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Pirate Party Launches Commercial Darknet
CrystalFalcon writes "The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth. This service lets anybody send and receive files anonymously without being tracked or traced. 'There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,' says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.'"
Tor has three intermediate hops between you and the destination; this only has one - so you get lower latency. Also, with Tor, your download speed is the minimum of the 4 intermediate connections' bandwidths. If one of those people happens to be a dial up user, you will be getting dial-up speeds.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Quite possibly, but the facts that its: 1) a different country, with a separate legal system that seems to deliver what the US constitution promises 2) A European Union country, which has demonstrated a much less media industry friendly policy and 3) a different judicial system, so that US laws don't apply, and US legal precedents won't have much weight suggest to me that it will offer quite a bit of protection. A terrorist might get caught up in the legal web, but the RIAA will have their costs raised by a couple of orders of magnitude, and Jesus, that's alright with me (cue guitars...)
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I think the point is that it's (1) based in Sweeden, (2) encrypted end-to-end, (3) as anonymous as you want it to be based on the information you provide to them, and (4) fairly strongly protected legally in the jurisdiction it operates in.
1 and 4 being pretty big for USians who are using it...2 for people whose ISPs filter. 3, dubiously so, as at some point they have your credit card saying that you have an account although I suppose that, if they don't store your tunnel account with your CC number, they have no way of getting to you personally.
It doesn't matter if someone nefarious is on the same link-local segment sniffing all your traffic, if they can't identify through technological means who you are, and can't compel the provider through legal means either because they didn't keep that information or just won't give it over.
Short version: They keep only records who is customer, not about his traffic. https://www.relakks.com/faq/legal/
Legal
RELAKKS is a company incorporated in Sweden. The service is basically a Swedish broadband subscription offered over the Internet. This means that the legal framework mainly consists of the The Electronic Communications Act 2003 389. What will this mean if:
Swedish authorities or,
Other organization or individuals demands access to information protected by RELAKKS?
RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.
If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned - fined not enough). .
RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but that's all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.
For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over "traffic data" including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.
Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never turn over any kind of information.
The combination Swedish high-tech encryption and the strongest legal protection give you true access to Internet, safer and speedier then ever before.
For more information about Swedish Telecom Law: The Electronic Communications Act 2003:389
I understand it that it's business and laws as usual here too, of course, but if they're enforced of leaving out user details, I wonder what exact differences their unconventional subscriber register has compared to a regular one. They don't seem to go into detail of that, and I'd guess that is the most interesting part here.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If it's a truly anonymous darknet, they won't keep 'subscriber linked to ip accessed this resource'-type records. Even if the US or any other overzealous country or power subpoenaed or stole the records to prosecute, they won't know which subscriber did what and when.
So the minimum of records they would have to keep is who's subscribed and paid, and even with only a handful of people on the service, there's no way anyone could prove beyond reasonable doubt that a specific person did it, and I don't think swedish law would enable prosecution of the ISP.
I did due diligence before I opened my little business. First, the demand curve for software doesn't fit what you might think from a microecon 101 textbook. Price is a signal of quality, and $10 software is "crud" whereas $25 software which accomplishes what you are setting out to do is worth actually getting out ye olde credit card. The other wrinkle is that advertising costs money and its impossible to make money at the $10 price point if you advertise. For example, during my last week I made roughly half of my sales through Google AdWords, at the cost of roughly $10-15 per sale depending on the campaign. I then get $25 and split $1 with Paypal, leaving me with money in my pocket. Google will not decrease my CPC just because I charge less for my product.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
They have a contract with Labs2 (run by the former ceo and founder of bredbandsbolaget) so bandwidth shouldn't be a problem.
I believe that it is in the article summary:
The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth.
Even today, you can route your Bittorrent traffic over Tor or I2P, but its slow as hell. And lets not be coy. The vast majority of people will use this for infringing copyright. That is the difference -- performance.
For example;
There's a zillion reasons really. But more importantly, you shouldn't need any reason at all. The simple fact is, there exist people who would prefer, atleast sometimes, being anonymous online.
Har har har--I'm laughing too, but:
Granted--I can type in any old crap I want when registering but my actual actual IP address sounds like it's logged:
So they are keeping logs.
The American in me is hearing: "The Swedish [authority] has to be really reaaaally sure you're gonna go to jail for this" to get all the information they wanted anyway. Forgive my skepticism. What I'm saying is: I was about to sign up for this and this is why I didn't.
Piracy is not what the party is about, it's a name they picked to be noticable.
The consumer rights party would be a stupid name, as it would infer some capitalist values and the party does not take a stance in questions like that.
Everyone please read! http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english
The party is here to counter the police state we are turning into with Bodström giving the lobbying organisations whatever they want, and to put a stop to the silliness of patents and eternal copyright.
So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.
One of the universal rules of happiness is always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual
Reading FAQ on their site it appears they use PPTP tunnel. While it's quick and easy to setup for clients, looks like it has some security flaws, quoting Poptop page about PPTP security (http://poptop.sourceforge.net/dox/protocol-securi ty.phtml):
"PPTP is known to be a faulty protocol. The designers of the protocol, Microsoft, recommend not to use it due to the inherent risks. Lots of people use PPTP anyway due to ease of use, but that doesn't mean it is any less hazardous. The maintainers of PPTP Client and Poptop recommend using OpenVPN (SSL based) or IPSec instead."
Relakks will hand over SUBSCRIPTION information ( that's all they keep). This means the Riaa gets "Why yes, John Doe uses our subscription-based internet service". This isn't a crime. If the RIAA sucessfully obtains this they have ALREADY got you on copyright infringement with OTHER evidence.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.
Except that Swedish authorities are known to violate the law if they like it.
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