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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."
Hooray! Now I can browse the net at dialup speeds once more!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The Dark Side of the Freenet is a pathway to many websites some consider to be unnatural.
For example, do you think Google will ever use Freenet in some manner?
I wish there was a way that I could view websites without giving any IP or client information. However, that kind of information is important to webmasters and business.
Thank you freenet team! The ability to remain anonymous is the only way to ensure complete freedom of speech.
I totally agree. With the lawmakers obviously unconcerned about the steady erosion of civil liberties, practical measures like these could be the only option for maintaining our freedoms.
Read Pynchon.
I'm not a member or involved in the freenet project but if you have paypal or whatever, drop by the freenet project website and donate a few dollars. Mathew Toseland (toad_ on freenode irc) has been slaving away on the project for a long time now, he's poured so much energy into making freenet a reality, kudos to him and a few of the other coders that have spent a lot of energy on the next generation freenet (nextgens/cyberdo/etc.)
Not related to freenet but in the definitely in the same sphere of anonymous networking is I2P. For anybody that interested in that kind of technology should check that out... it's a fairly well functioning network ATM but the main coder is putting off any big announcements until he's sure it's ready.
Freenet is neat, P2P research is phenomenal, darknets are probably the way to go...but boy, it would be nice to have something that is not implemented in Java.
I understand the reasons that they use Java, but still, Freenet is one RAM and CPU-hungry beast.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
I tried running a delivery service once, briefly, out of curiosity. Ripping open envelopes and boxes, I didn't notice any terrorism plans, but I sure saw a hell of a lot of people mailing child pornography. I closed my business, fired my employees, and never messed with delivery services again.
I tried starting an ISP once, briefly, out of curiosity. While monitoring my customers' connections with a packet sniffer, 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 routers, shut down my business, and never messed with providing internet service again.
I tried running a telco once, briefly, out of curiosity. Listening in on my customers' conversations, I didn't notice any terrorism plans, but I sure heard a hell of a lot of people discussing child pornography. I turned off my switches, burned my service trucks, and never messed with selling phone service again.
I tried being a mayor once, briefly, out of curiosity. Breaking into residents' houses at night with my police chief, I didn't notice any terrorism plans, but I sure saw a hell of a lot of people looking at child pornography. I shut down city hall, razed my city to the ground, and never messed with human communities again.
As I understand it, Clarke does not support the distribution of child pornography. However, he supports absolute anonymity and absolute freedom of speech. Neither of those can be guaranteed if you're censoring in any way, form or fashion. Once you have the ability to censor one form of speech (whether it's political speech, hate speech, or something like child pornography) you have the ability to censor anything you want. This is what Clarke is trying to prevent. Child pornography is illegal, as it should be, but you shouldn't have to trade your freedom of speech and anonymity to help catch distributors of child pornography, just as you shouldn't have to trade those rights to help stop terrorism. I think you did the right thing by uninstalling Freenet, because you're not ready to accept what freedom means. It's not something you can have in stages.
First, there's the "dual effect" question. If you set out to support political dissent, whistleblowers, and the like, are you unethical if a side effect is to enable immoral activities? In this case, a predictable side effect? If you have no way of knowing whether you're facilitating it?
Then there's the question: if Freenet is needed, is it right to decide not to run a node because you abhor some of the traffic?
I don't know the answers but do respect your decision.
And although I do believe in free speech (no government censorship), I don't think that extends to child pornography
Neither does Ian Clarke. You've missed the point. It's not about protecting child pornography as free speech, it's realising that you can't protect other, legitimate forms of free speech without also protecting child pornography as well. It's the unfortunate reality of information theory. If anybody has the power to stop the kiddy porn, they have the power to stop the legitimate speech as well, e.g. dissidence. The only true protection of freedom of speech is incapable of distinguishing between kiddy porn and legitimate speech by its very nature.
If you've come up with some revolutionary scheme that can stop kiddy porn without harming the protection of the legitimate speech, then I'm sure Ian Clarke would jump at the chance to implement it. But there's every reason to believe this will be completely and utterly impossible forever. Think about it.
The sad thing is, no matter how many times this is explained, there's always somebody as ignorant as you willing to tell people all about how he thinks kiddy porn is free speech. Please stop that.
These are pretty serious charges you are leveling against Clarke. Can you provide quotes with links that indicate Clark does indeed believe what you claim he believes?
"... He is actively helping people to distribute child pornography"
What you have posted is frankly libelous.
You can be sued, and unless you can prove that you know that he was helping to distribute child porn, you will lose. Otherwise, if you know this for a fact, I hope you have reported this to the authorities.*
Do you know for a fact that he is specifically helping to distribute child pornography, rather than simply building a general purpose network? *Any* communications network can be used to distribute child pornogrphy. Remember that usenet, AOL, and most recently Myspace was used to distribute child pornography. 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?
I turned off the freenet myself because I thought it could be used for child porn, and I didn't want any part of it. I do not support child pronography. But, I cannot support you making such claims about a person without evidence. Put up or shut up.
*I have the feeling you do not know this specifically about Ian Clarke. If you do, you should report it to the authorities, and if you had reported it, you wouldn't be blabbing libelously on the internet. You have correctly understood that the freenet, like any network, can be used to distribute child porn, but I don't think you know this about Clark. If you do, for God's sake, don't ruin the investigation by blabbing all over the internet.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Which is fine if you think that's something worthwhile, but is quite different in practice from your examples.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Now you run that statement through the same logical process you used before, and you come up with something like this:
"I used to drive at night, but it was unnecessarily risky, so I decided only to drive during the day. I didn't want to hit a pedestrian."
"I used to drive, but it was unnecessarily risky, so I decided only to ride a bike. I didn't want to hit a pedestrian."
"I used to ride a bike, but it was unnecessarily risky, so I decided only to walk. I didn't want to hit a pedestrian."
Notice how at some point, a quantitative reduction in the level of risk and a simultaneous change in the quantitative level of justification for the action changed a sensible statement into a ridiculous one? The problem isn't with the original statement, it's with the kind of logic you're applying to transform it into other statements.
Freenet's killer app is child pornography. I've never seen any evidence that any political dissident uses it. The level of risk of harming children is extremely high, and the level of justification is extremely low.
Find free books.
I think the main problem with freenet, I2P, and other similar services is not their privacy concerns (although important), but SPEED.
The speed at which any of these services run reminds me of when I had dial-up. Except these darknets don't even guarantee you can connect to even the most popular darknet sites. Even when I tweaked all the settings I couldn't ever get decent connections on freenet.
These sites are not going to be very viable until a lot of people use them, and a lot of people aren't going to use them until they reach something at least comparable to speeds of the regular web.
I appreciate all the effort of the people who make these pieces of software, but I can't help but feel much of their energy is misdirected.
Just my thoughts.
Let's all be totally clear on this: Clarke has an absolute belief in free speech, including communist literature. Not only does he believe that government shouldn't be able to regulate any kind of speech, including communist literature, but he is actively helping people to distribute communist literature, and so are you if you run a Freenet node, whether you know it or not.
But if you don't know three people who are using Freenet 0.7, hop on IRC (which is not the least bit anonymous) and see if some random stranger will give you their noderef. Random people who don't know each other exchanging noderefs over IRC provides what advantage over the prior Freenet implementation, exactly?
I don't know 3 other meatspace people who use Freenet, much less Freenet 0.7. I can't imagine that trading noderefs with some random person on IRC is any more secure than maintaining a node on 0.5.
I'm no Freenet hater, I've been running it for years and I've made several donations. Freenet showed me the "Diebold Memos" and other interesting items. I'm just looking for a plain-English explanation as to how 0.7 is an improvement over the prior Freenet implementation.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
Modern Java virtual machines can actually be more efficient than native code in many situations. The old criticism of Java, that it is slow, and a CPU/memory hog relative to native compiled code, was definitely valid back in the 90s, but is much less-so now. Check out some recent benchmarks involving Java if you don't believe me.
On 31 Mar 2006, at 20:08:
> This isn't about *technical* support, I just wanted to tell Matthew
> thanks
> for working on this project. The US government is really scaring
> me and
> I'm glad someone's working on this. You're doing a great job man.
>
> One question I have is that the paypal balance on the home page
> usually
> says something like a few hundred $, and I was wondering if it's
> actually
> generating the required $2300 per month, or if it's falling short.
> I've
> had a monthly donation set up for quite a while now, and I just
> want to
> make sure everything is going well financially for the project.
We have been fortunate enough to generate just about enough to pay
for Matthew for the past few years, but donations have been tailing
off as we haven't put out any new releases in quite a while due to
our work on 0.7, and the financial situation is actually quite
precarious just now.
Our hope is that with the 0.7 alpha release we will get some
donations, but if anyone can contribute, now would really be the time
(as there can be no guarantee that the 0.7 alpha release will
generate the level of publicity we have seen for previous releases).
Ian.
Distributing child pornography isn't necessarily a bad thing. If it's distributed for free on FreeNet, that means fewer and fewer people paying for it, which hopefully means less child porn all-together.
Now, if you think potentially allowing more people to VIEW child pornography is inherently bad, and will lead to more child abuse, for instance, this isn't much consolation. However, the supreme court has even ruled that *fake* child pornography is not criminal, so viewing animated or CGI child porn, for instance, isn't even illegal. So, as disgusting as it may be, there doesn't seem to be a concensus that individuals privately viewing something that appears to be child porn is bad for society, and will lead to serious crimes.
As an added bonus, the wider and more public spread of child porn, while it can't be traced back to the IP address that shared it, the picture can be tracked back using visual clues as to who is involved, and possibly making it easier for police to apprehend the actual suspects (just not the person sharing it, in this case).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"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,"
So's your local mailman. I hope you didn't send out any Christmas cards last year, and you had better make sure you handle all your bills online, otherwise you're aiding that pernicious distribution medium of kiddie porn known as "First Class Mail" (which, while not anonymous, is physically and legally protected from inspection).
Here's my 'freenet/Darknet' wishlist for the next release (hopefuly it won't take another 5 years before any major break throughs):
... you punch through making your traffic seem like standard protocols. An advanced version of this would allow you to load balance your traffic over multiple standard look-alike protocols, thus forcing ISP's to not be able to track (through agregate port router bandwidth stats) which new protocol/port you are using now so they could block it. Also, by allowing multi-protocol chaotic support that means each group of users would be using different protocols & ports... now try to stop that Mr. China firewall!
1) Bittorrent/utorrent inside Darknet support. (i.e. encrypted semi-anonymous file transfers)
2) Full IP anonymity
3) Multi-port support (i.e. when firewalls block it, you can change ports).
4) User selected periodic chaotic deep packet protocol emulation. Say what?! Imagine if you could download from a list of popular standard protocols & configure your Darknet client to emulate most of these protocols (one at a time & announcing the new protocol to your group of file-exchange-buddies)- anytime you want. You'd periodically select a new protocol (i.e. FTP, HTTP, OSPF, DNS, etc every time some advanced firewall blocks you) & BAM
5) Proxy bounce support
6) Open source API for additional protocol bounce support. (i.e. allows for crackers/hackers of restrictive/oppressive nations to piggy back Darknet inside a legit Server running say FTP or something of the sort) - Once the trusted server is infiltrated, it could allow for proxied clients to connect through it and out to the rest of the world.
I'm sure some of you could come up with more utopian anonymous & liberative strategies.
Cheers
adeptus_luminati
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Its too bad its written in java.. if it was in C/C++ i would have run a node...
Just find a developer who does a C++ implementation based on the sample code of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/). It shouldn't be that difficult and is cross-platform as well. Sorry, no I don't have the time to do it myself but I'll help with advice.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
"Freenet seeks to implement a level of anonymity that resolves people of responsibility."
I think the word you are looking for is absolve.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I've never seen any evidence that any political dissident uses it.
Well, that's exactly the point, isn't it?
a quantitative reduction in the level of risk and a simultaneous change in the quantitative level of justification
That's the flaw in your reasoning right there. You assume there is a "quantitative level of justification" when there is not. What you consider to be just in one case could be considered unjust by someone else. How do you determine who is right? You can't. Justice is a qualitative term.
The problem isn't with the original statement, it's with the kind of logic you're applying to transform it into other statements.
His logic is perfectly fine. All those statements are perfectly sound and logical. The problem is you think "justice" can be quantified so you find fault in those statements because your spectrum of "justice" does not match his. Sure if you assume your spectrum of "justice" to be true his statements appear silly, but that does not change their logical satisfiability.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
Well, Clark did write Freenet, which by his own admission is "a means by which information can be shared without fear of censorship of any kind." That being said, said poster you are replying to used Freenet, and saw some amount of child pornography on at least one node. Clark wrote the program, designed to allow anything to be shared / said. This seems to me like he is at least indirectly, but actively, helping spread child pornography. This is quite different than your poor comparisons to AOL and myspace, (I don't know about usenet) which explicitly forbid any sort of child pornography in their EULAs, and I'm pretty sure Myspace forbids anything pornographic period. But I don't really care, since I neither use Freenet, or have a stake in Clarke's reputation.
- Ian (Founder, Freenet Project)
welcome the idea that our overlords will have a harder time censoring and surveilling us.
There is always one of you per Freenet discussion.
I've used Freenet off and on for a number of years and I don't see much churn in the number of free sites. The most active free sites tend to be FLOGs (Blogs on Freenet). Many of the sites in Freenet have been there since what seems like the beginning of time. There are new ones added (like someone mentioned the Diebold files), but they tend to not be kiddie porn.
Here's an idea... run a node, access the non-kiddie porn content, post your own content, and use the network. The network is changed by observing it, so by accessing non-kiddie porn, you are encouraging it to be replicated across the network, while also making the kiddie porn hard to find.
Andrew
"You can be sued,"
The creator of Freenet bringing forward a libel suit. Now that's irony!
While the government can't destroy this sort of technology, It could, if it set its mind about it, make thinks rather difficult. For example:
*They could make all filesharing _programs_ illegal, then attempting to shut down distrobution of those programs (shutdown bittorrent.com, azereus, etc).
*They could shut down proxy sites.
*Really attempt to track down people in other countries who use this technology and provide outlets for it (piratebay, etc).
*Require ISPs to keep logs on traffic for much longer than they do now.
Being anonymous is not cowardice.
(I'm probably repeating things that have already been said, but I need to say my piece.)
Certain people are going to do unsavory things to children regardless of whether or not they have an audience. I have always failed to see the extra harm done through dissemination of such material. Would you rather that no evidence be distributed, so that the children suffer in silence? Certainly the extra indignity is insignificant in comparison to the original act.
Truly, I do not understand. Do you somehow think that the urge to abuse children is somehow viral, and that child pornography will "infect" others?
Any way I look at it, all objections to Freenet seem to boil down to one of two things:
1. "By golly, we have to do something about all of this child pr0n!"
2. "I don't want to get in trouble with the authorities."
The problem with #1 is that there isn't anything you really can do about it, and any symbolic act has the effect of harming legitimate use. IANAL, but I think that since, by probability, there isn't necessarily anything illegal flowing through your node, you have plausible deniability. As long as you run it on computers for which you have permission to use in this way, it's unlikely that you will get in any trouble.
If you don't want to participate, then that's fine with me, but make sure that you remember that convincing others not to use Freenet provides no viable benefit to children under abuse and harms legitimate attempts to exercise free speech.
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.
No, Clarke isn't *actively* helping to spread this any more than any other material. That's just how the protocol work. The eMule devs aren't actively helping to spread pirated material, Pirate Bay isn't actively helping to spread the latest DVD-R movies. They're just providing the service; it's people using it that spread the material.
And why the heck do you feel a need to mention "child pornography" at every chance you get? To make your point more clear? To show that you're against total free speech? Obviously, child porn is one of the things that appear on a network without censorship or easy tracking. Now, what do you think should be done with it while preserving anonymity? Try answering that instead of just throwing shit on the founder who just developed the purely technical service.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
>> [Because of Java] Freenet is one RAM and CPU-hungry beast.
The main criticisms thrown at Java (overheads and speed) always seem to miss the key matter entirely, as far as I am concerned. because those issues can be fixed, whereas others can't.
Execution overheads can always be reduced and JIT performance can always be improved, and the effect of VM overheads on overall speed becomes ever less significant anyway as our hardware becomes more capable. But there are two things that are getting worse, not better.
Those two things are Java bloat and hence complexity, and Java non-portability.
Java growth is monotonic -- there is never any reduction in its footprint, only increase, because developers usually add code and very rarely eliminate whole sections of it. What used to be a fairly concise VM with a few auxiliary libraries is now an extremely large and hairy monster. And with size comes complexity, and with complexity come continual maintenance, latent bugs, and insecurities. Java has become a liability instead of an asset as a side effect of its unstoppable growth.
And secondly, the "write once, run anywhere" paradigm has failed utterly and turned into a "write once, run only in the few places where gurus have waved magic garlic". Why this is so I have no idea, since the VM is 100% portable in theory. What's probably happened is that the extreme mess of libraries make simple all-inclusive installation pretty much impossible, and the design is unhelpful in that it doesn't bother to search for missing bits in default locations, but I'm speculating about that.
Whatever the reasons, throughout the many years since Java hit the scene (I go back to the dawn of time in OO), Java has managed to work on perhaps 10% of the many dozens of highly varied Unix-type boxes that I have owned or worked on. This contrasts with 100% of those boxes running C/C++, Perl, Python, Tcl, Lua, etc etc. All modern languages seem to work pretty much everywhere, with one exception -- Java. This is very wierd, for a language which is supposed to run anywhere.
So that's my beef with Java, a great pity because gramatically and in concept the language is terrific. Sadly, neither of those two problems will go away, because (i) developers will never shrink the system (that's simply not done), and (ii) Java fanboys simply refuse to believe that their beloved system has extremely poor portability in practice.
So, for me Java is in dead end street, unfortunately. And it's not that I don't like it, quite the opposite. It's simply too big and too selective in where it chooses to run.
"After a week of caching data, anyone monitoring your network will have no clue if you are hosting any illicit data or if you are caching data from another node."
Everything on Freenet has a timestamp. If a wiretap shows your node pushing an original key with a timestamp newer than when the wiretap started, you're the source. They may not be able to pin older material on you (depending on how much they know about your cache size), but if you continue to put new material on (i. e. continue to molest children), a wiretap will catch you.
The FAQ even alludes to this.
"However, I would not be surprised for a jury to rule against you, should a case ever be brought up"
That's what appeals are for.
Start your own net with your friends and their own friends and so on.
For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend-to-friend
I don't agree with this idea. We're not really dealing with a good here where the demand decreases as the supply decreases. The demand for pornography (of any type) is there, no matter if there is a supply or not. Without the demand for it, you'd hardly see the amount of pornography available on the internet today. If the "commercial" providers of child pornography in certain countries stop existing, pedophiles will continue swapping home made movies.
There are some who claim that pornography gives sexual gratification the user can't achieve, and there are others who claim it will make the user search for more material and perhaps (in the case of child pornography) turn the person into a predator. I'm not a psychologist, but I've read research papers where statistics indicate both. As far as I am concerned, both types of studies are usually doing statistical number juggling.
Thank god for free speech...
How about this hypothetical situation: an adult woman is raped, and the perpetrator videotapes it. About a month later over 100.000 people have downloaded that movie from the internet and "enjoyed" it. Don't you think there is something wrong with people that enjoy other peoples suffering? Don't you think people like that need (at the very least) some help to realise that what they're enjoying is just completely wrong? Now extend this hypothetical example, and replace "adult woman" with "10 year old girl".
As for freenet itself. The idea is a very sound one, however it's being abused for all sorts of purposes. Some people would argue that protecting freedom includes allowing any type of freedom, this is a filosophical matter I'll leave to anarchists and totalitarians to discuss with eachother until they turn blue. What is more interesting is the technological aspect. Freenet turns off a lot of people by the presence of child pornography, by the fact that anyone could be using any storage you add to it to store this kind of material. Technologically, such an open door policy sounds like the dream of any person who likes freedom, but legally it opens up a very large gray area I don't want to venture in.
My ability to pass on free speech is part of my free speech. Let me ntroduce you to the two things Freenet understands: 0 and 1. Please express in those terms what constitutes free speech, and what constitutes child pornography.
Freenet could not possibly make that distinction, you would have to ban it outright. But that would be prior restraint of speech. Let me quote you the Supreme Courts position on that matter in Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart:What else could you do? Well, you could outlaw anonymity. Here's the Supreme Court's opinion on that in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission:So in short, if you want to outlaw Freenet you had better revoke the First Amendment first. The Supreme Court has repetedly upheld the free and anonymous exchange of speech. In online terms, that translates to free and anonymous exchange of 0s and 1s. Not happy about it? Move to China.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Very... very well said.
I'm getting tired of people ignorantly giving up their rights in the name of "catching the evil doers". And of course the all mighty reasoning... "If your not doing anything illegal/evil, you should have nothing to hide."
When and why did this become acceptable logic? Do people not think ahead and picture the outcome if we as a society were able to catch anyone the second they commit a crime? The same system put in place to protect you from harm, now prevents you from ever being able to make a "mistake". A mistake defined by a governments idea of right and wrong.
Human beings evolve, grow, and better themselves by learning from their past mistakes. With complete and total freedom comes immense happiness and the birth of real tragedy. But must we all sit in detention because one kid threw something at the teacher?
It performs well and is actually pretty usable for downloading files. Oh, and it's had this particular feature for at least 6 months. http://www.gnunet.org/.
I am trolling
Everything on Freenet has a timestamp. If a wiretap shows your node pushing an original key with a timestamp newer than when the wiretap started, you're the source.
Say again? Bulk data keys (CHK) come directly from a hash of the source, no timestamp involved. Some Freesites have a rotating key system (really stupid) which means new keys must be inserted to keep a site alive which could sorta be what you're talking about. but I think these have pretty much died out and even so the timestamps could be forged. All current Freesites I know of use static SSKs. These are signed (unlike CHKs) but don't contain a timestamp. "Userspace" timestamps like those in Frost are meaningless. I could set my computer's clock to next week and post "in next week".
As for the rest, your basic wiretap would show an encrypted connection, nothing more. Maybe if you're talking about some wiretap/poison node combination you could get somewhere. In fact, forget the wiretap. If I got a node talking to your node, I have a lot better chance of making a statistical case (enough for "reasonable suspicion and a search warrant) than a wiretap.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yeah... just like watching "normal" pornography makes you more likely to rape random women on the street. Just like playing video games turn innocent teenagers into criminals who shoot cops and hookers. Just like reading Stephen King makes you a psychotic murderer. Just like watching Spongebob makes children gay.
I find child pornography as disgusting and horrible as everyone else, but I think your reasoning is more than far-fetched. At best, you're making a cum hoc ergo propter hoc mistake - it might be that people who view child pornography are more likely to abuse children (i.e., the claim makes sense, a priori - it'd still have to be investigated, though, of course), but even if it is true, I don't see why there would be a causal connection. It's much more likely that there would be another reason that led people to see children as sex objects - which in turn would lead to both an interest in child pornography and actual abuse. But someone who isn't already predisposed towards children wouldn't turn into a child abuser merely because he's exposed to child pornography.
If I looked you up and kept on showing you child pornography, would you ultimately emerge as a child abuser? Of course not. And the same is true for everyone else, too.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Does anyone else get that "gut reaction" from Freenet? I don't mean that it's the first thing you see. I can't even back this up with evidence (admittedly, I haven't been trying), but for some reason, p2p seems like an illegitimate way of getting stuff you would find at best buy, or a legitimate way of getting Linux distros...While Freenet, with all its talk of freedom, privacy, and the measures taken to ensure it, somehow comes off as a place you go for stuff too obsene for p2p.
Please don't mod me flamebait on this...It's a serious question. Does anyone else have the initial instinct that Freenet is a place to go for things that the FBI would arrest you for, if you did them on bittorrent? Something about the network...I think it's that it performs poorly (due to encryption), makes content difficult to search for (when searching by name), and that anonimity is the only selling point...but something about the network creeps me out.
Yeah, cross-platform coding sucks. When are these companies going to learn that we want proprietary binaries that need to be recompiled on each platform?
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league
Banded against his throne, but to remain
In strictest bondage, though thus far removed,
Under th' inevitable curb, reserved
His captive multitude.
Paradise Lost, Book II, Lines 317-323
Fighting from our dark places isn't really going to win this battle for Freedom. I appreciate what Freenet is doing. It's securing our fallback position. We need that, but we need more a willingness on the part of our citizenry to take the fight to the day-lit streets of the Mall in Washington D.C.
I'd rather be free by liberty and than free by obscurity.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/linux.html
-Tom
In this new Freenet, network connections only pass through a select few friends, but the routing layer hides this - files are globally available, as they used to be. You've misunderstood the protocol design.
Also, you've even misunderstood the "select few friends" thing. It's not that you can exclude people. It's that you have to actively include people - and you have to have their permission first.
An analogy would be: passing messages between people by telling a trusted friend, he tells his trusted friend, and so on until it reaches the destination.
Isn't that an accurate description of Sun's JVM :)
There are those of us who don't have the luxury of running a platform which Sun feels is important enough to warrent a pre-compiled propriatory binary for, and for us Java applications simply aren't an option.
There's mischief and malarkies but no queers or yids or darkies within this bastard's carnival, this vicious cabaret.
he is actively helping people to distribute child pornography
For your next act you should rant about how Tim Berners-Lee is actually in league with the phishers and scam artists who run websites on the internet. Or how Bram Cohen is personally sharing every song, book, game, and movie ever created, all at the same time.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have freenet. I'm only saying that his claim about it not having any effect on child abuse is bullshit.
Are you sure? Can you show evidence that greater access to child pornography leads to and increase in actual child abuse? Will more children be abused if more existing images are simply copied?
As an analogy, and quite a good one, will more music be written if people download it en masse over freenet?
May the Maths Be with you!
So... Your posting on /. with a C64 then?
.50 a month from your Freenet server. You don't need a monitor (that draws the most watts) for this setup, And if your really worried about it you need to wonder why your reading /. in the first place...
Seriously, what platform are you using that doesn't have a Java implementation on it?
And, even more to the point... Just have a Freenet server running in the basement someplace and use it as a proxy out to the Freenet. Buy/find/build a computer (don't spend more than one Benjamin on it) and put Any flavor of Linux on it, then load the Freenet proxy. Don't forget to load up the RAM, as Freenet eats RAM like the passengers of a Las Vegas tour bus eat at Circus Circus.
Not only is this good for the network (permanent nodes == good nodes) but the upshot is that you don't have to locate the server anywhere near your main computer. So you can get a low-speed computer, slap a giant copper HSF on it, and remove the fans. Less fans == less points of H/W failure down the road. Since it's Linux, it never needs to reboot. Since it's only doing Freenet (and only has that port open to the world) then you don't need to update the kernel.
And yes, I know what I'm talking about. I've got a E-PC in my basement that's been running along happily for over 3 years now, and the only thing that I've ever changed on it was the Freenet install. Unload, upgrade, and restart the Freenet proxy. Done in 5min. Whenever i want to use the Freenet i just change my proxy in my browser to my Freenet server in the basement. Takes me 20 seconds.
So I want all these excuses of NOT running Freenet to stop. Anybody can find a 'junk' computer and put Freenet on it, no excuses! Get those nodes up and running--the more nodes that stay online 24/7 the better. And trust me... Once you see the amount of creativity that true total anonymity brings, you'll be glad you at least saw it. You might not like it but at least you know it's there and what it's about. And like GI Joe said--Knowing is half the battle.
And if your really worried about your electric bill--don't. Your bill will jump up at most
Since the rights of the unborn (read: abortion) has become the ultimate litmus-test in meatspace, has kiddy porn become the Internet equivalent?
Of course that is a rhetorical question, and the answer is obvously a resounding "yes". So, from this point forward, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, let us all agree that any discussion of privacy, freedom of speech or anonymity on the Internet shall descend into a polarized debate over the evils of child pornography. Terrorism and illicit file sharing came in second and third, respectively.
You have officially "gotten the memo".
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
More importantly to me is that this is free software which requires a big ugly chuck of non-free software to run. Java sucks because there are no good and free implementations. Freenet hasn't worked with a free implementation in a looong time.
I _can_ kill a person.
I think you are confusing Freedom with impunity.
They are neither contingent nor corollary. Many very smart people would argue that they are often mutually exclusive...not least in so far as your freedom ends at my fist.
So that's why it's written in Java!
Actually my gut reaction to Freenet was fantastic - I don't want anyone monitoring my communications, other than the intended recipients.
I don't care to let them know what I'm reading, doing, looking at, or thinking. I don't want them to know who my friends, associates or business partners are.
Here in Canada we have the RCMP, CSIS and others. I don't worry about them in the Canadian legal context, but I do in an international legal context. There have been recent cases of the rendition of Canadians to some not so nice places, which appears to be as a result of helpful Canadian intelligence/police agencies notifying US counterparts that a traveller needed questioning because of someone they had met in passing - and off to Syria they were shipped.
Maybe it won't happen to you, but how well do you know your friends of friends of friends?
If I could browse, email, send and view files completely anonymously, I'd personally feel much safer.
Just my gut reaction, but I can appreciate yours as well.
"As far as child pornography and mitigating circumstances, exposure to child pornography does lead people to be more likely to molest children."
Bing-bing-bing... Timeout. I have seen one or two studies quoted on this (and related) issues, and I have also seen them torn down for their methodology. The core problem? Correlation does not establish causality, no matter how much academic language you cloak your paper in.
A disproportionate number of suicides prefer country music. Therefore, country music makes one suicidal (well, it does me, but that's a different phenomenan at work). Or is it just possible that someone in a state of depression identifies with songs about losing their job at the factory only to find their spouse ran off with their truck and dog?
Your argument is dangerously close to arguments the moral majorinuts use to legislate temptation out of our lives. Yet bizarrely, something is not working. Amsterdam, for example, with it's liberal drug and prostitution laws has a lower incidence of drug use and sex crimes. Go figure.
Do pedos seek out juvenile erotica? Duh. But have you seen any real study where actual control groups were randomly "exposed" to different types of stimulus with a followup on the amount and type of victimization perpetrated by the study group?
There is also a school of thought that the ability to act out certain unacceptable fantasies may provide a sort of safety valve for some individuals. Escalating behavior is a pattern in many sex crimes, and certainly seeking out reinforcing material is a part of that pattern. But it is by no means clear that it is causative.
"...statistically speaking, pornography DOES lead to increased sex crimes against women."
Garbage. You've been watching the FSC again (Fundamentalist Science Channel). Stop it. Exposure to that stuff will damage your brain.
Look, bad science is bad science, and bad statistics are the bedrock and foundation of bad science.
At best, you can find studies that correlate inappropriate sex with porn. But that does not establish porn as causitive, merely symptomatic.
Again, show me a real study. One where half of 1,000 individual are exposed to porn in a blind study, with the degree of victimization tracked. Until you can find that study, all you're doing is barking up the correlation tree.
Look, I smoke tobacco (I know, I know, I'm an evil bad pariah). Studies show that drug users smoke tobacco way out of proportion to the rest of the population. Therefore tobacco causes drug use. Right? Problem is, if they were giving away crack at 7-11, I wouldn't be interested. Correlation, or causality?
Folks, this stuff is way the heck too serious for us to abandon thought and reason in favor of mushy emotianalism and rhetoric, and fundamentalist notions that you improve human behavior by legislating "temptation" out of existance.
But until we do that, we are going to continue to be societal victims of a government that heavily funds bad science in the hope of apeasing the mystical majority.