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Pirate Party Launches Commercial Darknet
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Tue Aug 15, 2006 01:42 AM
from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
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.'"
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Pirate Party Launches Commercial Darknet
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Rock On Dude (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rock On Dude (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.defself.net/)
One question we get is if this works in the US. Yes, it does.
It looks like just a PPTP connection to a Swedish ISP, doling out some Swedish IP addresses. I'm curious as to the speed the service offers. What's the pipe feeding into Relakks?
Re:Rock On Dude (Score:5, Informative)
Net Neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
Some definitions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Authoritarian: Government based on manipulation of power where access to government information is limited and access to citizen information by government is unfettered.
Ask yourself which direction the US government is heading.
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday April 19 2007, @10:15PM)
Inside the US, though, the customers of large US telecom companies may be firewalled off from the service by the very people they are paying for Net access. If not that, they may be slowdd to a trickle of traffic.
If I was paying for access to "The Internet", and my service provider wasn't giving me access to everything I could legally access, then I'd be getting ripped off, wouldn't I?
So for the rest of the world US net neutrality laws don't matter so much. For those of us in the US, they matter a great deal, even when the traffic starts overseas.
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
*Yes yes I know or packets traversing across a US network segment.
**Neutral until the Telco's lobby the US administration to reign in them darn foreigners. After all its their divine right to extort money from those who have made a successful internet business.
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.infamous.net/)
Snuff films are not real [snopes.com]. And the problem with pedophilia isn't the transmission of images of the sexual abuse of children, it's when actual sexual abuse of children goes on.
Freedom has risks. If you have free elections, the "wrong" guys might win. If you have secure communications, "terrorists" might use them to make plans. If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.
But if you believe in freedom, you're very very wary of the state getting to define who the "wrong" guys, the "terrorists", the "bad guys", are. Consider that Martin Luther King Jr. was a target of COINTELPRO; consider Nixon's "enemies list"; consider the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dredd Scott decision, the Alien and Sedition acts, the Red Scares, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans...
And? "Anarchy" means no ruling hierarchy. Some people think that's a good idea [blackened.net], especially when it comes to communication. As Robert Anton Wilson put it [rawilson.com], "A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of `monopoly in the means of production.' Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual's brain."
Important note... (Score:3, Informative)
It looks like it is at least a quasi-commercial darknet.
Ryan Fenton
Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.sammamamma.com/ | Last Journal: Friday June 15, @01:49AM)
Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that I think
Re:Important note... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's very little in the actual document which isn't in the published article when it comes to cost.
Have you been living on Gilligan's Island?
5eu/month is, as pointed out in the FA, at the current exchange rate: $6.359.
Before Scotty Richter was castrated, he was bringing $2M into his office, yes, two million U$ monthly. And he wasn't the king of the mountain.
Can you explain how $6.359/month going to make a spammer think twice about using the service? Particularly when you consider the anonymity. No more looking for open proxies & relays.
They pay far, far, far more than that to set up shop in China, then send all of that crap back to the US. Most spam originates from the US as the 2003 U-CAN-SPAM law[1] basically gave them free reign, but the big boys still rely upon China.
Here are the top 200 spammers responsible for 80% of the crap which is dropped in your inbox. [spamhaus.org]
Some of these guys (e.g. Ralsky) have substantial setups in their basements or an office (when they-he aren't|isn't getting caught running around in nothing but a black thong -- yes, there's a picture of it in an anti-spam archive.
But seriously. How do you think ~$6/month is going to stop a spammer. I'm not trying to present a loaded question here. I really do want to know your perspective on this because you may have insights no one else has considered.
The only way I can see this not becoming a spam haven is if there's a volume limit for that price and you have to pay $x/volume for each increment after that.
I'm all ears.
_______________________________
[1] Very effective, wouldn't you say? Has your volume of spam decreased (without human intervention to separate the wheat from the chaffe?)
Ahem (Score:2)
(http://onphilosophy.wordpress.com/)
Re:Ahem (Score:5, Informative)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654)
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Insightful)
Although this is better for speed, isn't it bad for anonimity? Traffic that has been over four hosts is harder to trace back than traffic that has hopped over a single host.
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.atkennedy.com/)
Re:Ahem (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.paulmc.org/whatithink/)
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.
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.osreviews.net/)
Except that Swedish authorities are known [wikinews.org] to violate the law if they like it.
swedish ip's (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.urbanpuddle.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday April 02 2006, @10:31PM)
Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.
That's what I call massaging the numbers!
(Unfortunately,) I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waiter.Re:swedish ip's (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 24, @01:08AM)
Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1066346/)
Re:Question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Read The FAQ (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Question? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://wot.narg.googlepages.com/)
Re:Question? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.vanderlee.com/)
There are records, Relakks implies so themselves. It's just that Relakks claims to not hand them over readily.
Considering how effective the *AA's have been at getting access to private information based solely on completely meaningless evidence (a screen printout with filenames that look like copyrighted material), I have to wonder how easy it would be for the Swedish *AA-a-like to make up a bogus claim which could potentially get somebody imprisoned for 2 years.
You're paranoid and here's why (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities?
Records? What records?
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://wot.narg.googlepages.com/)
by dcapel (913969) on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908566)
(http://wot.narg.googlepages.com/)
Records? What Records?!
Re:Question?
(Score:2)
by mincognito (839071) Alter Relationship on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908567)
(http://thegreennotebook.blogspot.com/)
If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities?
Records? What records?
Ok, you are either copying me (your post id is one larger) or that is plain SCARY.
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
Now, in the 21st century, we have 'dcapel' and 'mincognito' with identical, +1 Insightful Slashdot posts simultaneously.
I call that progress.
It's now time for you two to sue the pants off of each other for copyright infringement.
Ready, set, call your lawyers...now!
Re:Question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Been reading the Baroque Cycle, have we? ;)
You are drastically underestimating the genius of Newton and the influence he would have on science. Saying "Newton did a handful of big things - laws of motion and universal gravitation (although these were building on the work of others more than is generally seen)" is like saying "Yeah, Einstein fooled around with physics, but really anyone who studied Planck and Maxwell could figure out that stuff".
He didn't just develop "laws of motion" and figure out "universal gravitation". As you said, this had been worked on by many people before. What Newton did that was so extraordinary was that he was able to, with four simple laws, explain EVERYTHING. He explained why Galileos balls fell like they did, he was able to explain Keplers four laws (which took Kepler 17 years to figure out), he was able to explain how the earth was kept in orbit around the sun, he was able to explain why the moon circled the earth. You have to realise the enourmous scientific breakthrough of being able not only to explain planets and apples movements, but to actually realise and prove that they were the same force!
After Newton, most people were of the opinion that physics was basically done! The rest was small stuff, maybe clarify exactly how the laws worked in fluids, or figure out that magnetism stuff. In the 19th century, students were actually advised not to study physics, because since Newton had finished it, it wasn't really a subject for the future.
Newtonian mechanics reigned as completely unchallenge for 180 years! 180 years! Only in 1864 with James Clerk Maxwells equations did a seed of doubt become planted, but there would be no other theory for another forty years. Between 1687 and 1905, Newton had not ever been even slightly modified. I mean, imagine that. In the modern world there is general relativity and quantum physics, but they change all the time, with string theory and m-theory, and the accelarating universe and whatnot. Not so with Newton, his theories remained, completely intact. They were that good.
A wonderful quote from Lagrange (who inarguably knew more about this stuff than us two) is "Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish". Turns out he weren't entirely correct, but you can hear in that quote that impact that Newton had had. He had explained how the world worked. All of it. Simple as that.
This is not even mentioning all the other amazing stuff that he did, the optics, the telescopes (which were indeed the greatest telescopes of it's day, and is still in wide use today), etc. Yeah, I agree, Hooke was a genius, but what did he do that was comparable to Newton? Discovered and coined the word "cell"? Hooke's law of elasticity? Assorted discoveries in Biology? His architetural feats? That doesn't even come close to Newton.
And so what if he was an asshole? Sure he treated both Hooke and Leibniz (and pretty much the rest of the western world) like shit, but does that mean his scientific discoveries are somehow worth less?
Bottom line, Newton completely changed how we view the world. Him and Einstein, those are the only two that can make a claim on explain the System of the World.
Re:Question? (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday October 15, @11:53PM)
In other words...
DUPE! DUPE! DUPE!
Okay, everyone can mod him down (-1 Redundant) now, for being a fraction of a second slower than you to submit.
You should be happy that this is nothing major. I heard an American sniper tell a story of when he was assigned to kill a Vietnamese sniper. The American's bullet went straight down the scope of the Vietnamese sniper's riffle, and killed him. If the American had pulled the trigger just a bit slower, it would have been the other guy telling the exact same story.
Re:Question? (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Monday February 13 2006, @07:11PM)
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.
So it is an encrypted proxy service (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://wolfire.com/)
Piracy really isn't all that bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.d14bl0.com/)
Not all piracy is a bad thing. I mean, software these days is seriously overpriced. You could teach yourself some very basic programming skills (Visual Basic, for instance), and create a program that'll do exactly what the $100+ equivilant does.
So of course people will pirate it. Why? Because it's rediculous to pay for something like that.
Then there's music. Just to let you know, piracy HARDLY hurts the musician. Considering that 90% of the sales go to the record company before the artist ever sees a penny, they're really not "losing" much at all.
Then again, sometimes piracy is a bad thing. Especially for the movie industry. Millions (if not billions) of dollars go into the making of a movie. While, yes, theater sales bring in tons of cash, DVD releases are also a huge factor in a movie's income. Downloading a movie hurts people a lot more than downloading music.
Piracy has become such an overrated "controversy" lately that it's unbarable. Look at the price of blank CDs. Did you know that you have to pay a "piracy tax" for these? Yep. All because some higher-ups think that an extra buck or two will help save a movie studio or a record company. It's batty. What if I just want to burn copies of pictures from my family vacation? Now I've gotta pay the MPAA and RIAA some extra cash for something that they don't deserve? Get real.
All these corporations think that they're helping people by attempting to foil piracy. Yes, they've got their hearts in the right places, but they're doing it all wrong. "Right track, wrong train" is a good saying for this. They really need to clean up their acts when suing people. I mean, they've gone so far as to sue old ladies who can barely turn their computer on, yet let huge pirates go unnoticed.
Why's this?
Because if they let big pirates continue doing their thing, then they get to keep on making more and more money with the "piracy taxes" and suing people left and right for WAY more than the material they've pirated is worth. They're letting people go to keep themselves in the game, which is horrible.
Also, just a little side note, to anybody who thinks the RIAA or MPAA might be knocking on your door. Go ahead and go to court, but bring up the fact that an IP address is not a person. Since your IP is the only log they have of the download (even if they have the MAC, that'll only ID a computer, not a single person), you'll win in court. And they'll lose out on a bunch of money for the court date, as well. Two-for-one, if you ask me. =D
Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not enough for some cheeky bastards, though. After people have gotten their latest crackz, I get a surge of search results from Google for things legitimate customers never search for (e.g. Name of the Program V 1.0 download). I lost $10 last time I got the hacker surge because I bid on my own program name as an AdWords keyword and the "its not stealing, its copyright infringement!!!1" crowd literally picked my pocket for a quarter a click.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://manasarovar.info/landing.htm)
One of the issues I have with smaller shareware apps is the price - rather than $25 for your app, if you cut the price to say $10 more people will be tempted to pay rather than look for a crack/serial. And I am writing from experience.
The math doesn't work, trust me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The math doesn't work, trust me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday March 11 2007, @09:18PM)
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://stinerman.livejournal.com/)
I believe all people have the right to take anything they need to live regardless of ability to pay. Oddly enough, I do consider myself a bit of an anarchist and am not ashamed to say it; do not make the mistake of taking my sig for my ideology though -- it is just something interesting I read. Since the topic is copyrighted works, none of which are essential for survival, it is odd that you would say that.
Just as nobody is born with an innate right to sell episodes of "24" for whatever they wish. You seem to mistake copyright as being a property right. I assure you, it is not. Society has decided it is better for all of us if we give creators that monopoly on distribution that I spoke of. My society (well, politicians) thinks that the life of the author plus 70 years is the length of monopoly best to get people to distribute their works (with the overall goal being the enrichment of the public domain, mind you). I respectfully disagree.
Reminder: copyright infringment is illegal, but not necessarily immoral.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday October 08 2004, @04:53AM)
And until you split your concepts, you are blind.
Eivind.
Darknet? (Score:3, Interesting)
This article seems like BS.
Re:Darknet? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Not sure about this (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a problem with the darknet. I like freedom but sometimes a little monitoring and record keeping should be used to help police catch the weirdos that exist in our society.
I think there should be a balance of privacy and safety for our society, maybe there is, but it doesnt look like it to me with this new service.
Exporting a society's good things (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, i expect that if the Relakks service becomes popular expect laws to be passed soon in other countries to curtail access to it.
Re:Exporting a society's good things (Score:5, Insightful)
Most laws are designed to make it possible for people to live together in the most productive way possible (thus NOT an anarchy and NOT the law of the strongest). These laws thus concern themselfs with avoiding that one person knowingly or purposelly causes harm to another person (such as murder, theft, etc), secure trading (contracts, sales laws, etc) and avoiding "tragedy of the commons" situations with shared resources (environmental laws, zoneing laws, etc)
Any laws dictating what a person cannot do with their own bodies in the privacy of their own house and without causing any harm to others is a moralistic law in that it tries to forcifully deny to others the (lawfull) possibility of acting in certain ways, even though those actions would have no negative impact for third parties.
Soft drugs prohibition is thus a moralistic law since smoking pot in the privacy of one's home causes no harm to others, while for example a law prohibiting driving while under the influence of drugs would NOT be a moralistic law since driving under influence strongly increases the chances of an accident which could harm to others.
Awesome! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://stinerman.livejournal.com/)
The problem (is it a problem?) with freedom is that people will abuse it. In this case, the right is privacy. If you outlawed crypto for fear of terrorists using it they would just use other methods. It might not be SSL/TLS/etc. but simple keywords. For instance, it could be agreed upon at a meeting that if the heist/bombing/etc. is going to go ahead, I speak to you about my mother. If not, I could speak to you about my father. Simple things that like that is essentally all they'd need to do to circumvent any outlawed crypto. The counter to that is to monitor the communcations of every last person on earth for all time.
Here, I'd hope you'd understand that the solution is worse than the problem. So that terrorists can't use tools that law abiding citizens use, you'd have to totally eliminate privacy and have everyone monitored all the time.
Rationale? (Score:1, Redundant)
(Last Journal: Monday October 15, @11:53PM)
There are numerous companies already providing anonymizing services, very similar to this. What's special about this one, other than it's affiliation with the Pirate Party?
Right... (Score:2, Insightful)
'There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one...'
Re:Right... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.leperkhanz.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 01 2003, @05:17AM)
rhY
Re:Right... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://ekj.vestdata.no/)
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.
Copyright incompatible with privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
it will just be full of movies and music and games (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.positech.co.uk/)
And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them. Its sad when people take the legitmate point about anonymity that you might need for political organisations, journalists and whistle-blowers, and just use it as an excuse to facilitate warez and music copying.
And calling yourselves the 'pirate party' is just plain insane. Whats wrong with "the consumer rights' party? or do they realsie thats way too hypocritical.
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid we had these things called "people." I miss them. Nice folk; and a good many of them were producers.
KFG
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the rest of your rant, 'honest' should come to your mind instead of 'hypocritical', because you don't perceive them as a "consumer rights party" anyway, or do you? It's an ironic statement on how they are perceived, playing with their underdog image. And people like you, obviously, would never see anything else than the "pirate" part, which is exactly why they are important, to constantly challenge such views.
Furthermore, I think the name is well chosen regardless, because can "The Consumers' Rights Party" get any more boring and non-descriptive? "The Pirate Party" is concise, provoking (to some), and easily remembered.
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:5, Informative)
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 [piratpartiet.se]
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.
Help us n00bs!! (Score:2)
(http://www.leperkhanz.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday October 01 2003, @05:17AM)
rhY
Re:Help us n00bs!! (Score:4, Informative)
(http://stinerman.livejournal.com/)
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.
Governmental power (Score:3, Interesting)
The police, intelligence services, military industrial complex for instance have to be paid. You can do that by raising taxes, or by printing more money. Raising taxes is the obvious way to do it, but how popular are you going to be if you increase income and sales taxation? You'd be out at the next election.
Well, you control the printing presses, so just print more money, pay the services and suppliers with this new money, you can do what you like then without raising taxation and pissing off the electorate. Unfortunately, money like any commodity is subject to the laws of supply and demand so if you increase the amount of money around, each dollar becomes worth less and you have inflation, though you can easily deflect that blame on to others; Oil suppliers, employee wage demands, greedy retailers etc.
If the government was unable to print money (actually to borrow it) on demand, it's power to wage war, to pay for expensive surveillance etc would be very severely curtailed because it would have to raise taxation to pay for these services.
If you really want to limit the power of governments, then you have to remove or reduce their ability to create money on demand. If you're a libertarian for instance and really believe in small government then move your savings out of your local currency and into some other commodity; Property, gold, silver, shares etc.
Pirates planning obsolecence... (Score:1)
From TFA:
2 Questions (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.soisanook.com/)
Latency? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
This won't be much use for me if it makes the latency of my VPN connection to my employer so slow that typing into VNC becomes useless. At the moment I get ~20ms ping times from home to work (somewhere in the UK to somewhere else in the UK) and typing via VNC over a VPN is just as good as if I were at work. I've had times when the latency went up and it rapidly becomes impossible to type at normal speed because you can't correct your mistakes as you go.
Has anyone got any figures for latency for this ISP?
Er... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://bondage.com/)
I applaud their honesty, but I'm not convinced on this "you pay us monthly, and we'll destroy the service" business model.
-b
PPTP tunnel ? (Score:5, Informative)
"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."
Warning! Not Anonymous (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.tribalnetworks.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday February 25 2006, @07:46PM)
The claim that this service provides anonymity and immunity to logging is only true in a very limited sense! This is basically a simple one level proxy which keeps access records which the authorities can get their hands on if they "suspect" a crime is being committed. Sweden is signator to various levels of intellegence sharing deals on international crime and terrorism so none of the Swedish laws on privacy have effect if some outside government presents "reasonable suspicion" of a crime being committed. And no, you don't have to be a terrorist or kiddy pron baron to be concerned here - tyrannical governments have been known throughout history to use any means to available to them suppress and oppress their citizens...
Tor [eff.org] on the otherhand can claim to provide a level of true anonymity because of the 'onion routing' concept. A potential adversary would have to infiltrate the network with enough fake nodes to get to both the input end (to get the ip) and the the exit node (to get the traffic) and then do some traffic analysis to match these two together in order to figure out who is doing what. This being very resource intensive, such capability would only be available to the highest levels of intellegence gathering and even then only for a limited set of survaillance targets.
Sacrilege! (Score:1)
Why not combined with PirateBay torrent trackers? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
using a VPN gateway only adds delays compared with a
real darknet with P2P VPN connections between trusted parts.
To give this some advantage if P2P traffic avalanches the VPN gateway
it should act like a tracker distributing both requests and
data packet responses, the difference being that each data
packet response may be multicast to all requesting parties
for a bittorrent. This should improve torrent efficiency.
The legal issue may be that the combined tracker and gateway
will in some sense not only have links to the data but in
a dynamic way have the data in its pipes.
Reminds me of a saying (Score:2)
This reminds me of a saying that is quoted in "Digital Fortress", a book from Dan Brown : "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes", which is latin and roughly translates to "Who will guard the guards?".
Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.chesmontastro.org/)
1. "The Watchmen"
2. Star Trek.
3. At least 6 million news stories about the CIA each year.
4. Bruce Schneier
5. About 6 hundred million blogs commenting about the news stories.
Oh, and
6. Decimus lunius luvenalis, better known as Juvenal.
Walk-around NAT too (Score:1)
If you can do more than one PPTP tunnel at a same time, and Relakks offer public IPs, one could actually get a global IP for every machine behind the router. Neat.
However their FAQ does not say anything what kind of IPs that are being assigned. Wonder if Relakks does caching too to take off some of the bandwidth load.
Google (Score:1)
(http://www.fiestyturtles.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 23, @09:07PM)
Needs VPNI would take a comment like this as being (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.keirstead.org/)
The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.
So, how long until Ma Bell and Pa Cable make it against their TOS to connect to an "unauthorized" VPN provider (whereby darknet VPNs are conviently never authorized)? Of course they would only do this after a little "helful nudge" by the DOJ.
Serioulsy - the idea is great, but using a service like this is basically like putting a big "HEY, I AM OVER HERE, COME ARREST ME AND THEN DO AN UNLAWFUL SEARCH OF MY HOUSE!" sign on your roof.
The sad sad thing is - a few years ago I would take a comment like this owrth a grain of salt and offer up some tinfoil to the potser. Nowadays I feel like it could actually happen.
Problematic to the extreme (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) You have to keep tabs on changes in Swedish law, European Union law, and USA law if you are an American citizen or risk being exposed legally at any time. If a terrorist bomb goes off in downtown Sweden, forget it.
2.) The very use of this service could expose you to conviction. I read a case in the news in which a judge instructed a jury in a porn case that even though no incriminating files were found on the suspect's computer, the jury could take the mere PRESENCE of encryption software as an indication of guilt. I can see mere use of this service being considered incriminating by some idiot judges.
3.) It's on Slashdot for crying out loud. Do you actually think law and government security geeks are not going to find it a challenge to break it legislatively or technically? I'd feel better if it were a privacy service existing in the internet twilight.
4.) There's the paranoia factor. What makes you think it isn't a trap?
Anonymity and credibility? (Score:2)
(http://www.tjerkstra.org/)
Cybercrime Treaty (Score:2, Informative)
List of signatories (Council of Europe site) [coe.int]
Now that is just... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.linuxplatform.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday December 16 2003, @04:31PM)
Think of the... government! (Score:1)
(http://www.musterion.net/)
Oh please. 99% of the traffic will be illegal filesharing. This particular statement is quite ridiculous because what does "darknet" have to do with keeping government in check? Something like this can have nothing to do with government accountability. The argument is akin to the "Think of the children!" approach so often ridiculed here.
Sold! (Score:1)
It's quite sad... (Score:2)
(http://wod.home.dyndns.org/)
correct translation from swedish (Score:2)
"If the government could check everything my friends and I do, we wouldn't be able to exchange copyrighted music, movies and software."
Timing Attacks? (Score:2)
(http://www.osreviews.net/)
flying spaghetti monster? (Score:1)
(http://flipmack.blogspot.com/)
You know, there is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Idea 1 :
What I, HUMAN, buy, when I buy anyTHING, it BELONGS TO ME, as in "MY book, MY cd-rom, MY computer, MY audio cd, MY dvd."
And I can do whatever I want with it, and the first thing I do with each and every data support is to rip and copy it, in hopes of gaining the ability to enjoy it when the support has become unusable (re-sold, given away, destroyed, lost, scratched, missing, stolen, borrowed). I buy a CD, not a nebulous right to play recorded music. I buy a round disc that holds many ones and zeroes, which represent music that can be played back when the round thing is inserted in a suitable device. That is a little far-fetched from buying a right to listen to music.
You see, THAT is what I call common sense: WHEN YOU BUY SOMETHING, IT'S YOURS.
Idea 2 :
"Information wants to be free" : bullshit. Information IS free. It belongs in the mind of each and everyone that wants it. Information is free because it can be replicated at no cost. Which leads to
Idea 3 :
Blah blah the cost of production blah blah : bullshit. A movie that does not return its initial investment in theater tickets many times over in the first week is a commercial failure. Oh, I know, the video market gains The Industry many many more $ even, but I say fuck them. They've earned enough money already. And they might earn even more if I could actually BUY the dvds ($30 a film? Yeah, right. Make that $10 and I'll buy them in six-packs.)
The production costs for a music album could be repaid many times over, too : The more people buy the hardware (i.e. the CD, or whatever other support) or the concert tickets, the more $ you get as a musician. The more people download your music, the more people will listen to it. THAT costs you NOTHING AT ALL.
Idea 4:
MY common sense tells me that, as there are zillions of people downloading exabytes of data on various darknets, the statistical chance anyone (i.e. you, reader, or me, writer) will ever be prosecuted for filesharing is very, very near zero.
Other ideas :
What "copyrighted material"? I can't copy a CD with its artwork, booklet, and sell the copies. Chinese industries do that, they have printing and CD presses. The ones where CDs get lawfully produced in the day and pirate-copied at night. That amounts to the same as printing money, then: the value of "copyrighted material" is non-zero at industrial scales.
Or distributed, as in "ten million BitTorrent users and counting" - the very same people that DO buy round plastic things in artfully decorated jewel cases. But they do not steal anyTHING. Thus, no theft, no crime.
Now, for software. Oh, make everything free for non-commercial use already, or so cheap that it would be more profitable for users to actually buy it instead of d/l'ing the crack from badly-coded, malware-infested and porn-ad-riddled crack sites. I'd have paid, oh, happily 10 to 20 for the whole Creative Suite 2, instead of waiting for a week for Azureus to DL it in English first and in French later. I'm a student and I'm not gonna see a ROI on that before the next version or the one after anyway. Now come sue me, Adobe, with your lawyers at [one year's student's expenses] a day. And it's not as if I didn't have to have the FULL version, not those castrated student editions. Yes, I know, I must still buy the hardware, but it's pretty hard to download it off the 'Net. And it CAN NOT BE COPIED AT ZERO COST. That's why hardware can be stolen. Not software. (Stealing the box in which the software comes IS theft, copying bits around is NOT.)
And while I'm at it, I'm gonna type another rant : hardware prices. Hey, nVidia, does a Quadro chip REALLY cost you one hundred times more to produce than a crippled GeForce *200? Didn't think so, either.
Re:ah... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.hiveminds.org/)
I'm nervous when people are nervous about standing up for themselves and saying, "Go fuck yourself, I'll read whatever I damned well like."
Re:ah... (Score:5, Insightful)
What country do you live in? I live in the USA where people voted in a facist administration that thinks the Constitution is a quaint document that is exactly where it belongs in a museum. If we could wrap copper around the founding fathers we wouldn't need foreign oil. Their spinning bodies could power the country for the next thousand years. If you mod this funny you aren't paying attention.
Re:Sweden must suffer for they sold ironore to Hit (Score:2)
Perhaps if the Bush family had not helped out German coal production and steel fabrication through American-financed companies which used slave labor from Auschwitz, all that iron wouldn't have posed as much of a problem.
Just a thought.
-FL
Re:No Linux support !? (Read the FAQ at relakks.co (Score:1)
RELAKKS running Linux
Q: Is it possible to use RELAKKS running Linux OS?
A: Yes, it should be possible. We hope to be able to publish a guide shortly.