MUTE: Simple, Private File Sharing

oohp writes "MUTE is a new file sharing network that provides easy search and download functionality while protecting your privacy. It does this by routing all messages through a network of neighbour connections, using virtual addresses and encrypting all the traffic (using RSA for public/private keys and AES for the actual encryption). MUTE's routing mechanism is inspired by ant behaviour. The program is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X."

Comments

Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[corebreech]

...with the same strengths (privacy) and weaknesses (slow).

My asymmetrical DSL connection just won't work well with a system like this. I don't have the bandwidth to act as a node that relays data for the sake of maintaining your anonymity. If we all had T3 connections in our home this would be great, but we don't.

An A for effort though. Implementations on most of the major platforms, with source code, and a neat analogy to how ants work to make it all understandable to the lay audience. Nifty.

(interesting that this story gets posted the day the federal appeals court forbids exactly the tactic by the RIAA this software attempts to work around.)

Re:Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[Adolph_Hitler]

actually Ian Clarke in his first paper stated he was inspired by ants.

Re:Seems an awful lot like Freenet...

[Doomdark]

This means that for every file delivered, more than one node is labored with the uploading of this file, and given that, for most people, upstream bandwidth is a rather limited resource, the ultimate consequence will be that the system will be slow as compared to one where the files are sent directly, e.g., FastTrack or gnutella.

Not necessarily, in theory (in practice, probably). If routing is done in a way similar to wireless ad hoc routing is supposed to be done, it could just mean that routing decisions are not done end-to-end, but by independent routing (and encrypting) nodes. Thus, there need not necessarily be additional unnecessary nodes; theoretically it could even reach better routing decisions, since it's not (just) your ISPs router trying to optimize based on financial reasons ("we have deal with MCI and thus we'll go from NY to LA and then back to Boston, instead of using direct route"). Your other point (asymmetric connections) is still valid though...

In practice it is likely that optimal behaviour won't be achieved, esp. in cases where endpoints are reasonably close to each other (in which case guaranteeing anonymity prevents best shortcuts). However, it really comes down to how well implementation works, not that specification dictates bad performance; and also in your usage patterns. If you want to swap files with your neighbour, this would be pretty suboptimal; but that's probably not very common use case. Inter-continental transfer, on the other hand, may not be much less efficient than "direct" connections.

Re: Bandwdth

[doublebackslash]

One user mentioned a bandwidth concern, I would like a adress it.
I was working on a project like this, and am now looking into contributing to GNUNet, a similar project. My framework had peers moving data in a similar way as these ants. The way I looked at it was that most of the time I select some files, let them download, and come back later. I'm sure the downloading takes only ten or twentey minues, but I'm at work or busy otherwise. Once I'm done downlaoding my computer just sits there folding. The bandwidth is going un-used!
There is plenty of bandwith sitting idle out there, so long as the ants are clever enough to avoid busy relays noone will really notice the drop in their performance. I think that they would have a similar approach (it seems it would work this way as a concequene of their ant design).
I sincerely hope that one of these true P2P private networks takes off in a big way, till then I will support them in every way I can.

Re:A plea for responsible advocacy.

[WNight]

Do you really think the RIAA would change, even if all unauthorized copying stopped overnight?

DVD region codes were added to protect a business model, not to stop piracy. (I know that's the MPAA not the RIAA.) They didn't pay for laws like the DMCA to stop people copying, that was already actionable. They paid for these laws to force people to watch commercials at the beginning of disks, and keep from importing movies from North America to other regions before the theatrical release. In other words, they wanted the government to pass laws protecting their lazy business models. "We don't want to spend to money to make the product available in a timely fashion - please prevent anyone from filling this niche before we get to it."

The RIAA is just as scuzzy in different ways. They pay the radio stations to play their music, but they also provide extra incentives for stations that only play RIAA content. They're actively involved in shutting out any competition, they complain about how expensive their business is and how they can't afford to pay artists much, yet the music industry is fantastically profitable - they complain when the industry doesn't keep growing at the expected rate. They use accounting tricks to make it appear that they lost money, yet if you believe their figures they should be billions in the hole, not incredibly rich.

That's why I don't feel sorry for the effects of this - they could have played fair and they'd have gotten much more respect and cooperation for everyone.

As to why I feel it's fair to use a copyright (the GPL for instance) to protect code designed to break copyright it two-fold.

First, we must be free to break the law, or uphold it, or we have no freedoms. Many times, the actions seen as 'right' in a historical context have been illegal. The Boston tea party, the American revolution, the underground railroad, the underground railroad in Nazi Germany, the French Revolution. Some of these were undertaken for no more than financial concerns - the American revolution for example, but it ended up allowing a nation to self-govern.

The point is that freedom requires the freedom to do the wrong thing, and that that wrong thing may end up being right in retrospect. We can't allow a circumstance where people aren't allowed to tinker with their belongings, as is currently the case with DVDs. To tolerate this is to tolerate much greater future injustice.

Second, while I respect the stated intention of copyrights, "to encourage creators to create by providing a financial incentive", I see that this isn't free to society. Providing an unnatural monopoly (Unnatural in that it's natural to see what someone is doing or saying and incorporate those actions or words into your own. Ideas flow naturally.) costs society. We're intended to get "paid" for this by the new works being created which will eventually enter into the public domain.

Copyright law as it stands today is untrue to those stated goals and unfair to one half of the equation - the citizens who pay for these protections and yet see absolutely no benefit. Current copyrights last so long that nobody who is alive today's children will be alive when the copyright on this post expires. How is this supposed to "give back" when you could be slapped down in court for quoting more than a line, even in direct response to me? The protections are too long, the punishments for violation are unreasonble, and the agreement is getting even more lop-sided.

For these reasons I fight against the modern view of copyright as the divine right of big corporations to borrow any pre-existing content, yet forbid everyone from even thinking of basing anything on their content.

I'm not anti-copyright, nor are most people, but we are anti-overboard-american-copyright-and-dmca.

I'm not rich, so my voice on this issue is worthless in Hollywood and in government. I'm one person, and one vote (unless I get a job at Diebold), so nobody cares what I have to say. I have to act, and if that req

Re:Perhaps one should ask why it is asymmetric

[Anonymous Coward]

So why can I get a 1500 down/ 768 up line for a reasonable amount, but a 768 up / 768 down line costs me more, not less, money?
It's obviously not a problem with physical allocation of the DSL line bandwidth.