Anonymous Coward]

With more people that use it, the faster it will go. Improvements are being made weekly, if not daily.

Donate 200 megabytes to the cause of Freedom of Speech, and the fight against the RIAA and its ilk.

Good idea, bad content

[nsideops]

I love the idea of freenet, but after reading how it works, I have to agree with a few complains I've heard. I'm not really happy about the idea of "anything" being able to be shared on my computer. Kiddie Porn comes to mind as one thing I want nothing to do with, and I have no controll over this being shared on my computer or not.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[RPoet]

Yes, Freenet is not for everybody. If you don't believe in total, indiscriminatory, complete freedom of speech and expression (an information anarchy, as it were), Freenet is not for you. On the other hand, if you believe there can be such a thing as "freedom of speech, but only when I agree," you probably have some thinking to do.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[nsideops]

The stand on kiddie porn for example...the kids are not adults therefore, under law, they can not make adult decisions for themselves. Realistically, they are not mature enough to make those kinds of decisions for themselves. I do not consider that a freedom of speech. It is infringing on the rights of children, hurting children, and should be illegal. As far as freedom of speech, I'm all for it and defend it, but that has nothing to do with the spread of free speech, ideas, or thought. It's simply praying on the defenseless.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[GooberToo]

Doing so would potentially create legal trouble for all other freenet users which allow those types of files. That's the whole point of it.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[shatfield]

This is the same scenario as the firing squad -- everyone knows that one gun contains a blank, but noone knows which one it is... therefore each person has a lingering hope that they were the one with the blank.

The fact that someone may have produced kiddie porn and shoved it onto Freenet does not mean that it is sitting on your machine. Since the content on your machine is encrypted, you'll never know for sure anyways.

The problem is not with the storage mechanism, it is with the sick person creating the content. That's where the problem lies, not in the bits and bytes on your hard drive.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[oxygene2k2]

freenet is a routing network..

should ISPs be allowed (or forced) to filter out content they're unhappy with on their routers and not pass it on because a request was made?

first you (not you directly, but several people here) blame china because they exercise that control, then you blame freenet because it takes away that control.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Henry V .009]

Of course, and every normal person agrees with you that a perfect world shouldn't have child porn.

But does the threat of child porn mean that you should give your government regulatory powers over speech in order to stop it? I'd think very carefully about that. Government abuse of power over speech is far more dangerous than individual abuse of free speech.

Your line of reasoning can be logically extended. Murder is bad. Far worse than child porn. The government could theoretically end murder with current video surveillance technology. Should government have the power it needs to do that? Of course not, the abuse would be horrendous. It is one of the costs of liberty.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Lemmy Caution]

The question is this: if you can technologically censor some speech, you are technologically capable of censoring any speech. If you can find a way to determine what's on your hard drive, you can be held accountable for it - and freenet's entire raison d'etre as a failsafe protection for free speech is destroyed.

In other words, one of the costs of ensuring free speech on FreeNet for Chinese dissidents is that it also gives a channel for child pornography and snuff films.

Also, there's a big gray zone when it comes to child pornography. The production of child pornography is clearly the exploitation of children. However, is documentation of a criminal act also criminal? Are all depictions of the sexual acts of or with children criminal? Should books like "Lolita," or dramas like "Romeo and Juliet," which describe relationships and sexuality with or between minors, be rightlly censored? Most of our ancestors before the 18th century or so were bearing children by the age 15 - do we want to treat their journals and love letters as kiddie porn? (I do believe there's a line between pornography and literary portrayal, but that line can at some places become blurry, and Nabokov is one of those places.)

Also, "kiddie porn" has extended to include pictures of kids taking a bath that were deemed just a little too sensual by some photo clerk, who brought them to a judge and got an indictment. Guess what: pictures of one's wife or husband as a minor can be treated as child pornography! There's a level of hysteria on the topic which has clouded the subject, and the desire to protect children from sex has become, in itself, a source for real censorship. And one that I'm sure the PRC would happily take advantage of while pursuing dissidents.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Lt Razak]

Very true. This sick person could (and will) put the content up somewhere else, if not on freenet.

And to the poster who is concerned--> I don't agree with the K.K.K either, but I do realize that they should be allowed to speak their stance. And the fact that you & I support our local/state/ government when they grant permits for these types of gatherings, doesn't mean we're promoting the K.K.K.

I would say the same thing about Kiddie Porn. Supporting FreeNet is about so much more than possibly supporting (a very very small fraction of) the Kiddie Porn out there.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[RPoet]

I share some of your view about my own statements; they could be taken quite to the extreme. What you have to understand, and accept, though, is that if a system like Freenet were to have some kind of built-in mechanism for removing extremely objectionable material, it would (as several others have commented now) need to have mechanisms to remove any material (and who would make the removal decisions?). And you can't have that and still have a system implementing the ideals of Freenet (total anonymity for both publisher and consumer).

And no, freedom of expression does not include the freedom to break into my private sphere and make noises during RotK. OTOH, that won't happen by running a Freenet node ;-)

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Threni]

I love the idea of roads, but after reading about how people travel on them to commit crimes, i`m not sure I want to pay any money towards them.

Nice idea, but until there is a method of transport which cannot be abused by criminals I'm going to sit right where I am.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[lysium]

Research has definitively shown that infant males get erections, and that infant females have vaginal secretions. Should infants be having sex with each other, or adults? No!
BUT.....Should we be pretending that they are sexless until older? NO! We are creating our own demons here.....

-----------

Re:Good idea, bad content

[trout_fish]

Yes, but it'd be nice to make the kiddie porn pushers lives a little harder by not storing their data (or being able to trace & report them).

The problem is that as soon as the source or location of information is made available the system ceases to be anonymous and is rendered pointless.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[kylemonger]

The issue is complicated. Suppose someone takes a kiddie porn image, chops it into several thousand rectangular bitmaps and scatters them across thousands of computers on the Internet. Which computer can be said to contain kiddie porn?

Suppose someone takes a KP image and XORs it with online copies of the U.S. Constitution, an image of Julie Andrews, and a PDF file of U.S. census data. They then take the result and put it up on the net, labeled as "white noise". Then they delete the original KP image. Where is the kiddie porn now? It can be reconstructed by XORing all the remaining files together, but none of those files by itself is kiddie porn. Is the kiddie porn really in the instructions on how to assemble the files to recreate the original KP image? Or does the KP image not exist until someone actually XORs the files and recreates it?

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Sloppy]

On the other hand, if you believe there can be such a thing as "freedom of speech, but only when I agree," you probably have some thinking to do.

And if you believe in "Freedom of speech, but with responsibility" then Freenet and its users are a tricky problem worth thinking about. Freenet is about more than just freedom of speech, it's an attempt to get freedom from accountability. Those two things are not quite the same.

IMHO, Freenet users are going to run into this problem: if you can't pass the buck, then the buck stops with you. Freenet users are going to try to claim they are carriers who are not responsible for the information that passes through their nodes, but they will be responsible, because they won't be able to pin it on someone else.

When someone breaks a law using Freenet and it is shown that they got their packet full of Evil Bits from your computer, the men with badges and guns are going to knock on your door. Then you'll either have to show in your log where you got that packet (so that the men with guns can leave you and go visit someone else), or they are going to have nowhere to go, so they'll stay interested in you.

That is undesirable, and it's why I won't run a Freenet node. I don't want LEOs bothering me because I assisted in someone else downloading their kiddie porn or sending a death threat to the president, or whatever. I hate bein' marked to take the fall.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Golias]

But does the threat of child porn mean that you should give your government regulatory powers over speech in order to stop it?

Yes.

The government should also prosecute those who use speech to incite a riot (yelling "fire" in a crowded theater), or amplify their speech over 80 db in a quiet neighborhood at 3:00 AM, or constantly sexually harass, over the telephone women who live by themselves.

You also do not have the right to commit slander or libel. You may not publish my credit card number or medical records. You may not redistribute copies of my novel, or bootlegs of my movie, or, as unpopular as it is to say here, an MP3 file of my musical performance.

Get over it.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Eminor]

Freedom of speach is one thing. Freedom of expression is quite another. I believe in freedom of speech, but not neccisarily in freedom of expression.

Freedom of speach is the ability to have and discuss ideas freely.

Freedom of express is the ability to express your ideas in anyway you choose.

For example, it is okay to say I don't like George W Bush for reason X. That is freedom of speach in action.

An example of Freedom of expression would be burning an effigy of George Bush. Although I would view this particular example of freedom of expression as okay, others are not.

Allowing an individual to share their views on child pornography falls under Freedom of speach and is acceptable. But Allowing an individual to create or distribute child pornography falls under freedom of expression and is not acceptable.

In short:
freedom of speach = good.
freedom of expression = shady area.

I can not support freenet because it allows freedom of expression and hence child pornography.

So to be clear I SUPPORT FREE SPEACH.

When you say "freedom of speech, but only when I agree," is a strawman falicy (you are twisting our ideas). You are lumping things into free speach which should not be there. Not being able to distribute certain content does not place restrictions of freedom of speach (although it may put stipulations on freedom of expression).

The Child Pornographer: "Hey man, I took pictures of your 12 year old daughter naked. It is my right to freedom of expression."

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Loki_1929]

"Government abuse of power over speech is far more dangerous than individual abuse of free speech."

Beautifully stated. What many people fail to grasp is the simple fact that liberty is hard. Your own liberty is not what makes it hard; it's the respect for the liberty of others which makes things nearly unbearable at times. In order to ensure that some poor soul has the ability to speak out against a repressive regime without being shot for it, I must in turn allow some sick bastard to get his kicks? This is difficult, but it's outright dangerous to start picking and choosing who should have which liberties.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[MourningBlade]

You know, it's funny. I'm a bit fuzzy on the dates, but child pornography was only made illegal in the US about 40-or-so years ago.

Of course, you have to separate pornography into two categories: 1) a media work showing an explictly sexual act (masturbation, penetrative sex, oral sex, etc) 2) a media work of a prurient nature that does not explicitly show "sex."

The former was illegal (minor consent laws and all that), but the latter was kinda legal.

When I say "kinda" I'm not being wishy-washy, it's that we're coming up against anachronism: according to experts on this sort of thing[1] attitudes of the "man on the street" have shifted drastically concerning photographs/drawings of young children. What would be considered "cute" and "childlike" back in the 1950's would be considered "grotesque" and "unsuitable for public consumption" now. Most of this can be linked to the witchhunts regarding child pornography.

Even more amusing, since the enactment of child pornography laws the average age of actors involved in sex scenes and -- and this is very odd -- in just plain romantic kisses in movies has gone way down. Way, way down.

I think it was Ebert (or was it Stephen King? King wrote about this a bit as well) who commented that youngsters used to go to the movies to see oldsters in a sex scene. Now it's reversed.

Salon commented[2] that the rabid and far-reaching bans on child "pornography"[3] has caused us all to think like pedophiles. Reminds me of the joke about the sexaholic who goes into the psychiatrist, who gives him a rorschach test.

"What do you see?"

"Two people having sex. A naked woman. A threesome."

"Jane, I think you've got a fixation on sex."

"What? Doc, you're the one showing me all these dirty pictures!"

Ah well.

So my point is that it's tough to say what's child porn and what's not, with the fact that we've gotten hypersensitive about it recently. I don't really feel like having the morality police check out all of my mom's photo albums to see if they're kosher. Especially morality police from the MPC[4]. Though being a smart son who knows the power of embarassment blackmail from mothers, I have removed all of my naked baby pictures. Now if only I could get the picture of me hugging then penguin at Sea World when I was 12....

And to spare myself accusations: no. I'm not "into" kids. To be honest, only recently has my age group become somewhat appealing to me at all: I've always been after older women, which is a real drag as women are used to young guys being...well, young guys.

So, just something to think about.

[1] I'm thinking of the historians interviewed in Salon concerning the somewhat-recent Paul Ruebens case. Interesting article.

[2] Again, the Paul Ruebens case.

[3] bare-butt baby picture arrests, anyone? Traditional Brazilian breast feeding family photos getting your kids under the care of CPS, like just happened in Dallas about a year ago?

[4] Most Persnickity Country

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Lt Razak]

And I own a hotel.

God knows what goes on there. In fact, I do find out what goes on there when the police get involved. But it's not like I woke up one day and said I wanted to start a business that helps husbands cheat on their wives, and dealers sell their drugs.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[zangdesign]

The problem is not with the storage mechanism, it is with the sick person creating the content.

That statement is entirely true. HOWEVER, I doubt any court in the United States would see it that way and you could end up spending a whole lot time next to some hardened killer who "just wants to cuddle".

I'm not sure that sort of indignity is worth some wierdo's free speech rights.

And yes, I am aware that people in China die because of government repression. But it is entirely within the power of the Chinese people to settle their problems with the government, WITHOUT our intervention, and so I leave it to them to do so.

Re:Good idea, bad content

[Ian Bicking]

I think it should be clear that child pornography is different from KKK material. If the KKK beat up some black guy who they didn't like, then taken pictures of it and distributed it, then it would be analogous. As it is, the KKK mostly just distributes at worse incitement to commit crimes, not actual evidence of crimes. There's a qualitative difference.

Oppenheim still won't get it.

[Xerithane]

The man used a furniture analogy to try to prove his point that copyright infringment is piracy. He discounted Freenet because it was too clunky. If the man were any more dense he'd require life support.

Re:Oppenheim still won't get it.

[argoff]

Actually, he can have a *COPY* of my furntiure any time. In fact, he can have a copy of my car too. In fact, it's a Geo Metro, there are 10 million coppies of it out there. Somehow I don't feel violated.

RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long it'll take for RIAA to spread the FUD about how freenet and opensource are evil

Question

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Okay, so let's say Freenet works perfectly and you can't trace anyone by IP address. But someone from the RIAA uses it to download a copyrighted song, wouldn't they then be able to sue all users of Freenet as accessories to the crime? (Assuming each node handles traffic from transactions it may or may not be involved in - that's the way I remember it working.) And then get a court order for Freenet to give up IP addresses of users who have downloaded the client?

Re:Question

[hawkbug]

That's why freenet needs to purge their webserver logs once an hour :)

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

freenet includes a "distribution servlet" with which people can download the software and join the network in a purely peer to peer fashion, requiring NO central download size (e.g. freenetproject.org or sf.net).

If you're wearing a tinfoil hat, find a friend on freenet (via iip or some other mechanism) and download from them. (not to mention the absurdity of suing someone for just *using* freenet... that'd get tossed even in a patriot act america)

Re:Question

[William Tanksley]

Not according to current legal theory. If you provide a service (in this case, hosting encrypted fragments of files) but you have no control or even visibility of how that service is used, you're not liable for the details of how it's used.

The people who use it are still liable, of course.

I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Freenet sounds like a great idea, but it's so obviously useful for such horrible uses, and there are other tools that handle most of the useful uses... I don't see it surviving legally (I mean that it'll be outlawed anywhere it'll be useful).

-Billy

Re:Question

[Henry V .009]

It's worse than the RIAA. There is a large quantity of child porn on Freenet. Now, because of the way Freenet works, you have no idea what's being served from your computer at any given time -- and no way to find out since it's encrypted. So if you run Freenet on your computer, you may be hosting child porn. Can the government go after you for that? If it wants to it can. Are there good reasons to take the risk? That's up to you to decide.

Is having truly free speech where some people inevitably abuse that speech better than having speech regulated by governments who inevitably abuse their regulatory powers themselves? Participatory democracies don't have a great track record when it comes to allowing unpopular opinions to be heard. In most of Europe today -- to pick one example -- you will serve jail time for questioning the holocaust. To pick another example, anti-hate speech statutes have been sucessfully used in Britain and Canada (and elsewhere, no doubt) to supress supporters of immigratation reform. Libel law is commonly used to supress opinions of those who don't have the money to defend themselves in court.

Is this a power you want to trust the government with? I don't trust mine with it. That's why I run Freenet. And hopefully, Freenet -- or the idea of Freenet -- will have enough popular support to make my government wary of cracking down on it. And as long as Freenet exists, there is at least one forum for truly free speech.

Re:Question

[Zork the Almighty]

The day it's outlawed in any western country is the day i set up a dedicated node with 40gb of hd space. There was a reason that Freenet was created after all.

Re:Question

[foolip]

I believe he's referring to the fact that it would be quite possible to set up a kiddie porn ring of something in freenet, and it would be near impossible to get hold of the criminals.

You know, freenet isn't just a file sharing network. First and foremost it's a medium which guarantees your anonymity, which makes it great for organizing a political movement in an oppressive regime and other things. But it's equally "useful" for doing things coveretly which most of us are disgusted by.

And child pornography is well beyond horrible, don't you think?

Re:Question

[blibbleblobble]

"But someone from the RIAA uses it to download a copyrighted song, wouldn't they then be able to sue all users of Freenet as accessories to the crime?"

If you've narrowed down the suspect to five thousand people, that's not going to get you very far in a court. When a shoplifter hides in a crowded shopping centre, you can hardly prosecute every person in the place as accessories.

To be technical about it, freenet guarantees common carrier status, simply through not knowing the content it's hosting. A freenet node is no more suspicious than any of millions of email servers which allow encrypted messages.

Asking freenet for people who've downloaded the client is hardly going to be a roaring success either, as you try to track down dynamic IPs that're months old and in different timezones. It's also pretty damned stupid, the equivalent of asking for the names of everyone who was given Internet Explorer on their computer, then suing them all. The AOL transparent proxy will be getting a lot of court-orders...

Not that anybody needs reveal an IP address to download something nowadays. What else is BitTorrent for?

Not a critisism of the thought, just that freenet is legally pretty safe. It's been directly taunting $cientology for years, and if there were a legal attack against it, it would long-since have been discovered.

Re:Question

[William Tanksley]

Yes, I would do the same, but the day it's outlawed is the day it becomes possible to arrest anyone using it -- and it's easy to detect use. This is why we agitate against laws to illegalise crypto. It's hard to tell what's being encrypted; but it's easy to tell that crypto is being used.

Yes, it's technically possible to defend against even this; but most people won't be able to, even technically competent ones.

I guess there's a good defence: everybody think of good uses for Freenet and start using it NOW. The more there are, the harder such a law will be to pass and slip by the judges. To be really powerful such a use should REQUIRE Freenet, and I can't think of any such uses (but I trust that others will). BUT ... don't let that stop you. Use Freenet instead of Kazaa to publish your legally permissible stuff.

If only I had anything to publish...

-Billy

Re:Question

[sploxx]

Hey, there is a relatively clear law in germany for that. Or, better, a principle in the constitution. It's called "Wehrhafte Demokratie" (well-fortified democracy).

The idea is, that it should (and is) be forbidden to speak against the principles of free speech and democracy, because they are the very ground you base your speech on. So if you praise hitler's dictatorship here, you will be punished for working against democracy.
I think it works well here and I also think it's not hurting freedom of speech too much.
Freedom is *NOT* absolute, even if some posts here suggest such a thing.

Freedom ends where the Freedom of others begins.

Re:Question

[Loki_1929]

"But someone from the RIAA uses it to download a copyrighted song, wouldn't they then be able to sue all users of Freenet as accessories to the crime? (Assuming each node handles traffic from transactions it may or may not be involved in - that's the way I remember it working.) And then get a court order for Freenet to give up IP addresses of users who have downloaded the client?"

Considering the fact that you can't narrow down what any single node has or has not done to aid in the download, you would pretty much have to launch a lawsuit against each user. Problem with that? Well, first of all, you'd have to find all the users of Freenet, and many are not in the US. You could start doing interner-wide port scans, but you're still going to run into a lot of walls, what with proxy servers, non-standard ports, etc. Assuming they managed to get a court order for the people who run the Freenet project to turn over the ips of those who have downloaded the software, they still will have only the records that the folks who run the Freenet project have. Who here keeps server logs for every single download of every single file, and maps all those downloads to individual ip addresses for any significant length of time?

Then you'd have to go about suing all of these people. Assuming we're only talking about say around 20,000 US-based users whose ip addresses can be identified as Freenet nodes, you're still looking at thousands of lawsuits. Thousands of lawsuits means thousands of lawyers, and tens of thousands of paralegals. If someone would like to try doing the math on this one, feel free, but I'd venture to guess that the amount of money invested in this kind of thing would run into the billions. The trick is, you can't selectively sue a few Freenet users, as you can't prove they had anything to do with the infringement you're claiming took place. We get up there in court and they start babbling off about piracy, my response is simply, "what proof do you have that I, specifically, infringed your copyrights?" The simple answer is, "we have none"; that's the way the network works. So they can either sue every single Freenet user en masse, knowing that they cannot prove a single case of infringement against any given individual, or they can pick off a few individuals and hope that they judges they get are so technically inept as to ignore the law and assume guilt without evidence.

That's the trick of it, really. Can you really win a lawsuit against someone without a single shred of evidence? If the RIAA can, it may hurt them far more than Freenet ever could, as they would be seen as an out-of-control lobby group which has managed to penetrate deep into the judicial system; completely disregarding the rule of law and forcing judges to do the same. It would prove once, and for all, that the RIAA is a ferocious beast which abuses copyright laws and manipulates the legal system to its own ends, and that it does so quite successfully.

Re:Question

[stwrtpj]

I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Freenet sounds like a great idea, but it's so obviously useful for such horrible uses, and there are other tools that handle most of the useful uses... I don't see it surviving legally (I mean that it'll be outlawed anywhere it'll be useful).

Freenet may very well serve as the ultimate litmus test of America's continuing commitment to the tenets of freedom and liberty on which its founding was based. You simply cannot have a truly free society unless you allow a means for truly anonymous speech. In the days before the information age, it was easier to be anonymous. Now it's next to impossible. Something like freenet makes it possible to have that anonymity again.

Will Freenet be used for objectionable actions (this being relative to the perceiver of course)? Of course it will. I will have to accept the fact that it will be used for kiddie porn, and that it will be used for neo-nazi hate speech. Liberty is all or nothing. You cannot have degrees of liberty, for that is not liberty at all, it is privilege, and privileges by their very nature can be taken away.

guns dont kill people ...

[emptybody]

For the same reason that a gun is not sent to jail after a homocide, the tools (software and networks) cannot be held liable for the actions of the people that use them.

Now, let me have my new anonymous data transfer protocol already!!!

Re:guns dont kill people ...

[jd142]

True. But the people who use the guns can be held liable.

As an earlier poster pointed out, the problem with this is that a user's home computer could be providing kiddie porn. It's one thing to steal songs and software, but it's another thing to host pictures of some 7 year old getting raped. I don't want to even have the possibility of that happening, so I think I'll stick with another distributed client.

Legally, would host computers be analogous to the phone company -- a common carrier? If you use a telephone to plot to kill the president, the feds don't bust the phone company as part of the conspiracy. Just like they don't bust AOL for providing chat rooms for 35 year olds to pick up 12 year old English girls. Are people hosting files or parts of files like the phone company in the eyes of the law?

Re:guns dont kill people ...

[benjamindees]

Actually, I was shocked to notice this one day at the courthouse, the state/city does actually prosecute the *tools* used in the commission of a crime. That's how they can *confiscate* cars, guns, drugs, etc... by bringing charges against them. Better make sure your car hasn't done anything illegal, like speeding, or else it might find itself in car prison.

Re:guns dont kill people ...

[stwrtpj]

As an earlier poster pointed out, the problem with this is that a user's home computer could be providing kiddie porn. It's one thing to steal songs and software, but it's another thing to host pictures of some 7 year old getting raped. I don't want to even have the possibility of that happening, so I think I'll stick with another distributed client.

Perhaps the biggest freedom of Freenet is the freedom not to use it.

NIO - the buggiest api ever.

[BassZlat]

Or close to it.

I'm one of the main developers for freenet (see zab_ on the opn irc logs the cvs logs)

When 60% of the code (measured in locs) is workarounds for jvm bugs, you know you have problems.

If the sun QA dept. had pulled their act together, this release would have happend at least a month ago.

zab

Re:NIO - the buggiest api ever.

[*weasel]

and yet whenever i try to tell people in the 'woe is java because of MS' threads that java has its own problems - i get called an MS plant and troll.

i'm just a developer who's run into these kinds of things too, and java left a damn sour taste in my mouth.

it's portable ansi C for me.

Re:NIO - the buggiest api ever.

[alext]

Conscious as I am of the incomparable force of bald assertion in /. debates, I venture to direct the attention of all those interested to the API linked in my earlier post.

Take a look at methods such as getChannel() on stream implementation classes such as FileInputStream.

Now recall that channels are part of NIO and did not exist prior to 1.4. A reasonable deduction is that the implementation of IO has changed to use NIO.

Though reasonable, I cannot claim to have made it since it appears in the book "JDK 1.4 Tutorial". Those possessing sufficient literary stamina and dedication to reach page 2 will be rewarded with the following:

"The New I/O API model coexists peacefully with the original I/O libraries from the java.io package. In fact, to a substantial degree, the original I/O libraries have been rewritten to take advantage of the New I/O API."

For what it's worth (and I appreciate that this may be very little) my experience is that since 1.4, java.io socket calls are throwing additional run-time exceptions, including more descriptive variants of IOException. This, to me, indicates that revised mechanisms are in operation beneath the covers.

I trust that this conclusion will not be too shocking to those of delicate disposition.

Searching on freenet?

[pv2b]

As far as I've understood, freenet is designed to be somewhere where you can access content, as long as somebody has given you the exact address to the file.

The problem I see here, is that there are no easy ways to search for content, except for out-of-band stuff like the web or e-mail, which mostly defeats the entire concept.

What Freenet needs in order to be a viable platform for not only publishing content anonymously, but also for finding it, is a search mechanism built into freenet. Before that happens, there is no way that it will become any popular with the file sharing masses -- it's just too find to hard something to download.

Re:Searching on freenet?

[bersl2]

When you install Freenet, on the start page (http://127.0.0.1:8888 by default) are several links to index pages. Most people writing freenet sites submit a link to their own site, along with a description. While one cannot directly search for content, most freesites have a definite topic. I consider this "good enough," at least at this size of network.

Re:Searching on freenet?

[42forty-two42]

Frost

Re:Searching on freenet?

[dasmegabyte]

Well, that's sort of wrong.

In freenet, you are ALWAYS searching. You're searching for a KEY, that LOOKS like a URL but doesn't have any information about where it's stored, that translates to a piece of data. When you make a request, you tell your fellow clients what you're looking for, and they either return it, or keep looking for you.

The problem with "keyword" searching over freenet is that somebody, somewhere has to index everything -- make a list of keywords, associate them by "URL," etc. On the internet, the indexing is performed by spiders that work for massive database engines. On Freenet, there's not really any way to perform indexing without exposing the data inside keys being passed back and forth.

To get around this, applications have been written to publish indexes of the data to common KEYs (like "INDEX07162003"), so you can download them and maintain a search engine on your own PC. One such application is Frost. They work pretty damned well.

In the early days of freenet, OFF freenet spiders created search engines, but these are by nature not anonymous -- and they were kind of crap. There was also some experimentation with english language keys -- eg, KSK@GPL.txt -- but the problem was that people were uploading FALSE data on top of what was supposed to be there. So most freenet content is now published using a private/public key system, so only change requests from the initial producer are honored.

The result is this system which works in the exact opposite way of the regular internet. On the regular internet, the client can only handle static content, so manipulation is handled by the server. On Freenet, the content on the server is static, so manipulation is handled by the client. You don't get the full understanding of how strange this is until you've used some of the funkee freenet messaging systems.

Lack of Content

[TheAmazingGoat]

The biggest issue I had with Freenet was not reliability or the fact that I might be sharing kiddy porn, but the fact that THERE WERE NO GOOD KEY INDEXes. Seriously, do a search on Google and the only ones you find are down or haven't been updated in two years. It's the big Catch-22; I won't use it 'til there's something to look at, but there won't be anything to look at until somebody uses it.

New upgrades work well

[Realistic_Dragon]

I have been running a node with 10k down, 5k up and a 1gb store forever now (niced at -15), and the new version of the software has made a huge difference.

No longer is my CPU at 100% all the time - before when I got put in seednodes I was flatlined, even with the thing niced to -18. Now it's not even noticable.

Bandwidth usage also seems to be more steady, rather than spiking every now and again it holds steady at one number. (~85-90% of allocation.)

Responsiveness has increased slightly - it's about what you would expect from a 56k modem connection.

Run one in the background for a few days - you won't notice it, really. The more people running these things the better, even if they have no use for the system yet and throttle it right back. (10/5 on DSL adds less than 1ms to my ping on ut2k3.)

Re:New upgrades work well

[muldrake]

I've mirrored some normal web content to Freenet . This freesite (only available if running Freenet) is a mirror of http://www.operatingthetan.com, my normal website on Keith Henson v. Scientology.

My major gripe with Freenet to this date is while it is marketed toward "weblike" applications, it often loses content more than a click or so in (note the front page of my freesite there works almost perfectly but if you click in the performance is significantly degraded).

I think its killer app might ultimately be the distribution of large 'splitfiles' with FEC encoding. I don't want to nuke Freenet right now by suggesting downloading huge pirate AVIs, but if you find one and try it, you'll see what I mean.

--
http://buttersquash.net Home of the Buttersquash Conspiracy

Did anyone else notice how many cookies RIAA sends

[pecosdave]

just to read that article? I think they're starting their monitoring from their own site. I rejected them all, but I'm thinking about going back to read the content. If those cookies are trackable through ad sites..........

Re:Huzzah!

[Abcd1234]

Ahhh, the now-infamous kiddy-porn rhetoric. I know you're probably joking, but this always comes up... "Oh no, private communications! But, now they'll distribute kiddy-porn! Think of the children! Oh god, won't someone please think of the children!" Puhlease... yes, something like this will be used for illegal means. So does the US postal service, or PGP for that matter. Does that make it any less useful? No.

The fact is, the minute you guarantee anonymity (something which, IMHO, is required for free speech... after all, what's the point of free speech if you're afraid to exercise that right?), people will abuse it. However, if you truly believe in the right to free speech, you must be willing to take the good with the bad. Anyone who suggests anything else doesn't truly believe in free speech.

Weak analogies

[felonious]

Matt Oppenheim: An individual who illegally distributes music on a peer-to-peer network has less of an expectation of privacy than a bank robber wearing a mask when holding up a teller. And, just as the bank robber cannot be heard to complain when the guard pulls off his mask, an infringer on a P2P network cannot complain. The bank robber can at least claim that until his mask is pulled off, nobody knows who he is.

I'll tell you what. If I'm robbing a bank and someone tries to pull of my mask they're getting shot.

Truth be known his comment gives us all a nice hint on how to further anonymize ourselves. What happens when the guard pulls off the mask and you have panty hose pulled over your head? Clean ones...He still can't indentify you...plus if you shoot him he can never tell anyone.

So today's lesson is if the guard/RIAA tries to pull back the mask/masque to make you identifiable then you must shoot to kill and leave no witness behind.

Thank you for playing

The Arms Race Begins

[Foofoobar]

As it has been stated before, this is nothing more than an arms race with each side escalating the threat and the defense with each move. The problem howver is that the RIAA is fighting against ALOT of techies and as such, not just in the US but worldwide. Even if they manage to pass laws against it in the US, people will still be developing tools to bypass in and will host them on international servers.

The sooner they discover they are fighting a losing battle and just accept it and look for a better marketing scheme, the better.

Mark my words:

[Istealmymusic]

Freenet will never amount to anything.

Its simply not efficient. I want to download music, new releases, and movies -- I don't need encryption. I don't need to store unknown files in an encrypted cache. I don't need the rediculously slow speed Freenet offers.

Enter China. They have TriangleBoy. An array of proxies available not behind the Great Firewall. Chinese dissidents can use these anonymous proxies to do publish and consume information. Freenet only inhibits this. Freenet's lack of performance is a major flaw. US proxies are fast, even when trans-Atlantic. Its tried and true tested technology; innovation is welcome, but Freenet is nothing.

Many P2P programs have been developed in shorter timeframes than since all the hype about Freenet began to now. EarthStation5. Piolet. Blubster. RockItNet. Heck, even Kazaa K++'s modifications to Kazaa. Although many of these are not totally anonymous, ES5 is. Check out the ES5 forums (warning: registration required), you'll find a list of tons of anonymous and transparent proxies to use with ES5.

AIM can use proxies too. So can ICQ. SOCKS5, HTTP. Even FTP, HTTP, Internet Explorer, etc. Many proxies also support SSL. For chatting dissident, one can do SSL over IRC.

Freenet is dead.

Re:Mark my words:

[Dr Reducto]

"Freenet is dead"

Please don't say that. The "BSD is Dying" Trolls are looking to expand their operations.

pfft..

[SophtwareSlump]

I played with freenet for about 6 hours one weekend and it just wasn't doing it for me. There was no central search function and a lot of sites with indexes weren't responding. I'm not saying that the technology behind the scenes isn't top notch, but the user interface leaves a lot to be desired if it's aiming for the mainstream or even just a blip below. It was actually infuriating me.

Summary of my experience: I found it nearly impossible to use and it was giving me massive Gopher flashbacks.

IP GO BYE BYE

[greygent]

Hey, since we're all throwing intellectual property rights to the wind by trying to deceive the RIAA, how can I apply FreeNet to misusing GPL'd software for my own benefit?

I'm sure none of you would have a problem with that, because you're not all about double standards, right?

Support Chinese dissidents

[frovingslosh]

should provide increased rest to Chinese dissidents

Unfortunately, while freenet might be somewhat secure and private, it would be pretty clear by monitoring a link to an ISP that you were using Freenet. If the Chinese government were to do this they could easily identify and round up the Freenet dissidents. What can we do to help protect freedom behind the bamboo curtain? You can do your part by making sure that Freenet is also used for downloading music! Everyone knows the Chinese like to download and pirate copyrighted material. The Chinese gub'mint will not give it a second look as long as they believe it's being used for piracy and not for dissident speech. We can all do our part for freedom by making sure that Freenet becomes a popular tool for file sharing.

Re:Hrm...

[captredballs]

You mean your web browser's UI? I'd recommend mozilla, konqueror, opera, or internet explorer. If you have trouble with any of these I'd recommend this book. This page might also be useful.

How do you spell "clueless"?

[djeaux]

How about "O.P.P.E.N.H.E.I.M."?

From the C|Net interview:

Oppenheim: How does this have anything to do with corporations? This has to do with artists and creators. Artists and creators, like anybody else who creates something, should have the right to sell what they create...Indeed, most artists spend a lifetime trying to sell the result of their efforts to record companies so that they may make a living making music. At the end of the day, that is a great thing for music lovers--otherwise artists would have a lot less time to create the music we all love.

Fine, let's take the corporate aspect out of it & pay only the artists' share for compact discs. That would be somewhere on the order of 30 or 40 cents per disc, if that much (if the artist has a good contract). OK. Throw in $2 for the media & production. CDs start selling for $3 (like vinyl in the early '70s) & P2P would be irrelevant.

Yes, artists deserve to be able to sell what they create. That's why the record company moguls, agents & hangers-on often make as much as or more than the artists themselves.

20 years ago, I remember the high price of CDs being explained as "recouping research & development costs." Ummm... Methinks those costs were recouped long ago. Corporate greed is what it is...

But yeah, Oppenheim, let's take the corporations out of this. Who do you think is paying RIAA in the first place? Roadies?

When the guy equated file sharing with bank robbery, he showed that he is a nutcase.

6/4 is out the door

[neoThoth]

Another anonymous peer to peer system is being developed called 6/4. Many will recognize this as a tribute to the massacre at Tienamen Square and rightly so. It was not developed in order to thumb our noses at the **AA organizations but since they are attempting to inpinge on our rights why not use this tool against them as well.
Download here
Please note these restrictions:
1. You cannot download this software from us if you are a national of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. Sorry. That's the rule and we cannot let you copy it if you are a national of one of these countries.

2. You cannot download this software from us if you are located in Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria (or you are located in an embassy, consulate, or other facility that belongs to one of these countries). Again, that's not our rule but it applies to us and we intend to obey it.

3. You cannot download this software from us if you are an entity on the "Denied Persons List" published by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security. The Denied Persons List is published here or here [text file]. The most recent changes to the Denied Persons List are published here.

4. You must be a Certified Patriot! In our view, it is exceptionally patriotic to be a member of Hacktivismo and to advocate civil liberties all over the world. And we don't view people who agree with George Bush, John Poindexter, John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney, or Don Rumsfeld as very patriotic at all. It is patriotic to disagree with Mr. Bush and other friends of Big Oil. But neither we nor George Bush can decide unilaterally whether you are a Certified Patriot merely based on your politics or point of view. A "Certified Patriot" has come to mean anybody (even communists, militia members, muslim extremists, animal-rights activists, tree-huggers, vocal critics of John Ashcroft, and card-carrying members of the ACLU) not listed as a "Specially Designated National" or "Blocked Person" by the U.S. Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control ("OFAC"). The OFAC list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons [PDF] is located here [PDF] or here [text file]. The most recent changes [PDF] to the SDN and Blocked Persons List are published here [PDF]. IF YOU ARE NOT ON THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT LIST, THEN YOU, TOO, ARE A CERTIFIED PATRIOT! Congratulations! ;-)

What concerns me about Freenet

[jeremyds]

Taken from Freenet's FAQ:

I don't want my node to be used to harbor child 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. There is another thing you can do. Since content in Freenet is available as long as its popular, you can help limit the popularity of whatever information you do not like. For example, if you do not want a file to spread you should not request it and tell everyone you know not to request that specific key. However, keep in mind that freenet is not designed so as to only allow communication between people if a sufficient number of people agree with the communication. Freenet is designed to make communication possible even if there's just one publisher and one reader, and this is already reasonably feasible on the current freenet.

I'm all for freedom of speech. However, I really don't like the idea of my computer being used to trade child porn. By running a Freenet node, I give up control of what information gets shared from my computer. Sorry, but I'll pass.

Re:What concerns me about Freenet

[goldspider]

Now that's pretty creepy. Wouldn't a FREEnet want people to have the freedom to determine what they do and do not want on their computers? Giving up that control doesn't sound very free to me.

Re:What concerns me about Freenet

[EllF]

You are not "all for" freedom of speech, then. You are partially -- perhaps mostly -- for freedom of speech. Just not speech which crosses your own personal boundary, in this case, pornography involving children.

Re:What concerns me about Freenet

[Abcd1234]

No, it's the ultimate form of freedom for the publisher. No one can censor you, not even the members of Freenet. Heck, I could post a massive rant about how much I hate the authors of Freenet, and they couldn't do a thing about it. THAT is the ultimate protection of free speech, and that is what Freenet is all about. The fact that you don't get that just proves that you don't really understand what free speech (and Freenet) are all about.

Re:What concerns me about Freenet

[salesgeek]

whether they tolerate speech which they disagree with, or even find disgusting.

If child porn were speech, it would be just talk. As it stands, at the best it is evidence of a crime that was committed in creating it. At the worst, it is a product that required the rape of a child to create and is a tainted product.

Child Porn != Speech.
Child Porn != Expression.

Re:What concerns me about Freenet

[adaknight]

Now this is silly. It is obviously a form of expression. Please don't be upset at this fact or get overemotional. I repeat: it is a fact that kiddie porn is a form of expression. I actually find it offensive that I'll probably have to defend myself from overemotional nuts now by saying something like "Of *course* it's disgusting, and I'm *sure* *everyone* will agree with me." In any case, ("as much as I agree with your sentiment," dammit!!!) your argument makes no sense and as such, being without logic, it doesn't really belong in a g33k ph0rum.

The fact that we're even debating this stupid kiddie porn argument at all is disgusting and it's really telling. Grow up, everyone.

Fucking political correctness will preserve my karma, right?

Re:What concerns me about Freenet

[alwsn]

If child porn were speech, it would be just talk.

Clearly the logic you suggest isn't true, as many forms of non-verbal communication have been deemed 'speech' and are protected.

There are some (no, I am not one of them) who view adult male, child male sex as not only good, but a requirement for a healthy life. The North American Man Boy Love Association is an example of such a group. Until recently their motto was "sex before eight - or it's too late."

I personally find this sort of behavior abhorrent, but it certainly is an expression of personal belief.

Re:Different purposes

[aztechClanIII]

yes, privacy is *very* good. Don't get me wrong. It just seems like this type of network is only for people who can run the client 24x7 (the more you run it the faster it goes). There must be some way to speed up the connection process so that mobile users can have quicker access to freenet content. It would be nice if mobile users could have a "buddy node" that would always be 24x7 that they could connect to in order to get online with more nodes faster. Perhaps 2 types of clients are needed? ahhh, nevermind. this project is slated for the far-reaching future when no one can do anything anymore. Maybe then, everyone will run their nodes 24x7 "for the cause". For now, I'll just stick with bit-torrent. ~

NIO

[alext]

For anyone in the dark as to what the NIO reference is to, it's the new + revised Java APIs for sockets and files.

These include:

• non-blocking I/O similar to a Unix select()
• no-copy buffering
• file locking
• memory-mapped files

There's also a transparently obvious move to appeal to the /. audience in the form of the new Perl-style regexp handling!

Re:Huzzah!

[egg troll]

So does the US postal service, or PGP for that matter. Does that make it any less useful? No.

You're right. One can use these means to acquire child pornography. My concern with Freenet is that it could be hosted on my PC...without my knowledge of consent. Right now, its this factor that keeps me from adopting Freenet. But that's just my opinion....

As soon as you censor one thing ...

[jstockdale]

Remember that as soon as you censor one thing, you must censor everything. If the system has the ability to say restirct kiddie porn then it must have the ability to arbitrairly restrict anything, therefore undermining the system in its entirety. Also, remember that freenet functions to keep alive items that are most frequently accessed, so if the world were free of perverts we wouldn't have the problem in the first place ;)

If all content could be encrypted ....

[cyberjessy]

Computers should have encryption capabilities built into hardware

then ...

All web servers would serve encrypted content..

All you mails would be encrypted...

All filesharing would be encrypted...

Perhaps this could be done if the modem/network interface had encryption built in. (Just that I wish they were standard)

Then we wont have to look at freenets and peek-a-booties for freedom.

Re:If all content could be encrypted ....

[Single GNU Theory]

Encryption is not the same thing as anonymization, authentication, or authorization. Encryption is a method for hindering the decoding of your communications. It is not a method of disguising the identities of parties in a transaction, verifying an identity, or granting privileges to an identity.

Encryption everywhere without the rest of the infrastructure means that there is a better than average chance that the spam in your inbox has not been snooped in transit.

Re:If all content could be encrypted ....

[kippy]

Bruce Schneier said something to the effect of "encryption isn't just some fairy dust that you can sprinkle here and there and expect things to be secure". Even if there were hardware level encryption, there would need to be an infrastructure set up to make everything work together securely.

That would require everything from the read/write head of a disk to a DNS server to a java app to communicate with each other. If there is any error in implementation, nothing will be able to talk to anything else. If there are any weak security links, well, you know how chains work.

I'm not saying it can't be done, it would just require no less than a full overhaul of pretty much all computing hardware and software to conform to a complex set of security protocols. Anything less would be insecure.

It will probably survive by analogy

[Pac]

Freenet sounds like a great idea, but it's so obviously useful for such horrible uses

In the same category we already have guns, knifes, airplanes, TNT, email, television, cars. I think Freenet has a good chance.

Re:Guess I won't worry until the BSA kicks in my d

[shatfield]

Who are they going to send the letter to? You? Me? The hackers at the Freenet project? The Freenet project isn't pirating their software, the people on the network are. This is Grokster all over again. Freenet has legitimate uses, just like Grokster does... the BSA will never be able to shut it down, because it is GPL'd. The software will always be there.

And since the BSA will never know what anyone is downloading or uploading, they really have no-one to send their stupid letters to.

Freenet, saving trees one BSA letter at a time ;-)

liberty or death

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use Freenet much, but I leave my node on always. The way things are headed, freedom of speech is gettting more and more suppressed. I want to continue to support something that we may all need in the future just to communicate. We may all end up like the Chinese dissadents... just read some of the babelfished stuff on their site... can you imagine going through this?

Re:Flaw in your analogy.

[Abcd1234]

So, if someone hacks an FTP server you run and copies kiddy porn to it, that makes you liable? Somehow, I doubt that... it's called plausable deniability.

Another example, you own a field and someone grows weed on it, does that make you liable? I double that, too...

The fact is, Freenet protects the node operator because they honestly have no idea what content is on their computer. Moreover, they aren't even likely to have the full contents of any given file... only parts of it. Therefore, I suspect there's a real defence for people running Freenet nodes.

Re:There is a difference

[Lemmy Caution]

What if I want to refuse to store criticisms of the People's Republic of China on my hard drive? Or criticisms of G.W. Bush or Bill Clinton? If I find a mechanism of discerning the content on my system and becoming selective about it, then so can the people who wish to squelch the speech to begin with.

Truly free, truly anonymous speech, if speech is understood as any text or image or sound that can possibly be stored or transmitted, whether it is secrets vital to national security, pornography, slander, libel, copyright violations, or my recipe for waffles, does really demand, in this case, that someone risk hosting materials they might find detestable.

Otherwise, it's like saying "I support your right to live, but I'm not going to pull you out of the water while you're drowning." At best, the "support" is just so many words - it's really support for "nice" speech.

Re:bull

[pv2b]

The goal of bittorrent is to distribute content quickly. Anonymity is not an issue, you can easilly get IP addresses of lots of people downloading, as well as find the source of the .torrent file of the tracker.

The goal of freenet is to distribute content anonymously.

What's your point? They are two different tools, with different issues involved.

Re:+Funny moderation is skewing /.

[Anonymous Coward]

but funny mods dont give you karma, so the whores dont have a reason to post them

Re:Flaw in your analogy.

[Ultra64]

Another example, you own a field and someone grows weed on it, does that make you liable? I double that, too...

It definitely does make you liable, they will sieze your property and you will go to jail. The law doesn't care if you claim that you didn't know about it.

A little tip on priority numbers

[i_am_nitrogen]

Negative numbers are higher priority. Positive numbers are lower priority. 0 is the default priority. -20 is realtime, 19 is idle-only. So, if you set your freenet process to -15 or -18, it will take over your system. You probably want it at +19. Your CPU usage will probably still be at 100%, but when you want to do something else, freenet will be put to sleep and you shouldn't notice any sluggishness in higher priority processes, unless external requests are overloading your net connection.

Re:A little tip on priority numbers

[archen]

hehe... this reminds me of where I work where I told another admin that the backup should be niced to around 15 since I have to do one backup a week while people are still using the system, and I didn't want to drag people down. So the guy sets the nice level to -15. Next week I start the backup and man did I catch hell from irate users...

The moral of the story is to read the man page. Or if in doubt, just use nice with no argument and accept the default of 10 =P

Freenet in C

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a clone of Freenet that is written in C called Entropy. You can download it from their web site.

Re:Huzzah!

[dasmegabyte]

Actually, it will have your knowledge and your consent. You know that Freenet has, is, and will be used to deliver content you don't agree with. You consent to allow this, or you don't use freenet.

It sounds like you are not ready to be free. The first step towards freedom is the release of control. As long as somebody is able to make a decision affecting somebody else's use of the medium, then it is not free. It is censorship -- and it doesn't matter how righteous you want to get about it, it's absolutely anthithetical to Freenet.

"But Freenet could be used by pornographers, theives, or terrorists!" True. It can also be used by artists, musicians and governments. It is a tool of the oppressed, with absolutely no background checks. Hell, if I had the ability to censor Freenet, I'd stop every picture of Hitler, every hateful word, and everything pro-conservative and I'd refuse to serve requests for these things, either. In fact, self censoring scripts have been proposed to allow users to "ban" offensive keys. However, none of them would work. Because data flows over and around the machines that won't serve it. New keys will be created daily to lift the ban.

If you don't like it, use the WWW. Freenet is a big, scary idea. A big data bath of absolute freedom. I feel I'm responsible and patriotic enough to use it -- because if even one intelligent, oppressed thought floats to the surface amid the gallons of smut, it'll be worthwhile.

What???

[eclectic_echidna]

...Freenet is primarily used for the distribution of noncopyrighted material at this time. It is actively being used in countries like China by dissidents to distribute censored information...

...and offer superior anonymity in the process...

I though that it was anonymous. How do we know that Chinese rebels are using it???

Re:Anonymity?

[shatfield]

Easy. All communications in and out are encrypted. Your usage data just shows that you at IP [w.x.y.z] connected to IP [a.b.c.d] on such-n-such date and time, and transmitted some unintelligable data. It doesn't say what you did there, or every how you did it, aside from a port number that you used.
Without certain peices of information, they would have no case.

RIAA: "Your honor, we show here that said defendant connected to this other person at noon on the 15th. We suspect that they downloaded a copyrighted song file!"

Judge: "And which song was it?"

RIAA: "We have no idea, your honor, and they won't tell us!(stomps around courtroom and waves fist in the air)"

Defendant: "I'll use the Chewbacca defense! If it doesn't make sense, you must aquit!"

Judge: "The defendant has countersued you for his attorney fees. I find for the defendant on the grounds that you have wasted all of our time here today. His lawyer fees came to $5,000,000. Now pay up."

You can't misuse the GPL with it

[sterno]

Well let's see, if you distributed the source of the file, you'd be in compliance. If you distributed the binary without the source, you'd be out of compliance, but who would want it? Yeah, I trust some version of software I downloaded over a P2P network that refuses to give me source code.

So what else would you do? Modify it? Okay fine, modify it. Then what? How am I going to know that this file even exists to download?

Ultimately something like Freenet doesn't really do anything to GPL software because the fundamental thing that freenet alters, distribution, is already completely kosher under the GPL.

bittorrent within freenet?

[gladbach]

The only question I have, is would it be possible to do something like bittorrent from w/in freenet?

The KP problem...

[NotInTheBox]

Basicly the problem I see is that in the production of KP, childeren are being hurt.
In the distribution there is no one who gets hurt. The comsuption of porn will damage the user (addict) more then they already are, and they will loose every sense of reality.

Think of it: Images only becomes porn if someone uses it in that way. A bitmap is no more then a collection of numbers. -- one day you can make a tool the could generate the image you wanted -- No one got hurt in the process. Would you then still object to the images?
(I would object to you wanting to make these images...)

Regretably there are to many people in the world who enjoy looking at KP, imho they should be locked away for a very very long time. Regretably there are people how do anything for a buck, even rape childeren, imho they should be executed.

However: The only way to get ride of KP has nothing to do with distibution. The only solution is that we need beter people. People who value life, truth and people more then money or there own selfish impulses. Who would not think of childeren in that way...

Therefore: if this has nothing to do with distribution, then it has nothing to do with Freenet.

Absurd

[poptones]

Your argument is absurd - posting pictures in the front yard is not at all akin to hosting pictures where someone must request them - but even it if weren't ridiculous you should learn a little history (and some sociology as well). In many places nudity is illegal - you ok with that? In other places pictures of children "having sex" (simulated or otherwise) is not strictly policed - and, in fact, it wasn't even illegal in the US until the 1970's. It should be completely obvious to any thinking individual that this censorship has done nothing at all to "protect" children.

In fact it has arguably harmed both individuals and the greater of our society. Harmed not only directly from the heightened stigma associated with this behavior (which discourages open discussion of the problem, thus further isolating people from seeking treatment), but also because of the witch hunts this stigma has incited, leading to the destruction of a great many lives: (innocent) parents and the children of those parents whose lives were destroyed.

Yes, free speech is all about "shit you don't like." That you and so many others have been so completely brainwashed by the thought police running washington and the allegedly "free" press shows just how fragile freedom is. Polls in Singapore have shown that, by and large, the people think government censorship is a good thing; your comments are emblematic that same brainwashing right here in the good ol' "Land of the free."

What do you get for pretending the danger's not real?
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel...

Re:Correct me if i'm wrong, why not FreeNet-Napste

[paganizer]

There are a couple of good user interfaces for Freenet; the best is probably FROST, which includes messaging and searching.
look in the "tools" section of the freenet site.

Excuse me? Lack of index?

[Myself]

There are at least half a dozen reliable index sites within Freenet itself, and several of them are linked to from the gateway page.

Why would you want an index outside of freenet anyway? Holding such a thing on a regular web server means your access can be tracked and logged, which defeats the purpose!

There's plenty to look at in Freenet. I'd bet a significant sum that you haven't tried it recently.

Re:Free speech isn't the issue...

[gilgongo]

By that logic you would be in favour of outlawing the telephone system, since I can use that to make a drug deal, or incite racial hatred.

Or what about beds? I can have sex with minors in my bed. Make beds illegal!

You're right - it's not about free speech, but it *is* about balance. Balancing the good with the evil.

If you can find a way to design Freenet so that kiddie porn is difficult or impossible to upload without altering the system so much as to make it useless for everybody, then go ahead.

Re:Freenet Blocker - is it possible?

[dasmegabyte]

It has been done. It was pretty worthless. It may still be in process, but it is not a part of Freenet. It's a hacked client and you're welcome to use it.

But you should know that the reason it was worthless is that keys in freenet are so easy to create that the second one got blocked, and published to a block list, you could resubmit the same file with a new key. Which would also have a different file size and CRC.

So, no way to identify offensive files until they download and decrypt. So, no useful mechanism to censor them. But a very useful mechanism for filling your hard drive with a useless black list.

It doesn't help, besides. If your computer refuses to serve a file, clients will just request around you. And thanks to the ease of changing keys, you're still not protected from having offensive material on your PC.

Lots of work with no benefit always seems suspicious to me...

How to make Freenet suck less: Leave it running!

[Myself]

For the Freenet newbie: This is NOT your plain jane filesharing program! You don't just point it at files and say "let people leech these". Freenet is a transport layer. Most users access it through a browser, retrieving HTML and images stored within Freenet. It's also possible to use it as a messageboard, file repository, and more.

When you start up Freenet, you give it some disk space to use as a "datastore". This starts empty, and fills itself up over time as your node participates in the network.

When you click a link in Freenet, your web browser requests the key (sort of like a url) from your local node. Assuming your node doesn't have the key, it asks another node for it, which then asks another and another until the key is located. The data is then passed back up the chain to your node, and along the way some of the intermediate nodes keep a copy.

In this manner, popular content propagates in Freenet. By leaving your node running (and making sure it's actively participating in the network, serving requests) you'll allow it to store some of the keys that make up Freenet's content. When you use your node, it's likely that some of the keys you want are already stored there.

Routing is similar. When you first install Freenet, it has knowledge of a few "seed nodes", and that's all it knows about. As your node talks to the seed nodes, they tell it about other nodes, and your routing table grows. This makes you less dependent on the seed nodes (which are probably melting today).

A new system in Freenet called "probabilistic caching" results in a certain amount of specialization, and a significant performance improvement. It's based on keys (which are cryptographic hashes of content) and node IDs (which are crypto keys). Both are fairly randomly distributed, numerically. Here's how PCaching works:

If your node ID ends in 0x3F, then when your node participates in the chain for a piece of data whose key ends in 0x3F, it's very likely to keep a copy. When your node handles other keys, it might still keep a copy but it's not as likely. Likewise when you request a key that ends in 0xD3, that request will be passed, if possible, to a node whose ID also ends in 0xD3. This is a simplified explanation and I'm not a Freenet coder, but that's how it's been explained to me.

Obviously, the larger and more up-to-date your routing table is, the more easily your node can find the pages you request. Being an active part of the network is the best way for your node to keep a healthy routing table and a relevant datastore.

Freenet is unique among p2p apps in that your user experience actually improves if you contribute more bandwidth and space. (Bandwidth is much more important than drive space. 100 nodes with datastores of 1 gig each will make a much bigger impact on the network than 1 node with a 100 gig datastore!)

Bandwidth usage...

[pla]

10/5 on DSL adds less than 1ms to my ping on ut2k3

The biggest factor that keeps me from using Freenet comes from the bandwidth requirement. I have a nice fat cablemodem connection, on a non-saturated segment, so I get GREAT rates, both up- and down-stream.

However, I officially have a 2GB/month cap (fortunately my ISP has yet to enforce it, since I use 5-6GB in a typical month). As slow as it sounds, 10Kbps, continuously used, would effectively consume slightly over my monthly cap. That strikes me as a SERIOUS problem. Realistically, I would need to set it to 1kbps up and down to leave room for my "normal" net use, and that just doesn't seem either fair to other users or convenient for me, IMO.

Re:Bandwidth usage...

[Realistic_Dragon]

You can set a max data transfer for it. Once it's done, it just shuts down. Or you can run it when you use it, it just won't be as fast.

Re:RIAA and 30 years of permission to copy

[dasmegabyte]

They don't have to show you anything. All they have to do is prove to the jury that your file sharing harmed their industry.

Legislation is against human nature. If we weren't all naturally inclined to steal candy bars, shoplifting wouldn't be illegal. The RIAA is trying to tell the world that what you are doing is just as wrong, morally speaking, and as long as the people signing the papyrus and reading the verdicts believe what the RIAA is telling them, it's going to be illegal.

You know, a lot of murderers don't understand why what they did is wrong. This doesn't get them free.

Your recourse in this battle over the freedom of music is twofold: one, you can stop trading and fight tooth and nail in the courts and on the streets to legalize it. Or two, you can just make sure you don't get caught.

Ask the millions of Americans who smoke marijuana, drive over the speed limit and don't pay their fair share of taxes which of these two courses of action is most effective.

Re:Dynamic IP, router...

[Rob Simpson]

That isn't from the FAQ, it's a little note hidden in the middle of the logfile. The FAQ just gives a bit of info on using a firewall/NAT. Mentioning it in the FAQ, mentioning the steps needed if you use both, and providing a link to somewhere where one might acquire a dynamic dns hostname, and how to set it up - that might be helpful.

Just an idea..

[jetmarc]

> Freenet's about PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

What about this idea to increase the deniability: Imagine a trojan
that installs Freenet on the infected machine and makes it part of
the network, then erases all traces of itself. This trojan could be
put up on a web site, with a notification to the usual anti-virus
companies.

Later, when someone gets under legal pressure for running a Freenet
node, he could claim that he didn't install it. He didn't know he
was running that "Freenet thing". Most probably it was installed by
a Trojan, and in fact there is one known to do just this (reference
to anti-virus company press release).

That would be even more plausible deniability, wouldn't it?

Marc

Freenet is *not* risk-free.

[autopr0n]

All Freenet does is spread around the liability. If I own a copyrighted peice of information, and I find you sharing a copy of it, I have every right to ask you to stop, and take you to court if you refuse.

With Freenet, all I need to do is record the IP address of people who I got the data from. It doesn't matter if they were the ones who posted the key in the first place. If I can verify that you were serving my IP, you're liable for it.

The firing squad

[DoctorFrog]

This is the same scenario as the firing squad -- everyone knows that one gun contains a blank, but noone knows which one it is... therefore each person has a lingering hope that they were the one with the blank.

Not exactly. The blanks prevent anyone else (such as the deceased's buddies) from knowing who fired the fatal shot. The soldier firing the blank knows it; blanks mostly just make noise, firing a lead slug at high velocity makes the gun kick back against your shoulder with unmistakable force.

The analogy does work for the originator, though; the non-paedophiles (deceased's buddies) won't know who fired the shot (put the kiddie porn on Freenet). The one who did fire the shot (the pervert) will know it, though.

What Freenet's anonymity offers is the ability to leave moral choices (in the manner of its use) completely up to the individual conscience. The price of that is that you have to leave the manner in which others use it up to their individual consciences.

Not Anonymous, Not Deniable?

[zero_offset]

Do yourself a favor and carefully read the security section of the Freenet FAQ. The two big draws for Freenet are anonymity and plausible deniability, and both have issues people need to be aware of.

One highly relevant quote about anonymity:

Freenet does not offer true anonymity in the way that the Mixmaster and cypherpunk remailers do. Most of the non-trivial attacks (advanced traffic analysis, compromising any given majority of the nodes, etc.) that these were designed to counter would probably be successful in identifying someone making requests on Freenet. On Freenet, whatever you do, your identity is still revealed to the first Freenet Node you talk to, and even if you limit yourself to talk only to trusted nodes (a feature that will be implemented in the future), they will have to talk to the rest of the network at some time or another. The anonymity that Freenet offers is really just obscurity in the fact that it is hard to prove that your node wasn't proxying the request for or insert of data on behalf of somebody else (who might also just have been proxying it).

And another quote highly relevant to plausible deniability (which is effectively what Freenet relies upon to store potentially controversial content on any connected node, hopefully without exposing that node's owner to prosecution for hosting that content):

Hashing the key and encrypting the data is not meant a method to keep Freenet Node operators from being able to figure out what type of information is in their nodes if they really want to (after all, they can just find the key in the same way as someone who requests the information would) but rather to keep operators from having to know what information is in their nodes if they don't want to. This distinction is more a legal one than a technical one. It is not realistic to expect a node operator to try to continually collect and/ or guess possible keys and then check them against the information in his node (even if such an attack is viable from a security perspective), so a sane society is less likely to hold an operator liable for such information on the network.

They are clearly moving in the right direction, but are they really there yet? Would it be possible, for example, for the RIAA to say, "Hey everybody, this free application will help you decrypt your Freenet node so that you can ensure you're not infringing," and then they're free to nail if you if you're "trafficking" in illegal files? Obviously there are other hurdles (such as identifying you and the content you're hosting), but I suspect the basic idea still describes a potentially unpleasant scenario.

Also, I saw a slashdot reply to another article recently (somebody help me here?) which quoted a legal decision (somehow involving Sony?) which pretty clearly stated that you're still considered guilty if the prosecution can prove that you were intentionally trying to avoid having knowledge of what you suspected was illegal activity for the sole purpose of using that as a defense later on. (At least, that's how I interpreted it... I wish I could find the citation.) Freenet seems to fall flat on it's face in this respect.

Don't get me wrong, I've been fascinated with Freenet and I think they're trying to do a Very Good Thing, but these are two points that I think are important which a lot of people overlook.

Heh, ironically, slashdot is currently showing me this quote: Be careful how you get yourself involved with persons or situations that can't bear inspection. :)