Slashdot Mirror
New "Dark" Freenet Available for Testing
Sanity writes "The Freenet Project has just released the first alpha version of the much anticipated Freenet 0.7 branch. This is a major departure from past approaches to peer-to-peer network design, embracing a 'scalable darknet' architecture, where security is increased by allowing users to limit which other peers their peer will communicate with directly, rather than the typical 'promiscuous' approach of classic P2P networks. This means that not only does Freenet aim to prevent others from finding out what you are doing with Freenet, it makes it extremely difficult for them to even know that you are running a Freenet node at all. This is not the first P2P application to use this approach, other examples include Waste, however those networks are limited to just a few users, while Freenet can scale up almost indefinitely. The new version also includes support for NAT hole-punching, and has an API for third-party tool development. As always, the Freenet team are asking that people support the development of the software by donating."
I tried Freenet once, briefly, out of curiosity. Looking around at listings of content people had compiled (can't remember the terminology now), I didn't notice any terrorism plans, but I sure saw a hell of a lot of people swapping child pornography. I turned off my node, deinstalled the software, and never messed with it again.
Let's all be totally clear on this: Clarke has an absolute belief in free speech, including child pornography. Not only does he believe that government shouldn't be able to regulate any kind of speech, including child pornography, but he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography, and so are you if you run a Freenet node, whether you know it or not.
To me, there's a clear distinction between a belief in free speech (government not censoring speech) and believing that you, as an individual, should help people to propagate certain kinds of speech. And although I do believe in free speech (no government censorship), I don't think that extends to child pornography, which by its nature requires a heinous crime to be committed in order to produce it.
Find free books.
You're deluded. Java is a pig.
Interesting logic: I must support Ian Clarke and his ideals of absolute freedom of speech, otherwise he might sue me for saying bad things about him?
Are you making the same claims that the creators and owners of usenet, AOL, and MySpace are "actively helping people to distribute child pornography", like you said of Ian Clarke?
No, because child pornography isn't the killer app of AOL, but it is the killer app of Freenet.
Can you provide quotes with links that indicate Clark does indeed believe what you claim he believes?
here and here
Find free books.
The comment that Freenet is largely used for distributing child pornography...
Is probably true, there are very few people who really need this kind of protection at the moment and it's disturbing but one of these groups is child pornographers.
Slashbots think that the parent poster is commiting a logical fallicy of some form (likely the slippery slope form) when in fact he is perfectly correct.
What he isn't taking into account is that these nets need to be running and populated when censorship does occur so that everyone involved with them can't be labelled a traitor.
As far as child pornography and mitigating circumstances, exposure to child pornography does lead people to be more likely to molest children. Molesting children has pretty serious consequnces on their mental health throughout their life(partially because of the views of society towards molestation). This is something it's pretty tough to condone, I think Freenet is a good idea if we need to trade a small increase in pedophilia for a permanent venue for free speech I think that is a trade off we will need to accept.
If pedophilia grows out of hand we may need to curtail these dark nets but that too becomes a tricky proposition.
Flaimbait? Step on someone's toes, eh?
If you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide, comrade.