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Freenet Project More Stable, In Need
An anonymous reader writes "The Freenet Project is asking for donations to help keep their main programmer, Matthew Toseland. After a long time, finally Freenet, software which 'lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship' is working fine (and fast) again, since their overload problems are almost completely fixed. They even plan to write a paper about the overload problems. If you want to try, be sure to run the latest stable or unstable snapshot."
Welcome to the new world of Open Source, courtesy of the GNU Manifesto.
Freenet is what the web was before big-business began to gather it in its claws - a true forum for free speech. Well worth donating to.
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
Many may, and probably will, complain that Freenet is slow, doesn't work, etc. This is why Freenet needs your donations. Matt has brought Freenet's speed back up to where it used to be before all the routing problems. I remember when you used to be able to DL movies off of Freenet at reasonable speeds. And it's a given the 'child porn on my computer' argument is going to be brought up with the Free Speech for everything but that! vs the Free Speech Perdiod zealots fighting it out.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
What about the Communist dissidents in countries like China where their government won't let them publish their views? Should they also be deprived of their freedom of expression?
--
Adobe's anti-counterfeiting softw
fails to solve a problem that doesn't exist
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
I agree. The trouble is we do not all live in countries which draw a liberal line at law enforcement. FreeNET is a great idea spoiled by the rotting compost in our society which puts so many off.
BTW - if you are unaware - unlike most P2P systems, on FreeNET you do not choose what material to share, rather it gets stored (and served from) your computer according to the network-wide demand. So if someone uploads kiddie porn to the network it may be stored on your computer for others to download. Because of its anonymous nature (well, nearly) it is very attractive for people who may want to bypass local law enforcement - i.e., those that wish to engage in unlawful activities will be disproportionatly drawn to it.
I'm glad that they claim to have fixed those issues, because I seriously love the concept, and I'm jumping at the chance to try it again.
I don't believe in freedom of speech as an absolute right. It's not. The principle is "You're freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." In other words, the obligation to do no harm trumps the right to free speech. I'm free to call you an asshole, because presumably that does no harm. However, I'm not free to publish your credit card numbers! How does this relate to Freenet? I don't know... most of the anonymous remailers got shut down due to their inability to prevent themselves from being used for criminal behavior. What checks does Freenet have in place to preserve privacy, and yet prevent the distribution of illegal material? Do the developers beleive in an absolute right to distribute copyrighted material, or child porn?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Well, I downloaded and installed this java client only to find out the Freenet is not yet searchable. I've read several articles about the freenet over the last few years but have never figured out how to find anything of value (to me) on it.
In fact, further reading of the FAQ states that if you don't want your node to harbor child porn, you should not run a Freenet node.
I'm all for freedom of speech but i don't support anyone who would take other's freedom away. Child porn is exploitative and robs children of their childhood. The concept of freedom of speech is only useful if it promotes freedom. For example, supporting the right of Nazi freedom of speech can only lead to the growth of a movement that wants to take your freedom away. Logistically, this makes absolutely no sense to me.
I'm uninstalling the freenet, sorry.
Funny, THEMians criticizing the United States' legal system without understanding it. We believe the same thing here, epitomized by the famous hypothetical that you don't have the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater because of the stampede danger.
Apparently its hard to pay the bills with "free" these days.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
The inverse is also true. What if YOU had something you needed to say but couldn't?
What about the Communist dissidents in countries like China where their government won't let them publish their views? Should they also be deprived of their freedom of expression?
If Freenet is so useful to dissidents, then an oppressive government will simply make its use and distribution illegal. They don't need to monitor what's actually being traded on it by specific individuals.
What if it was YOU that had your personal information dragged all through freenet from an Ex-Wife or Disgruntal banker? I bet then you would wish for some control to the service.
No, I would be going after my ex-wife or banker, not complaining about freenet.
Without censorship,
Our kinds will be teenage sluts, working for pyramid groups, worshiping some pagan god, while indulging in transgender, transpecies, disgusting courtship rituals that involves ritualistic sacrifices of viginity, then eBaying their souls to the lowest bidder, which of course is horrible since it strays from our capitalistic ways and eventually turn us all into slutty transgendered pagan communists.
Anyways.. in our society where we expect the world to educate our kids, we're not ready to move away from censorship.
Hmmm....I'm failing to follow your logic. Please explain the part in between "no censorship" and "all hell breaking loose".
Thanks.
...but I don't believe in freedom of speech as an absolute right.
Why? When is it ok to silence speech? When it goes against something you belive in? I personally don't agree with your post
but that doesn't mean that I think you shouldn't be allowed to speak your opinion.
"The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think." - Picard
It did help, I for one value the freedoms I have and believe freenet is one of the things required to protect these freedoms.
In short I donated $20.
-- You can be a geeklord too
The version on the download page is ancient. If you read VERY CAREFULLY to the bottom of the download page then you might end up running the "upgrade.sh" script which might actually give you performance. Then after about a day of struggle you may stumble upon the "Nubile Tutorial" so that you actually know how to use Freenet.
It had always seemed that Freenet leadership is obsessively interested in getting press, yet at the same time embarrased enough by the actual system that they make it impossible for anyone but the most dedicated techies to get started using it. Considering that at startup some of the first content encountered is (quite unfortunately) child pornography collections, I wouldn't be surprised if this is almost intentional to keep the Press talking about the high ideals without seeing the current reality. Maybe it's even best for the project at this stage.
If freenet is to succeed, and we all desperately need it to, it's going to have to make itself both USABLE and RESPECTABLE. That means new potential users should not be confronted with stomach wrenching content even if such things are available by the nature of the system.
-braddock
Freenet will blatantly be used for child porn, and probably already is. While I'm sure there are lots of chinese people who will find value in it, there are lots of child pr0nographers rubbing their dirty little fucking hands with glee. "Oh look, something free and uncensored! Better puts some child porn on it! (uploads)."
Yeah, free speech is nice, but at the same time providing free speech to child pornographers and Nazis is both hypocritical and wrong.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Is a fact of life. There is NO way to prevent it when people want it.
Be it on freenet, the open web, or the US-mail.
If that offends you then dont contribute time/energy/resoruces/money to freenet.
Oh, and dont buy stamps, or buy gas or anything else.. As there is nothing in this world that isnt tainted somehow..
Just get used to it, and move on.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> Freenet contains NO spyware or adware , it's Free
> Software!
But it requires the Sun JRE, which is proprietary bloatware.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
After installing FreeNET and trying it out , I couldn't care less about its claims to be a conduit for freedom of speech. Along those lines, I also couldn't care less about poor, oppressed people in communist countries who aren't allowed to express their views, if they try to express them via FreeNET
FreeNET claims to provide an safe haven for people to exchange information without fear of oppression or censorship. What FreeNET is (whether or not by design) is a "harbor house" of sorts for child pornographers, terrorists, and other criminals.
You may argue (as the FreeNET team does), that a few bad apples are just spoiling the bunch, but next time you log on to FreeNET, count how many of the afforementioned links are available (and towards the top of all the lists).
As far as I'm concerned (and I am not a lawyer, but I have studied the U.S. Constitution in-depth), free speech extends to speech. It does not extend to breaking laws revolving around child endangerment and molestation and civil rights violations and hiding behind it by claiming it's protected by the right to free speech.
In fact, having something like FreeNET tied to the open source community could have a harmfully negative impact upon it. Imagine the FUD campaigns if people started pointing to the material available on FreeNET (sure, they'd be baseless arguments, but they'd be playing on people's emotions). Rebuttal to the FUD might be that such material is freely available from other sources, however that argument would fall short in the eyes of the public because FreeNET is forever tied to the open source community
Just some things to think about before you consider donating (time or money) to the FreeNET project
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
Wait a sec...
Are the dissidents communists, or are those oppressing them communists?
Your statement makes very little sense. Communism is an economic system - and an economic system has very little to do with freedom of speech.
(Actually, communism may have more of an effect upon freedom of speech, but in the case of communism as an economy, it actually HELPS it)
China's government is communist (though it's becoming arguable with the humungous amount of foreign trade going on). However, it is also a dictatorship (and a somewhat fascist one at that) - a dictatorship certainly supresses civil liberties.
India is communist by popular election. No system of government which supresses personal freedoms as China does would be acceptable to the masses. And you certainly don't see these violations of civil liberties in India today.
Looks like you're still feeling the ill effects of Senator McCarthy (America's worst politian. Ever)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
What checks does Freenet have in place to preserve privacy, and yet prevent the distribution of illegal material?
That's kind of the point. Illegal != immoral != harmful. It's up to each individual user to determine whether what they're doing is "right" or "wrong". Is it wrong to wail against communism? The Chinese government thinks so. Is it wrong to spread child porn? The U.S. government thinks so. But, what does the USER think. It's THEIR responsibility to do the right thing rather than the government forcing them to do it. I must say, I don't participate in freenet because I'm not convinced that the benefits of using my computer to help spread democratic propaganda away from the prying eyes of the Chinese government outweights the negatives of some sick fuck using it to spread kiddy porn, but that's MY decision, not the governments.
When you rely on the government to hold people to certain standards, you're just asking for trouble. Look at the gay marriage thing. Does it hurt anybody? No. Still, there are people who say it's right and people who say it's wrong. The government wants to stick it's big nose in the mess now and that's just begging for trouble. They'll try to legislate morality which is just plain nuts. The government is hear to PROTECT and SERVE the public, not be a self-appointed moral watchdog. Freenet is an interesting experiment in putting the power of deciding one's own moral course back in the hands of individuals.
Unlike the screwball grandparent poster, I like Freenet in principle, I'm just not convinced that I like it in practice...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
What I want to say is free anoynomous speech has it's draw backs.
And this free anonymous speech can be filtered, since it is free, and it is anonymous. Filtered in the sense that I'm more likely to trust something my mom says than some voice I hear whispered in a subway. We've gotta teach our kids to moderate that free speech and figure out if it's trustworthy or not, before they let it convince them to become teenage sluts building pyramids for alien-worshipping monkey gods, or whatever it was you alluded to. Anything you read on Freenet should be treated as an unfounded rumor. Which doesn't do much good for our Chinese dissidents, I guess.
The difference is that only popular items becomes memes as they are spread to other servers when requested.
Things that are not popular eventually go away as the servers they are on smoke them when more popular content is downloaded.
So, if your server is storing lots of kiddie porn (and there's no way to tell without trying to download it and seeing how fast it goes), then that means many people are downloading it...which means that you are probably living next to child pornographers, and probably have some in your church, synagogue, temple, job, and home.
Hell, you might even be one yourself and not even know it.
Yeah, right.
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.
Personally, I think the only way to stop kiddie porn is at the source. Removing the transport medium will only lead to those involved seeking another medium, and there's always SneakerNet.
> What FreeNET is (whether or not by design) is a "harbor house" of sorts for
> child pornographers, terrorists, and other criminals.
You mean `the internet is...`. So why are you using it. Perhaps you should stop using the phone, postal system, visiting libraries etc.
You can only make the world a better place with information. Ultimately, it is better than ignorance, even if you can pick a few examples of the downside.
I'm still at a loss as to how the internet can help terrorists. What can they now do that they couldn't do before with phone calls? Likewise for "criminals" in general.
I think the internet is a godsend for police and other agencies trying to track down child pornographers.
apparently, our biggest beef with freenet is that it is littered with child pornography, and a demand for child pornography leads to more of it being made, and therefore more abused and exploited children. however, freenet is free, as in beer, as is all of the content. so what do the pornographers get from having their collections on freenet, and how does it lead to more child porn being made?
> It was an interesting social experiment, but it's served its purpose, and IMO
> the time to pull the plug is long overdue.
If it's popular, people will use it. Which third party should pull the plug?
> Ian, Matt: You made your point -- absolute anonymity means we'll have to face
> some things we don't like. Now pull the plug before someone gets killed.
LOL! You drama queen! I love Slashdot! "Oooh, look at my serious face! I am the conscience of the internet, and I have determined that that is a Bad Thing!" What, so things can happen now with the internet which couldn't have happened before? No doubt you're thinking of bomb making or something? That's the example you always here. You know how easy it is to make an explosive? They practically tell you how on the news every time there's an attack on the American troops currently occupying Iraq, or on Israelis.
Seriously.
Nearly all of the posts i'm seeing talk about how horrible freenet is because it may be used for child pornography or other illegal things and then go on to say that freenet should not exist and how terrible they must be etc. etc. I've even seen posts saying (to paraphrase) 'everyone should have free speech except kiddie pornographers and nazis'.
get a clue and go fuck yourselves! If you want to filter what someone says because you dont agree with it than it's not really free speech, is it?
Further, these morons arguing against freenet are using the same argument i see used so fervently in defense of DeCSS or any other tool that allows them to pirate music or do something 'cool'...
'Hey! you cant make this tool illegal! Just because I have a card programmer doesnt mean I am stealing. i have rights, man! Free speech!'
So, which is it?
(a) Tool X can be used for illegal things and therefore should be banned.
(b) Tool X can be used for illegal things. It does, however, serve useful, legitimate purposes. Keep it legal.
I vote for option B myself.
The solution is, of course, easy. Accept that you cannot solve social problems by technical measures. Censorship and political oppresion are political problems, they will be solved by political changes or not at all. A P2P network might be a tool usefull for those working on these change, but it is neither sufficient on its own, nor is it really neccessary.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Personally, I think the only way to stop kiddie porn is at the source. What are you doing to do, follow everyone with video cameras until they reveal they are a pervet?
Removing the transport medium will only lead to those involved seeking another medium, and there's always SneakerNet. The thing is, the internet (server based or direct P2P) is not an anonymous communication medium, people are liable, so the source can be more easily found. Providing an electronic transportation medium to them that is making their life easy and removing the kind of back-tracking that could be done in a conventional internet transfer. Sneaker-net takes us back 20 years when there are organised groups which could be infiltrated by law-enforcement. By endorsing FreeNET you make the paedophile's life easier and effectively remove any possibility to trace tem.
But FreeNET helps freedom of speech in China you may ask... Well just punish anyone you find with FreeNET on their computer to death! Perhaps the People's Firewall (sic) could reject packets which appeared to be encrypted (or all non-web traffic, as pointed out earlier). 'Tackhead' made an excellent post earlier.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
It's impossible. If an authority can declare a file illegal, it will be abused. We cannot make the system safe for chinese dissidents publishing files that happen to be illegal locally (most political or religious texts, for example), while being able to censor it in the West.
There's a huge difference between tolerating something and actively propagating it.
Stick with your decision, but know that child porn isn't exhalted or even condoned on Freenet, and it isn't even specifically accepted as a necessary evil. Freenet merely redistributes in-demand files (as collections of bytes like all others) across a network in a way to prevent the ability of any party to suppress them or know their originator. This is to guarantee freedom of speech and expression. That some combinations of bytes form graphics that any responsible and/or balanced person would find repugnant, doesn't change the fact that they're still just bytes which freenet can't distinguish from "Das Capital", a treatise on democracy in China, a mirror of RIAA subpoenas or the latest episode of Enterprise.
If you want a system that can censor a particular kind of data, it would require a central authority to make that judgement -- and the entire point of a decentralized network of expression is lost.
where'd my typewriter go?
This is not correct. Your node will contain information that you requested or somebody else requested through your node. That's where the plausable deniability comes in. Thre's no way to tell if you personally requested that data. In fact, if an investigator requests kiddieporn through your node, it's equally likely that it's his request that placed the kiddieporn on your node.
Ultimately, the security of freenet relies on the premises of plauable deniability and entrapment. The authorities can't prove whether you're the originator of questionable content or just one of a number of random proxies passing it along.
SO, in the end, the protections freenet offers are alot less than it's creators would have you believe. If your government/legal system allows entrapment or ignores plusable deniability, then you're screwed.
An interesting sidenote is that KaZaA (and clients under the fastrak network) had the exact same problem in the begining when it's popularity sprung up....
Actually - you're not storing pron or any files. You're storing a partial of encrypted file. You never store an entire file - just an encrypted segment of a file.
Let us say that I'm a member of a organization that is strict Constitutionalist, or in other words, believes in a LITERAL interpretation of the Constitution of the U.S.; Or I was a fundy Mormon (Polygamist). Or a member of ELF.
That would make me a terrorist to the current administration.
Let us say also that the Administration was making use of advances in Science to monitor dissidents communications, purchases, library visits, how many times you go the bathroom each days, etc.
Freenet is a neccesary evil, much like lawyers.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
By the most sensible definition of location of data, the child porn is not on your computer.
What you have on your computer is indistinguishable by all known statistical tests from random noise. The sum of this pseudo-random data on all nodes, viewed in a particular way, i.e. through a suitable client, is the Freenet network. The child porn is there, all right - if you're sick enough to seek it out. But the nature of Freenet means that no mapping can be found between data in it, and encrypted data on nodes. That's the whole point. So why worry? If there was a scheme by which you mailed your hard drive to some island and they added it to a pool of storage anyone could access, would you have the same qualms about your disk being possibly contaminated?
What good is a node whose CPU and memory are hardly used, but fullfills no requests because the network is screwed up?
Priority 1: Create secure, anonymous, decentralized network
Priority 2: Get network reasonably functional
Priority 3: Get resource usage reasonably low
Priority 4: Get network running very well
Priority 5: Get resource usage way down
Right now, I'd say they're working towards 3 and 4, and doing a damn fine job at it. When you can design a functional, anonymous, secure, scalable, and fault-tolerant network, and have each and every node use minimal resources, feel free to let the Freenet team know. Until then, either run a node, or don't run a node - donate, or don't. But don't sit there and complain with no useful suggestions, corrections, help, or ideas to offer.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I believe in the principles of Freenet.
I am willing to dedicate disk space
I am on a broadband connection where I can affort x GB / week.
I have tried freenet carefully setting the supposed bandwidth controls. At first everything was fine, but as days and weeks went by my node got more and more popular. Eventually it was way above the limits I had set and I could find no way to throttle it back to a reasonable rate, so I was forced to remove the service. This was far more problem than even it's slow speed -- it made it impossible for the average user to use. Normal users get into trouble if their bandwidth usage keeps going up without limit. I also run web pages that eventually become unusable if they get too much competition. That is the make-or-break feature for me. I must have bandwidth controls that put a real cap on bandwidth.
"I couldn't care less about its claims to be a conduit for freedom of speech."
"It does not extend to breaking laws revolving around child endangerment and molestation and civil rights violations and hiding behind it by claiming it's protected by the right to free speech."
Personally, I think you're totally crazy. A digital camera and a CD burner might seem like ideal tools for publishing child pr0n. Should they be illegal? Should I say that I couldn't care less about their non-infringing uses? You're just another hypocrite who hates the DMCA for it's effects on non-infringing uses, but at the same time is more than happy to kill a project like FreeNET because it can be used in ways that are in violation of your laws and morals. I don't want to start a war here, but what is wrong with you people!?!?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Yes, but Slashdot provides us with another handy example: The moderation system demonstrates how anonymity is essential to free speech. Here on Slashdot, disagreeing with the crowd only costs you some Karma. In the world at large, differing opinions can cost you social status. In places like China, dissent can cost you your life. Anonymity allows you to express your views without fear of retribution for doing so.
Also, being anonymous does not absolve you from responsibility. You still have a responsibility to say something worth hearing, or else no one will listen, and your freedom of expression is wasted. For example, how many GNAA posts have you read lately? How many goatse links have you clicked on? Even if you read Slashdot at -1, I doubt you would pay posts such as those much attention. The trolls are free to spout their gibberish all day long, but that doesn't mean that they're guaranteed an audience.
True freedom of expression is an all-or-nothing deal, unfortunately. The moment you put limits on it, it's no longer free. Denying anonymity is one such limit. Denying certain forms of expression is another. Most people here, it seems, though they would deny it until they were blue in the face, don't support free expression at all.
Lets start by creating an official government of slashdot moderators who can and will censor all speech which they personally do not like.
I'd like to be on that government so I can censor your post as my first action. What you seem to not be capable of understanding is that FreeNet exists not as a habor for kiddie porn and terrorists but as a harbor for each and everyone one of us humans on planet earth.
It just so happens that decent people are so afraid of the bad people that they are willing to sacrifice their Freedom for security. You want the government to rule over you, you do not care about freedom and I don't see how you or people like you are any different than the Chinese.
You must understand that forces within our government currently want to control every aspect of the internet, companies like Microsoft and the RIAA want to control the internet, and the only group of people who want to stand up for YOU the internet user is FreeNet.
Look, if you want censorship on Freenet, ask Ian Clarke to build personal Freenet filters which can filter out all content you dislike. This is the solution, personal filtering of the net. This is the same solution we use in the real world, we personally filter ourselves out of bad environments and away from bad people.
There are plenty of murderer killer rapist people who you could hang with in the real world, and no one stops you from joining them. It's up to you to decide for yourself right from wrong, not the government, not the internet government, not Ian Clark, not the technology. It's not the gun that kills people, its people who kill people. Remember that its not the FreeNet that rapes kids, or launches terrorists attacks, its the people.
FreeNet WILL become a Haven for hate unless YOU actually make use of FreeNet. It's your choice, but either way FreeNet will be created so you can either help put good content on it, or you can let all the bad people claim it and whine and complain how its a haven for them instead of for you.
" Full Disclosure: I've never installed Freenet, but I've been following its development closely since its inception. I'm subscribed to the notification of new releases from Sourceforge ..."
"I've never driven, or for that matter seen, the 2004 Jaguar XKR, but I looked at it on a website. I've got to say, the thing is a total piece of junk. The radio looks like it probably doesn't give good sound, the seats don't appear very comfortable, and I seriously doubt it rides very well either. Plus, judging by the way the engine looks, it probably doesn't have any power at all. I don't understand why anyone would even bother considering to buy one"
"The last release on that page is dated July 17, 2003."
The last major release was then. That being said, the very fact that we're not even at 1.0 means that major changes happen all the time. Had you bothered to look further, or perhaps subscribed to the devl list, you'd see that stable receives updates about once a week on average, and unstable is updated almost daily. Each 'minor' update contains numerous bug fixes, and often contains new routing features or additions to the protocols. The current stable release is 5070, which was released today. The last stable release was put out about 3 or 4 days ago. The rapid, sustained development of Freenet continues to be the fastest I've ever seen, of any project I've ever followed.
"And by Clarke's own admission in his 'State of the Freenet' letter, it doesn't work very well. He *thinks* this new algorithm will solve the problems, but nobody knows that for sure."
You're taking the letter very much out of context. Again, reading the devl mailing list would provide you with far better understanding of the issues surrounding Freenet's development, problems, and solutions.
"Is Freenet so hard that this many programmers can't deliver a working version in close to a year?!"
This, you discern, without even having tried it? That's incredible. Listen, put down the 3-way call with Kenny Kingston and Ms Cleo, and ask some people who actually run Freenet. Or, wait a week or two for the Slashdot-Freenet overload to die down a bit (takes a little while for the network to adjust to massive influxes of new people), and *gasp* download the program so you can try it for yourself?! In case you're wondering, Freenet has worked to varying degrees since I started using it about a year ago. As the protocols and code is adjusted, things either get really good, really bad, or somewhere in between. When you're doing something this brand new, and making major changes all the time, there's nothing else to be expected. As of right now, stable is working fairly well (was working outstanding a few weeks ago), and unstable is working even better.
"The goals of Freenet are lofty, and for that maybe they deserve more patience, but when does the community just cut and run?"
I would assume that most 'cut and run' within a few days of downloading the program at this point. Why? Because it's not a simple AOLesque installation. It requires some configuration, some manual configuration, a bit of knowledge, and a lot of patience. There is a large group of die-hard Freenet users, such as myself, that would need to have serious, prolonged problems with the software before thinking about giving up on it. Most of us have talked with Toad and Ian enough to know that we're not being jerked around, and that this thing is going to move forward to the benefit of many, many different people. They're open and honest about progress and problems, and they both make themselves available all the time. Toad, especially, has gone the extra mile with me on a few different occassions to make sure that I was able to solve problems I was experiencing. I didn't get a 'RTFM', nor a non-response, and I certainly didn't get ignored. My mail to the support list has always been answered with much help from numerous people. I couldn't possibly fault any
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Which only fuels the kiddie porn market. That law is a bad law, its like the drug war and it only makes a minor problem into a bigger more harmful problem. I don't care if people jerk off to fake kiddie porn, I mean really thats their own imagination. However real kids who get raped and put on the net, thats wrong and it does serious harm to the kids. There is a difference between fantasy and reality and we must figure out how to deal with reality.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Yeah! And I'd rather not have kiddie porn travelling by mail. If we need to end the postal system, so be it, it's for the children. Come to think of it, those vile kiddie pornographers are using encryption to hide their behavior. Let's ban encryption too. Some are even using the Internet, let's ban that. And they're using cameras to take those pictures, time to ban cameras.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, human beings are a common threat in the sexual abuse of humans. We better get rid of people ASAP.
Ultimately your argument is, "But what about the chiiiiiildren!" There are lots of tools used by criminals. Yes, child pornographers use Freenet. It's unfortunate, but it's not the fault of the tool. Terrorists use airplanes and box cutters, but no one is trying to ban them.
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Which is why those movies Traci Lords made when she was 16 are such hot sellers down at the video store on the corner, right?
She was over the age of consent. The movies are child pornography.
Check your own facts. Yours are in error as regards to law.
There is no such legal thing as "kiddie" porn. Only child pornography. The age in question is 18. Parent poster also used the term child porn, not "kiddie."
Personally I myself do use the term "kiddie" porn to distinguish between items depicting prepubesent children and the underage, but sexually mature. I think it's a valid distinction.
But that distinction is social, not legal.
KFG
Take a close look at how Freenet nodes operate, and realize the minimal amount of traffic analysis that would be required on the part of any government agency to identify node operators and direct queries to guarantee that for any value of "contraband" required, some data corresponding to "contraband" exists on the node of the person selected to be the test case.
Leaving your argument aside, you don't actually know how freenet works.
'Direct' requests to a node are not necessarily answered by that node. There is no way for a particular attacker to know whether the node it requested the data from answered it directly from it's data store or routed the request to another node which subsequently answered it.
Unstable is a much smaller network, so it's easy to make it work well. Stable is not yet working "well", although it MAY have improved a bit recently; it may work better in the near future, as we get rate limiting sorted out.
Small works well. Then, every time there's something that spurs a lot of interest, the performance is abysmal. Now I'm sure the same excuse that this is just temporary growing pains will come up again, but I for one have lost faith in that.
To me, it looks like Freenet has got fundamental scaling issues, as it would appear from the circle of people I know, that Freenet regains its past performance about the same time that the numbers using it are back to where it was.
It's very easy to make something work well on a small scale - small enough, and even a dumbfire search (pick a route at random) works. Rate limiting, load balancing and getting the most out of each node is good, but I don't think it'll solve the real problem.
I'm not saying I have the answers to make it so that it *does* scale well. But I think I've understood enough of what Freenet does to realize it *won't* scale well. Ah well...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Guess what? Before you ask or accuse, I don't like the idea of child porn. Duh. Does anyone other than the small minority of people who have some deep seated issue? Quit parroting every politico seeking reelection.
Just because you find ponography (to you) of any sort, doesn't mean that something like Freenet is bad or not needed. There is an ever increasing inabillity to exercise free speech every day. Read your ISP's TOS. Try and get a letter to the editor printed that is critical of the paper. Try to buy an ad during the SuperBowl.
Why isn't this figured out by now? I kill someone with a hammer. Oh, outlaw hammers! Nevermind that with that same hammer I could help fix a poor family's house. I know, "But you still killed someone with the hammer!"
It's rather obvious to me that those who would filter free speech are the world's biggest pussies. Frankly, I enjoy and use my human! (NOT GOVERNMENT GIVEN) right of free speech every day.
Those who would filter it miss the whole point, and miss the irony of the fact that they are encouraging the removal of any personal responsibility, free action or speech.
Yeah! Freedom of Speech is great as long as I like it! You can recite that over and over, when you're in prison for saying something that your new leader didn't like.
No, I would be going after my ex-wife or banker, not complaining about freenet.
...of course assuming you know who did it. Won't do much good if you don't know who. And even if you "know", you need to prove it. Neither of which Freenet is going to help you with.
Basicly, Freenet is open to libel, slander, fabrications, pump&dumps, fraud, disclosure of trade secrets, personal information and whatever else you can imagine that involves misuse of information.
It's not just the kiddie porn. And if you want to combine the two, imagine photoshopped kiddie porn of you and your kids. Wouldn't be able to stop that either.
Freenet is merely one of many ways to achieve the same though. You might want to ask some of the free webspace providers if they ever had cases of encrypted/password protected files being traded over their webspace.
The uploader doesn't know the downloader and vice versa, and the hoster doesn't know the content. Throw in some anonymous proxies and basicly noone knows nothing.
Freenet just claims to be a little better at it than that. And a little simpler rather than having people find proxies on their own. It is merely so disturbingly visible to people - kinda like Napster was, despite all the mp3 trading on irc/ftp/usenet before that.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I don't think Freenet is about 'avoiding responsibility', I think it is about protecting yourself from those who find your opinions 'distasteful'.
Yup. Sadly, that may include pictures of porn. And it may include photos and reports of people getting killed for going to a democratic rally.
Porn will be made and distributed with or without Freenet. What about censored, unpopular, unjust information?
It's easy to sit back in your Aeon chair and say, "Well if they can't be bothered to run over to the local AP wire office, then their story must be false."
That's exactly what the government wants you to think, no tinfoil hat needed.
In which case I entirely fail to grasp the point of your previous post, which in some regards contradicts this one.
In this one you also confuse issues of 16 and under 16.
I might add that so long as your morals are not in contradiction to the law you are certainly free to apply them as you will.
My own morals, for instance, prevent me from eating meat. I do expect those morals to apply to you, however.
KFG
Do NOT underestimate the intelligence of these so called "n00bs", people are capable of making their own decisions. Look at file sharing in general, it is associated with a strong youth/anti-authoritarian streak in america today. Do you think that simply because people are not technically literate they do not see the content on p2p/freenet and understand that the material is dangerous to themselves?
Are you saying they, the masses, do not see what they are doing?
Why do they still use those technologies? because they psychologically don't give a flying fuck what the government says. We are a morally bankrupt society that will take what it can get and always eyes politicians and the government with a certain distrust.Fuck it, I say do foist these technologies onto the noobs, they can make a decision on their own,let it pervade the technosphere, let the information flow where it will.
Oh, by the way
"it's your door, not theirs, that will be broken down. If Ian and Matt want to take such a radical stand for free speech, let them host the illegal content, and let them take the risks."
What does it matter to you what people do? Your commentary almost sounds like those opposed to peer2peer networks in general. Are you opposed to p2p? Are you opposed to freedom of information? Should there be restrictions on what a person can KNOW?
Now pull the plug before someone gets killed.
people are dying every fucking day.
Hope they are prepared to reject anything that looks encrypted. SSL, ssh, VPN protocols...
...(whether or not by design) is a "harbor house" of sorts for child pornographers, terrorists, and other criminals."
Oh, you mean like the Internet? Or maybe you mean SCO's definition of Linux? Or maybe how China looks at any sort of freedom of expression that isn't sanctioned by the gov't?
I'm NOT taking anything to extremes here - as I sometimes do to prove a point - these are all realistic and reasonable examples. I could also mention guns (if you outlaw guns than only...) or even democracy itself (even well educated people can make stupid decisions!)
Child porn and other filth exist because there is demand for it. Arrest the bastards responsible when possible - what else can be done? Should we also ban digital cameras and/or color printers because of their possbile infringing uses? There is a point at which we must realize that technology will bring us both good and bad consequences - but this does not mean that it is necessarily evil.
Is your argument about Freenet that it can be used to distribute bad stuff, or that YOU can't find any other legitimate use for it?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Kiddie pron and terrorism. Music and movie sharing. All the usual suspects are dragged out whenever [lobby group] needs to implement a new measure to watch you online and offline.
Your point about even viewing kiddie pron being a crime is at the heart of why their "studies" are fundamentally flawed. Anyone who has any "evidence" that kiddie pron is a massive problem is themselves guilty of viewing it, possibly downloading and categorising it. How did they do their study? By guessing how much is out there?
To me, kiddie pron seems an invaluable tool to frame someone (as with Scott Ritter) such that the court of public opinion will convict them regardless of the real truth of planted evidence. The fact that no one acknowledges this scares me, because it means no one will question when some is found on someone's computer, whether it really WAS downloaded by the person found with it.
Visceral Psyche Films
No kidding, one of my old roommates looked into doing this for his college departments.
;)
"Yeah, I could drop all the random port stuff, but then nobody'd *ever* be able to use one and it'd break 1/2 of the applications we use."
Greaaaat solution.
I figure I'm about as culpable as anyone running a router on the regular public internet. My node will route any requests it recieves, regardless of content; in the normal course of operation, I can't even tell what is locally stored on my hard disk. I'm no lawyer, so I don't know the ins and outs of common carrier status; I have no idea if this line of argument would hold up in court. It's basically the legal theory that the whole freenet project rests upon, though. And, yes, if the feds decided to crack down on freenet, I would be happy to stand up in court and argue for free, anonymous, uncensorable communication.
Just trying to open someone's head! I mean "mind!" Open someone's mind, um, to the possibilities! With explosives!