Freenet 0.3 Released 175
A few folks noted that Freenet 0.3 has been released. You can read more at the project homepage. The software's description: "
Freenet is a peer-to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of censorship. It is completely decentralized (there is no person or computer essential to its operation), meaning that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster. Freenet also employs intelligent routing and caching to learn to route requests more efficiently, automatically mirror popular data, make network flooding almost impossible, and move data to where it is in greatest demand.
Changes: This release includes dramatic architectural improvements, addition of internode and data encrpytion, subspaces, along with improved performance in a variety of other areas."
I would be working on this... (Score:3)
FreeNet has two basic needs:
1) Programmers: Everyone knows C, many people know C++. Nobody I know personally knows Java. Clearly there ARE people who know Java--but how do the numbers compare? Why not write the core in C (which is, face it, just as portable as Java if done correctly) and then a UI in Java?
2) Testers: I run a home network. In order for people on the Internet to see my FreeNet node, I'd have to run it on the public side of my firewall. But there is no way in hell I'm taking the time and security risks to install Java on my server.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi (Score:1)
Another free observation
It's a co-op, dummy. (Score:1)
It's a Co-op, dummy. It only works if you 'pay' for what you get out of it. You're no more special than every other member of the group. You want to be able to pull files from Freenet at a reasonable clip? Then you put up a Freenet node, and join the co-op. You want to upload files implicating a former employee with a modicum of anonymity? Then you put up a Freenet node, and join the co-op.
If you don't, don't. The world won't end without you. It'll be okay.
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Re:security,firewalls,clients,YES! (Score:1)
There is a Perl client available so people can setup Freenet access on their web pages, see FCRC [thalassocracy.org], so you should see web based access soon.
For Windows Active State [activestate.com] has ActivePerl, a FREE Perl interpreter, easy install. All you do is type the name of the perl program at a DOS window. Perl programs are easy to change, and docs come with the download.
Other Clients are being developed and are available HERE [sourceforge.net].
Re:IANAL, but here is what will probably happen... (Score:2)
That's the reason for splitting the data, as is done by my Random Pads [eleves.ens.fr] proposal or, better even, the Publius [nyu.edu] system.
See here [quatramaran.ens.fr] for an implementation of a secret-sharing mechanism.
Re:I have a dream... (Score:1)
It was always said in the open-source whitepapers that successful open source projects always had reasonable code at the outset, not just a pretty idea.
John
Re:You haven't defended Free Speech until... (Score:1)
John
A free market for good ideas? (Score:1)
First the point. Why not let the nodes "vote" on what content to serve? This is not the same as having the government or a monopoly (USPS) decide what can be carried. With a large network, there will always be some way to find and distribute "bad" (unpopular) content. It will just be more difficult to do so.
The current situation vis-a-vis real warez and kiddie porn is a simple example. Anyone who thinks its just as easy to download these things today as it is to buy a book online is either testifying at a Senate hearing or smoking crack rock.
Moving on to implementation. Some of the FreeNet routing "magic" includes choosing where to store data based on proximity to its users. Presumably, if you use a site all the time, a lot of it's data will simply be stored on your local node (your hard drive). Therefore, if you don't read bad content, it is unlikely to be stored near your machine.
This argument applies if your neighboring users are also servers. If that assumption holds then content you avoid but your neighbors don't is likely to be stored on their machines, not yours. This leads me to the conclusion that "network content approval" can be achieved in an anonymous, equitable, and emergent fashion by requiring that every user must be a server. For all I know about FreeNet (not much), this feature/bug is already built-in.
Of course, such a system is not perfect. If you run a large server and your naughty neighbor runs a small pc, you are likely to store much of her "offensive" content. But hey, you probably already do.
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Dr. Hodad
Black's Beach Tanning Supply
La Jolla, California
Re:I have a dream... (Score:4)
You have misunderstood what Freenet keys are. Internally they are cryptologically derived arrays of bytes - nothing that can be described via URNs, URIs or whatever.
We have sketched up a standard for describing keys of the different types as URIs. If somebody wants to make one for describing them as URNs, go ahead - it does not effect the network, only the clients that need to turn them into keys.
I have not spent much time in corporate environments, but enough that the concept for a "working group" sends chills down my spine. No beuracracy here please....
We will of course write an RFC, but we need to to know how we want the protocol to work ourselves before that - and we are still far from that.
Re:I would be working on this... C code! (Score:1)
This is only the start of Freenet, you know these guys are going to tie it into Gnutella, Mojo and other systems so it's harder to stop. There's a Perl client available so people can setup Freenet access on their web pages, see FCRC [thalassocracy.org] so you should see web based access soon.
I see a Perl server coming someday soon.
For Windows Active State [activestate.com] has ActivePerl, a FREE Perl interpreter, easy install. All you do is type the name of the perl program at a DOS window. Perl programs are easy to change, and docs come with the download.
But I have (Score:1)
Re:You haven't defended Free Speech until... (Score:1)
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:3)
The simple answer is that we have written Freenet for people whose ethics include the freedom of speech - even that speech which they do not like.
Since yours obviously do not, the way you can assert your ethics is simply not to run a Freenet node, and maybe by sending some money to one of the organisations who are on your side (MPAA, AFA, the Chinese communist government, etc).
open space... (Score:1)
Freenet stores everything that is poppular, and if you dislike kiddie porn and are worried about your hardware being used to distribute that, then all the more reason to use freenet.
Why? Because you are one more user who does not use freenet for kiddie porn. There by bringing the average popularity away from kiddie porn. Which results in kiddie porn dissapearing faster from freenet.
Its all about popularity, the way ellections should be
Re:"it's about taking away the ability to censor" (Score:2)
It's not talking about your freedom to control the content that passes through your computer. It's talking about the freedom of everyone to publish what they want. This means that in order to ensure your own freedom, you must help to ensure the freedom of others. If you don't think that's fair, then Freenet is not for you.
Re:Everyone: Please read! (Score:2)
You still seem to be under the impression that paedophiles go around trying to pick up children. For a few, this is the case (though they wouldn't be "paedophiles", but I don't want to get in arguments over terminology). The vast majority, though, have more or less no contact with children (beyond what one would normally find in the general public). Whether they're impressionable or not isn't relevant because there's no sexual contact involved. Paedophilia is not about actions. It's not about going out and having sex with minors.
Why don't you find some paedophiles and find out: (a) how many have had sex with a minor; (b) how many have had any sexual relations with a minor; (c) how many have had a romantic relationship with a minor (e.g. holding hands, talking); (d) how many have even approached a minor in the hopes of starting a romantic relationship. Most have a clear sense of what will do harm to the child on what won't, and will be able to draw the line. The problem is that the *only* paedophiles you hear about are the rapists, which is a very small part of the paedophile population.
And, off on a tangent here, one of the best thing about children is that they *can* have a meaningful conversation. They don't talk about the weather; they don't talk about politics; they don't talk about getting drunk; they don't talk about work; they don't talk about money. They generally only talk about things which are *shudder* interesting. If something's on their mind, they tell you what they're thinking, and then they stop. If you actually try listening to what children say, I think you'll find them quite intelligent. I fail to see why anyone would *want* to talk about something like world current events when they can talk about a nice picture instead.
Re:Centralized is not totally bad... (Score:2)
YOU said it.
That statement's wrong.
Freenet was designed with security as a goal, yes. Efficiency was another goal. Should SSL be illegal? If you're presuming anything that permits secure movement of information is also meant for movement of illegal information, sure sounds like it.
Freenet, in addition to material which is in some areas legally questionable, has hosted the Federalist papers, the Communist manifesto and other political documents. It has hosted many of the papers which the "Church" of Scientology has fought to keep secret (and while these may be under enforceable copyright in the US, it ain't the same everywhere). Freenet has valid uses. It was created with them in mind.
Re:Personally, I'm rooting for MojoNation (Score:2)
Well, as I understand it, the files that get the most attention (i.e. downloads) will be the most widely distributed. Everything people publish will still be there, it's just that the most popular stuff gets distributed more. That means that there will probably be a lot of pr0n, since it is extremely popular, but everything else should still be accessible.
Re:What about user identification? (Score:1)
No, it isn't. And that's quite intentional. The reason: who decides what's appropriate? If we're deleting the kiddie p0rn, why wouldn't we delete the pirated copies of Windows? One could argue that it makes freenet look like a piracy tool if we don't. But, if we delete the pirated copies of Windows, why wouldn't we delete the copies of the MS Kerberos spec? and on and on....It's a slippery slope that no one wants to go down.
Nice, but... (Score:2)
It's good to see that there are people working on systems like Gnutella and Freenet, and it would be nice to see some functional results. Unfortunately most of the Gnutella clients I have tried were pretty much in the very early stage of development. Some didn't even include basic sharing functionality (but hey, at least they were THEMABLE!!!). How complete is Freenet's functionality? Is there no motivation to get a single solution out that works well?
Call me flamebate, but it looks to me like a case of "too many chefs in the kitchen".
Ways to Squash Decentralized Networks (Score:4)
Also, it seems to me that any network in which a specific document can eventually be tracked to a single IP address is insecure. While it can never be shut down, per se, anyone who is doing anything that make *make* someone want to shut it down can still be found (at least until the mibs knock at their door).
Check the Specs! (Score:5)
never broadcasting search queries (thank god).
Intelligently mirroring any and all data to a subset of the nodes that route the file to you
finding a file in the network is done in a chain, with the first node that knows where the data is directing the file request straight to that node
What this means is that, sure, in theory you could have to go through a hundred hops before you find your file. But next time you want that file, it'll be right next door (e.g. one hop away).
That, in my opinion, is leaps and bounds and orgasmically better than what Gnutella can do. Don't you think?
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Re:Nice, but... (Score:1)
Gnutella was swamped and mostly useless when people thought Napster was gone.
Freenet is better in these areas, but not "perfect".
I see a day soon when these systems will be tied together. Some people will run Gnutella nodes and not care because they are personally "suit proof" or living on a private island. Plus, it's expensive to go after 1000's of nodes.
The one problem with Freenet is paying the bandwidth bill. Also, you have no say as to what is stored on your node. Say, you like MP3's or want to put out your own MP3's, and you don't like porno, you have little choice as to what your bandwith is used for. "Subspaces" help a bit in this area.
Re:Ways... Please post any "Squash" ways! (Score:1)
Semantics (Score:2)
The mp3 naming convention comes into play with the diversity. Though Freenet may protect against identical INPUTs of files on the same node, it does nothing to protect against the same song simply being named differently, recorded at a different bit rate, input errors, etc. from different uploaders. If Freenet's users prove incapable of deciding on a standard file per song, that WILL increase the burden.
Where Freenet may work well at distributing a few suddenly popular texts (i.e., DeCSS) [maybe even better than some of these ftp mirrors], I believe it'll fail at the task of distributing mp3s in the manner that napster users expect to be able to use it [even ignoring the lack of search capablities and the like].
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:1)
Since when does supporting freedom of speech mean supporting what people say with it?
If I see a skinhead standing on a street corner handing out NAZI propaganda, because I support his right to speak, I will not do anything to silence him. But I am not going to stand there alongside him handing out flyers as well and support his message .
Re:good for future bandwidth (Score:1)
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Re:I would be working on this... (Score:1)
As said in the Freenet FAQ [freenetproject.org]:
3.6. Why Java?
In addition: if you know C and/or C++ Java is extremely easy to learn. The Java standard libraries provide heaps of functionality for free. Java is a higher level programming language than C, meaning lots of stuff is taken care for you, meaning you can write the programs quicker.
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:2)
So are you going to withhold your taxes on the grounds that an immoral user might misuse those archives, that YOU paid to maintain ?
Re:Legalities, Versioning, and Permanence (Score:2)
No we aren't. We are working on updates, but the updates will be non-destructive, ie the act of uploading a new version will not make the old version go away. Self censorship will not be allowed.
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:2)
Yeah, the Chinese communist government, plus, oh, I don't know, the government of every single industrialised nation on Earth!
This is incredible. Someone says that he doesn't want his computer distributing information that "could kill someone, or could exploit someone against their will". (As well as being morally very questionable, this is almost certainly illegal in most countries.) The response? Scream COMMIE !
Remember that, people. Don't want to aid and abet criminals, eh? Don't want to distribute things which go against every moral you have, huh? Well, ya know, there's a Mr. Mao out there who has a country for Red traitors like you!
Re:I have a dream... (Score:2)
Forgive me if I don't share your enthusiasm for this approach.
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Re:What about user identification? (Score:4)
Oh, yes, it is. All speech is speech. Even if you don't like it. I don't like the stuff you mentioned either, but I acknowledge its fundamental right to exist. Freenet is not a tool for bookburners.
So what I want to know is - is it possible to track this kind of rubbish and remove it, along with users who upload/download it?
No. You cannot track the users; that's a very large part of the whole point of Freenet. However, remember the old "ignore it and it'll go away" bit? Because of Freenet's architecture, this is actually true. If no one downloads it, it will eventually be deleted to make room for things people do want to see.
Keeping it free of this crap will mean that Freenet will be a much cleaner place than the web, and it will also attract less attention from governments looking for their next target.
Define "clean." Free of things you don't want to see? Who gave you, or anyone else, the authority to determine what a person may see (parents excepted solely in the case of their own children), except for that person him/herself? No one did, because you have no right to do that. Freenet, it seems to me, is not about giving people the right to see what they wish; it's about taking away the ability to censor.
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radio (Score:2)
The guys over at L0pht [l0pht.com] (which I didn't see at the MIT Flea yesterday...) were working on such a system. I wonder if it's mothballed due to their newfound partnership with @Stake [atstake.com]. Hm.
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My
Quux26
Thank God for projects like Freenet (Score:2)
Some may say that this day has already come, and projects such as Freenet are a last ditch attempt to save the few scraps of Freedom that we still have. I say that projects such as Freenet are a pre-emptive strick against the greedy corporations. We can fight back by hitting them where it hurts: in their pockets!
Sure, some people may be using Freenet to distrobute such things as child porn, or terrorist bomb making blueprints, but personally i think that is a small price to pay for the defence of our Freedom. Provided Freenet does not get detected and closed down by the corporate Police, we can continue to fight back against them by trading their "valuable" items, such as MP3's, DVD's, and applications. If enough of the worlds users can do this, we can really show the greedy corporations who's boss!
So i say Yay! for Freedom, even if it does have a small cost.
Re:Ways to Squash Decentralized Networks (Score:2)
Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
Frankly, I agree about censorship being evil, by and large. But I do recognize the fact that there is some material out there that some kids, even many kids in some cases, aren't mature enough to handle. It then becomes a parent's duty to ward off things like that until the kid is mature enough to handle it reasonably.
Parents don't necessarily have a duty to control what their kids see, only a right. It only becomes a duty when the kid genuinely couldn't handle the information in question.
This does put a duty on a parent to watch the kid and try to determine what sorts of information the kid could or could not handle; you seem to have done this. You don't think your kids are mature enough to handle the Bible, so you hide it from them. Probably for the best, actually; your viewpoints on Christianity aside that's not a children's book (take a spin through the books of Judges, Leviticus, Song of Solomon... heck, most of the Old Testament... and you'll see what I mean). Even the famous stories told to children are watered-down versions. It does lead me to an honest question: have you read it yourself? Seems to me as though someone who's anti-Christian ought to at least know about the religion they don't like, and no better way than by looking into what's generally considered the definitive book on the subject
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Re:Everyone: Please read! (Score:2)
Interested troll tests Fascdot nick? (Score:2)
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:2)
You don't need to support it. You don't necessarily SUPPORT it by hosting it, you're making their speech POSSIBLE.
If I see a skinhead standing on a street corner handing out NAZI propaganda, because I support his right to speak, I will not do anything to silence him. But I am not going to stand there alongside him handing out flyers as well and support his message .
Its not comparable. What's comparable is as follows. You own a "public plaza" where people walk. Would you let the nazi stand there and hand out his propaganda? If not, would you let OTHERS stand there and hand out THEIR propaganda?
I would definitively let him hand out his propaganda on my plaza if I would let others do it. He should have the same right to distribute his information, as others should have. I would on the other hand strongly oppose his stance, and I would even go so far as print out my own brochures and stand alongside him handing out information that rebuffed his.
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Re:I would be working on this... (Score:2)
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Re:Semantics (Score:2)
One problem w/freenet and the caching system is that you cannot create dynamical sites. Everything is static pages, that you have to update manually. Another problem is the entire update thingie. Since everything is "pull-based" I would think that expiring an old document is almost impossible. That would be kinda ruining to say, a homepage that's updated every hour.
I don't know how, but I hope that the above mentioned problem will be addressed by the creators of freenet.
To sum it up - I think you should look elsewhere if you just want another warez&mp3sharing tool. FreeNet *can* be used for those purposes, but its not efficient to do it with. You'll have to distribute the "keywords" for the song through some means, if you want anyone to be able to FIND it, and then you're vulnerable to censorship again.
So, i don't see the problem.
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Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
* Using thermal noise, it is theoreticly possible to determine the temperature of the noise source, thus the noise is information, not noise :).
Bill - aka taniwha
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Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
BTW for those that are wondering, yes, I am anti-christian (and religion in general), but only on a personal level, I will never tell anybody else not to be one, except possibly my kids, and really, if they are going to be religious, I want them to make that decision with thought, not blindly.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Re:I would be working on this... (Score:2)
That's ridiculous. A JDK/JRE is no more of a 'security risk' than Perl, Python, or Tcl. You're probably thinking of Java applets or something. But if you want a reason not to code in Java, security is NOT one of them.
Re:I would be working on this... (Score:2)
Its probably since the project leader, Ian Clarke, recently graduated from University. At the moment, certainly in my course, Java is being taught as the primary language - hence most students are more familiar with it than any other language. I've done a variety of programming in various languages outside of University, but most people I know there haven't.
I wouldn't be surprised to find this the case at Edinburgh University too - and since Freenet started life as a final year project, the choice was probably limited to Java only.
As a side point - this trend in teaching Java may be its "saviour" in becoming very widely accepted. If its all that graduates know, it will become the standard language of choice very quickly.
Re:Centralized is not totally bad... (Score:2)
Re: Slippery slope (Score:2)
Seriously, the poster mentioned drug-making material - if you think it should be possible to remove drug-making information, then how would you stop the Islamic nations from removing any tobacco growing or brewery related information from freenet?
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi (Score:2)
Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
I won't get into your bit about implying that the current laws dictate morality (unless I inferred wrongly).
Re:Definition of "speech" (Score:2)
And if the public doesn't want it, then they have a right to not have it.
This is absolutely not true. The public does not have the right to say what is and what is not acceptable speech. The Bill of Rights was specifically established to prevent this "tyranny of the masses." There are forms of this speech that are reprehensible, and continuing to bring up the bugbear of child pornography leads me to believe your case is somewhat weak. Speech is anything that can be communicated, like it or no. - Rev.Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:2)
It would seem to me that an integral part of the freedom of speech is trusting your citizens (users) with the ability to determine for themselves what is worth participating in (listening to, reading, viewing, etc.). I'm not talking about removing content from the entire network, just my box. If you do not even give the users the right to determine what they want to traffic on their own servers, where is the freedom in that?
A dog by any other name... (Score:2)
It may perform a few other minor tricks, but that system is what sets it apart from GNUtella. As for "clues", we'll see what you say when it fails to support a viable mp3 community.
Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
Freenet is meant to be international. There isn't any international agreement on what is "rubbish". In the US the things you mention are constitutionally protected. In Holland not only is cannabis growing information legal, but so is growing the cannabis and smoking it. In England (and, I would have thought, most countries) a lot of pornography is legal, and is used by happy consenting adults to enhance beautiful relationships. In some countries pictures of women's legs are immoral.
The usual way of handling your personal values is that if you are homophobic, you avoid gay bars, if you don't like pornography, don't buy any, and if you don't want your children making drugs, teach them about why you think it is bad. You do not have to impose your values on everyone else on the entire planet, with a multitude of diverse cultures and value systems, most of which are unlikely to be anything like yours. I wouldn't suggest that the whole world bans sprouts, just because I don't like them.
Re:Semantics (Score:2)
Freenet's efficiency would be inversely proportional to its size, if it didn't use route compression and document clustering.
Large files could cause a problem, if the clients didn't insert a large file in a number of smaller chunks, along with an index file listing the keys of the chunks.
Multiple versions of files will not necessarily cripple the network. Napster works. Gnutella sort of works. It's important to allow multiple different encodings of a file, because otherwise somebody could insert a bogus version of a document and there would be no way to replace it with the bona fide version. (This is known as "key squatting".) We are assuming that people will start to build up indices (on Freenet) of "good" files, causing the "good" files to be requested more often than the "bad" files, which will eventually disappear from Freenet. Freenet avoids multiple identical encodings of a file, so no space is wasted by storing two identical documents on the same node.
You haven't defended Free Speech until... (Score:3)
Until then, it's just posturing.
I think he's entirely in line. It is you who isn't.
If you don't want people to be able to say what they want to, then don't run a Freenet node. It's that simple.
(oh, and also, please don't run for public office. We've got enough of your sort already)
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Re:I have a dream... (Score:4)
I think you have a false idea of what a "working group" is. It is nothing like bureaucracy. The IETF has always been very open and very efficient in its structure. It's more about radically dissociating the implementation from the protocol, which is an essential step in producing a "standard" that is not a mere description of what a program does (in the same idea, for an RFC to become a Draft Standard it must have two independently developped implementations). It's about thinking before you act, and letting some well-known Internet experts give you advice.
You (and others) react as though I had attacked the idea of Freenet. I haven't. I think it's great. But I fear there's too much emphasis on the "let's implement it" rather than on the careful definition of a well-thought protocol. The implementation is nothing: the only important thing is the protocol. Of course we must fear the reverse pitfall, where the standard (like many W3 standards) never gets implemented because it was devised without any thought as to implementation. But the Internet is also too full of protocols that were engineered toward one single implementation.
And an IETF working group is the natural framework for developing a protocol. Remember: you don't need to be member of anything to do this (the IETF has no permanent members). It will bring the attention of experts who are able to address the problem of integrating the protocol defined in the mass of other existing standards. And it will bring recognition, quite simply.
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi (Score:2)
Re:Ways to Squash Decentralized Networks (Score:2)
I don't see this happening because I believe distributed peer-to-peer will become the future internet. while it is technologically inferior to other methods today, since when has that kept dedicated folks from making it better? Once it becomes a 'standard,' filtering will be out of the question. Such a proliferation of distributed networks will appear and become massive far before the government is able to flesh out anything against it, expecially due to the shifting nature of new tech. Pass a bill today that stops what worked yesterday.
They would have to strike early, as in now to accomplish anything, and I don't believe it has even blipped in the mainstream yet. 9 out of 10 people have never heard of Gnutella, and it is the largest of its breed.
Re:I would be working on this... (Score:2)
The Freenet protocol is actually very simple, though (or at least it was back then). If you can get the SHA1 hashing algorithm, then you're about a quarter done. Don't be too surprised to see Freshmeat flooded (a la mp3 players, Napster, Gnutella, ICQ clients, etc.) with Freenet clones in the next few months.
Re:Definition of "speech" (Score:2)
In other words, only popular viewpoints are valid? The very principle the US was founded on was that while the majority may rule, the minority is protected from being squashed by them.
Your argument is rather weak, unfortunately, because you can't even classify Mozart, Van Gogh, and Shakespeare in the same league. They worked in entirely different media, and it's impossible to make fair comparisons across media. And for the record, even if it were possible to make fair comparisons across media, I wouldn't class kiddie porn in the same league. But just because I happen to think something sucks doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. Just because a million people think something sucks doesn't mean it shouldn't exist either.
And if the public doesn't want it, then they have a right to not have it.
Right you are. Every person has an inherent right to not download anything they don't want to download. Implicit in the right to speak, after all, is the right of others to hear you as they wish, or to ignore you as they wish.
However, in no way does the right to free speech imply the right to silence another person, or to restrict what another may hear (again, the sole exception being parents, and even then only as concerns their own children).
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Could be dangerous (Score:3)
I don't like the idea of totally untrackable access. Freenet gives the perfect tool for spreading copyrighted software and music. While many think that it serves them right, it is illegal no matter how much that software or music costs.
But I'm even more concerned about child pornography and other dark sides of man. If those sickos can't be tracked, we've just created the perfect tool for child abusers. And frankly, I can't believe that this kind of freedom or anonymity is more important than human rights of the victims of these criminals.
Personal feelings aside, Freenet is also dangerous to the internet. As much as some people would love it, the society can never be free. If you want a safe society, you have to compromise a bit with your own privacy. The politicians and authorities know this and want to keep it this way. So if Internet suddenly becomes totally anonymous, there will be legislation and international agreements to bad all anonymous internet traffic. It will be severly restricted and all rogue countries will be banned. Just look at the land mines to get an idea.
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi (Score:2)
Re:Check the Specs! (Score:3)
Of course Freenet is different in that it's more chain-y than other protocols, so there's a larger chance of getting a corrupt node. Hopefully, whatever node you use (and whatever node they use, etc.) will be actively maintaining, and will always be adding new nodes and removing old nodes so as to keep the network mostly pure.
The claim that Freenet is completely anonymous is not entirely true. Obviously, if I upload something to a node, I'm giving it my IP. However, it doesn't know if I'm uploading it myself or if I'm uploading it on behalf of someone else. If, however, I'm constantly giving it advertisiments, etc., banning my IP would be a quasi-effective solution (especially if there were something analogous to, say, the RBL).
Maybe this is a bit cheesy... but (Score:2)
"Those who would sacrafice freedom for security deserve neither." - Ben Franklin
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Re:Centralized is not totally bad... (Score:3)
The Freenet guys are ultimately hoping to have a "subversion-mode" dist of Freenet which will be completely hardened to identification as Freenet traffic, and that sounds fuckin cool :-)
-=20
Not really (Score:3)
Re:(OT) Re:I would be working on this... (Score:2)
powerful innards? - oh you mean Multiple Inheritance , Operator Overloading, and Dangling Pointers
That garbage was taken out because of the unmaintable code that it helped to create.
If you need the speed of c for writing something like a 3D shooter then use it!
The issues that freenet has are not related to application speed but bandwith, and that is definetly a language independant problem.
But if you still need some of those "power innards" write JNI code for your java to use.
BTW, have you taken a look at IBM's JDK1.3 for linux? It might not be the language to write something like OpenGL in yet, but it's JIT compilier breaks the bytecode down fast as hell.
Re:I have a dream... (Score:2)
Who mentioned closed doors? IETF working groups are as open as you can get. Internet working drafts and RFCs are public documents. They get ample public scrutiny. Much more than Yet Another open source project on sourceforge in which the protocol and the implementation are hopelessly tangled.
What I am saying is that the implementation is far less important than the definition of the protocol. It should serve as a Proof of Concept, but it should not lead the way. The two should be kept separate enough.
One man's moral stand is another man's censorship (Score:2)
You can't, whether you run a Freenet node or not.
If your machine is connected to the internet, it's probably forwarding packets full of kiddie porn, white supremacist bullshit and a thousand other flavours of poison all the time. If your machine uses a dialup connection, you're just paying someone else to forward those packets. The only change when you start running a Freenet node is how long you sit on the data.
It's important that Freenet node operators can't (easily) filter the contents of the datastore, because if they could, a node operator could be held responsible for the contents of the datastore if he didn't filter it. Would you want to be held accountable for the contents of every packet passing through your machine (or your ISP's machine)?
Re:Freenet really needs the support of the communi (Score:2)
I have a dream... (Score:5)
Freenet is good, it came up with some pretty neat ideas, but it would be better if it had been developped and thought out in advance in the context of an IETF [ietf.org] working group, if the specifications had been released as a Request For Comments [rfc-editor.org], and, in other words, if it had paid a little more attention to existing Internet standards instead of being Yet Another anti-censorship system.
For example, why did Freenet have to come up with their own key scheme instead of using the official standard of Uniform Resource Names [isi.edu] (URNs) defined by RFC2141 [urn] (the previous link was an example of a URN)?
I have this dream of a true world-wide distributed database founded on recognized Internet standards. It would use URNs as keys. (In particular, it would allow arbitrary Unicode character data.) It would use the ubiquitous RDF [w3.org] format as "semantic sugar" (pardon the expression) of its communications. It would borrow ideas from HTTP (the best Internet communications protocol we have so far) for the protocol, and Usenet and Freenet for the distribution mechanisms, as well as the public key distribution system and trust web, and the everything [everything.org] system. It would use public-key cryptography as the basis for its trust graph, so as to make data authentification possible and tampering impossible. Certificates and signatures would be distributed along the network itself. It would employ secret sharing mechanisms to split the risks of carrying certain data. It would be impossible to tamper with, impossible to censor, and extremely difficult to break. It would replace the lousy and obsolete DNS system (and also alleviate somewhat the power of "root registrars" in the DNS), and possibly The Web itself. And, to make my dream even more of a dream, it would be simple to implement.
Hmmm.... Nice project, for the year 2100 or so. Anyone care to start an IETF working group?
Event that wouldn't help these days (Score:2)
Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
If there truly is "rubbish" on freenet, it will never be requested, and thus it will fall off the cache relatively quickly, leaving freenet nicely uncluttered.
Centralized is not totally bad... (Score:3)
This is all very good in theory - but I've found that Gnutella (another non-centralized peer-to-peer system, albeit without the encryption layers) suffers as a result of this - with no central servers your packets may be routed through potentially hundreds of systems.
FreeNet must overcome this (although I am glad to see that intelligent routing is being worked on and improved!) if it is going to be viable.
BAN THEM!! BAN THEM ALL LIKE THE FOOLS THEY ARE!! (Score:2)
IANAL, but here is what will probably happen... (Score:2)
People keep on touting the anonymous aspect of freenet and gnutella. The problem is, is that it doesn't really matter where the data originates or where it ends up. Now, encryption makes it very difficult to peek at data being transmitted between nodes, but the last node on the chain gets decrypted data, and can finger the machine that it was received from. No, I'm not talking about the originator of the data, rather, the last system that packets physically came from.
You see, it's against the law to transmit some types of data, be it child porn, warez, or whatever. If that type of data is coming from your system, too bad, you are breaking the law. This was almost the case with ISPs until laws were passed protecting them from their customer's use of their networks, but guess what? There are no laws protecting you from yourself! If an official connects to your node and downloads the DeCSS code, they can come take your system(s) and charges can be filed. Why? Because the decrypted, "illegal" data, was received from your system, and that's all that matters. If you feel that running freenet relieves you from your responsiblity for data transmissions from your systems, according to the law, you would be wrong, unless, of course, you are an ISP.
Basically, if you run freenet, you assume the risk, just like if you setup an anonymous ftp server allowing uploads, you assume the risk.
Somebody please correct me if I am mistaken, but with the laws that we have in place, that's how I see things.
Amazing tech.. (Score:3)
After all, this goes back to the original ethic of the Internet, the ability to share things freely, post things around, and generally be pretty laid back about things.
The sad thing about it is that it's become as necessary as it has.. What with the legal vultures leaping onto everything in an attempt to make it theirs, and stopping people doing anything they either don't understand, or don't agree with.
Malk.
Re:Ways to Squash Decentralized Networks (Score:5)
Freenet takes this vulnerability into account in two ways:
First, you don't send out a query to a central server and get back an IP address, like you do with DNS or Napster. You send out a query to a neighbouring Freenet node and get back a document (or a failure notice). You can't tell whether the document came from the node to which you sent the request, or from one of your other neighbours, or from another node whose IP address you've never heard of. All you know is that it passed through the node to which you sent the request. But since it may be stored somewhere else, that knowledge doesn't help you to censor the document.
However, if every request was routed through dozens of nodes before the requested document was found, and if the document had to be passed back through as many nodes, Freenet would be extremely slow. Freenet has two clever properties to avoid this: "route compression" and "document clustering".
Route compression
When a node responds to a request by returning a document (call it document X), it can set the DataSource field of X's metadata to indicate the node from which X was obtained. (This may not be the actual source, but it cuts out some of the middlemen.) The requester uses this address when looking for documents with keys lexographically close to the key of X, so the intermediate nodes are skipped in any future requests. Effectively, a new edge in the Freenet graph is created, linking the requester to the node listed in the DataSource field.
Document clustering
This works almost like a neural network "learning" the fastest route to a document. If a node successfully obtains document X from node Y, it will forward subsequent requests with keys similar to the key of X to node Y. Over time, Y's cache will fill up with documents having similar keys, clustered around the key of X. This will increase the likelihood of success of requests for keys inside the cluster, and increase the likelihood of failure of requests for keys outside the cluster (as unrequested documents are squeezed out of the cache). The sets of documents cached by Y while serving requests for each of its neigbours will start to overlap, and the sets will eventually become identical - Y will become an "authority" on a particular part of the keyspace. Over the network as a whole, documents with lexicographically close keys (note that this has nothing to do with the contents of the documents) will tend to cluster together on the same node. Thus over time, requests will be routed more and more efficiently as the "guesses" made by nodes about which neighbour to forward a request to become more and more accurate.
The second way that Freenet avoids censorship is through replication. Every node involved in tunnelling a request caches the requested document as it passes through. This not only allows documents to cluster, it also ensures that popular documents are replicated across the network while unpopular documents eventually disappear. Any attempt to censor a document by taking advantage of route compression to discover the IP address of the node storing the document is bound to fail, because you have to request the document dozens of times to be sure you have found the true source of the document, and by that time you have succeeded in spreading the document all over Freenet. It's a very elegant self-balancing mechanism.
Re:Check the Specs! (Score:3)
Buzzz! Incorrect answer. The bulk of data in Freenet will be inserted under CHKs - content hash keys. Tampering with the contents is impossible, because the key used to request it is unique to the data.
But how can I get these hashes to request? Meet SVKs. These keys are cryptographically signed, and their data is intended to redirect the user to CHKs containing the real data. Also check out SSKs - these permit a publisher to insert plaintext keys under his own "subspace", all signed by his private key. For example, you might request "freenet:SSK@down_with_the_state,ut8hLKSEDHt9ut3OT GDIty40", where the string after the comma is the publisher's public key. Cool, huh?
So it's really simple. Content is guaranteed to be what you expect through secure hashing. Built-in cryptographic signing provides an elegant way to find out exactly what data to request.
Right. Only the first node in the chain knows who you are. That's why you MUST run your own node.
When you request data from Freenet, you send a request from your Freenet client to your local Freenet node, saying "I am looking for X". Your node relays this to the node most likely to have this data. It probably won't, but it'll forward the request again to the node it thinks is most likely to have the data. After ten hops or so the data will almost certainly be found, and it'll travel back down the chain.
Now what does this mean for anonymity? Well, if you're running a local node, and you request data through it, for all the other nodes know your node is just relaying a request from someone else. So there's no way to prove you've actually requested anything!
Freenet really needs the support of the community. (Score:3)
If we all talk about it, it will never happen. But we have the power to make it as important and standard as anyone. Look at our plans of world domination with Linux!
If we can kindle the same passion for a secure and safe internet, I am sure that the freenet idea can be driven to a high standard of acceptance. I am sure the last thing any control-seeking organization wants to have happen is the mass acceptance of a decentralized encrypted network.
it's very easy to download and install.
It doesn't chew up much bandwidth to run a node.
I doubt it will be long before someone hacks in a Freenet client into Mozilla, or another open source browser such as Conqu or Galeon.
I really believe that it's quite important for the community to rally behind this effort... if we don't accept it, nobody will.
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Really (Score:2)
Freenet does not push data around. Data moves around the network in response to requests, ie it is pulled, and in a much more efficient manner than Gnutella (no broadcasting).
You will not find dozens of identical versions of a file on Freenet, because when a document is inserted into Freenet its key is generated by hashing the data. That means that two identical copies of a document will have identical keys, and thus they will never be stored redundantly on the same node.
The amount of data stored is, as far as I can see, irrelevant. I don't understand where your hundreds of gigabytes/terabytes argument is coming from at all. Unlike Gnutella, Freenet should be able to scale to thousands or millions of nodes without breaking up into isolated islands. Maybe your concern about the size of "all the popular music" is based on the idea that Freenet is meant to be a Napster replacement? It's not. But if people want to use Freenet to trade MP3s, and they're willing to provide the disk space, it's certainly up to the task.
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:2)
I wish that were possible. I hate it when my own tax money is used against me.
---
Re:Nice, but... (Score:2)
Ok, the basic differences are like this:
In my brutally honest opinion, gnutella sucks icebergs through a nano-tube.
Re:security (Score:2)
Gateway
----------------------------- Exposed net
Firewall ExposedServer1 ExposedServer2
----------------------------- Isolated net
PrivateServer PrivateWorkstation
Of course, for my home network my architecture is actually more like,
FireWall-Is-The-Gateway-And-Runs-the-Exposed-Serv
--Parity
Re:Solution? (Score:3)
But really, what is this technology going to be used for primarily? Probably something illegal.
Since when is it wrong to do things that are illegal?
people are going to view this as is a system that will be able to thwart Big Brother, aka the government and big business.
Well, that is one of the things that it can do. "It's a feature, not a bug!"
Ofcourse we need to protect the freedom of speech, especially in a medium like the Internet. I just hope it's done legally.
This is an oxymoron. When laws are created that constrain individual freedom, and when court decisions prohibit people even from talking about these issues, it's not possible for individuals to "protect freedom of speech... legally". We must break the law, or live as sheep.
Re:Could be dangerous (Score:3)
Child pornographers aren't usually caught in Internet-tracking stings. They are usually caught because they turn in their computer for repair and someone sees something, or from other tip-offs.
What's really dangerous is your quote:
It reminds me of this Benjamin Franklin quote:
To many, the ability to truly anonymously share information is an essential liberty. Ask any whistleblower, pro-democracy activist in China, or anyone afraid of repercussions should they be caught sharing information.
"But what about illegal uses, such as copyright violation?" you may say. Define illegal. In what country? What about countries where copyright violation isn't illegal? Ever been in a Saudi Arabian music store? A Falun Gong booklet is illegal in China, should we not be able to share one? Many in Kentucky would consider what I see on European billboards to be obscene, a punishable offense to distribute. Should they have the right to say what is legal to distribute?
Whenever there is the slightest doubt, always err on the side of freedom.
Re:Nice, but... (Score:2)
If you request a document from a freenet server, it will find where it is, and propogate that document to all nodes between it and the actual location of the document (with each node only knowing ips of the requesting and granting nodes for that document). This allows for popular documents to be widely distributed so that you won't have to wait long to get them. It also means that merely looking for a document causes it to propogate.
Imagine the MPAA consternation if merely looking for DeCSS caused it to be distributed more widely. Further, even if they ran a freenet node, they'd only be able to tell which server immediately next to them in the server chain supplied the program and they'd only be able to track where it was going to one server away.
Re:Could be dangerous (Score:3)
Seriously, everything can be misused--and I don't want a totally safe society.
Re:What about user identification? (Score:2)
"If a man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately, he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case are superfluous."
-- UnknownRe:security (Score:2)
What about user identification? (Score:2)
The idea of a more "free" network built on top of the current one is something I thing we're going to need more and more in the current climate of censorship and oppressive legislation, but I'd like to know if it is possible for Freenet users to be indentified, either through the content they upload or their behaviour whilst online.
Whilst there is a lot of information which certain national governments would rather have suppressed that deserves to kept alive, there is also a lot of stuff on the internet which shouldn't be kept alive, but which will quite likely attempt to preserve itself through services like Freenet. Things like instructions for making drugs, race hate literature and pornography are not "speech", and should not benefit from the protections built into Freenet.
So what I want to know is - is it possible to track this kind of rubbish and remove it, along with users who upload/download it? Keeping it free of this crap will mean that Freenet will be a much cleaner place than the web, and it will also attract less attention from governments looking for their next target.
Personally, I'm rooting for MojoNation (Score:2)
http://www.mojohackers.org for developers
Decentralization, file encyption and micro payments. True, the whole Mojo economy is still in a beta state (right now there is an abundance of available space and not a whole lot of content...this tends to cheapen the value of free space and mess with the economy) but in only two months it's gone from something that wouldn't even run on my WinNT system to something that I have been able to publish many files and have my friends those files by just sending them a nice little URL.
Check it out. Right now we need some good open content to fill up all the available blocks and start putting the system through its paces.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Re:You haven't defended Free Speech until... (Score:2)
It's not as if all the encrypted information sitting on your server has your stamp of approval on it. It's specially designed so that you don't even know what's there!
If your qualm is that you could possibly be furthering the Nazi cause, perhaps you should reflect that what you are really doing is supporting a much bigger and more important ideal; free speech.
He merely wanted to protect his own freedom of speech--his freedom to decide what information he does disseminate and what information he doesn't.
Honestly, that's hardly freedom of speech. It's not speech just to act as a technological relay for information; mailmen don't cry out that their freedom of speech is violated when the possibility is very real that they could be disseminating material that they don't agree with. Would you consider it unethical for the post office to faithfully deliver a message that contains objectionable material? Should they instead take the liberty of exercising discretion over what they will and won't disseminate?
--
How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:5)
The question that pops into my head when I consider the ramifications of FreeNet:
How can I ensure that my machine is not involved in the trafficking of content that I don't support?
I think a lot of people who find FreeNet interesting immediately imagine all the victimless pilfering that can go on. "RIAA can't shut us down!" I'm not talking about free movies. I'm not talking about cracked Win2K warez. I'm not talking about the source code and inflammatory emails that were leaked from MegaCorp's development department the day before the stock price plunged.
Once you are a node, it seems you give up your right to have any control of what's hosted on your own computer. You become a member of the collective. You are a cog in a machine, without any ability to have any context.
John Doe may like kiddie porn, GHB date rape drug recipes, tips on how to spot vulnerable SUVs for car-jacking, Aryan Nation websites, and abortion clinic hit-lists. I don't. Look for it elsewhere.
If you want that sort of information, I don't want to be a party to it. I'm not talking about legalities. I'm not talking about censoring all of FreeNet from that information. I'm talking about my own ethic.
I don't want to have the feeling, that information resides somewhere on the server I've installed with my own time, money and energy, that could kill someone, or exploit someone against their will.
This isn't "cover my ass", this is "sleep well at night."
Re:I have a dream... (Score:2)
I understand the ideal of dissociating the protocol from the implementation, and why it is good, but it is simply a luxury that we cannot afford. The current implementation is an experiment - it is based on a concept that has never been tried before, and an observation about data topology that has never been proved beyond a few controlled simulations.
There is simply no way we can draft a protocol today for the features that are still pending inclusion in Freenet, or for the changes we will doubtlessly have to make in order for the current features to work smoothly, because we have no clue what it will have to look like. And nor does, to my knowledge, anybody else.
This is the reason why Freenet appears to progress slowly - we are experimenting with what works and what doesn't with every step into the darkness. I do not know any other way to go about this.
(And no, I'm not being defensive at all. I'm sure you want only the best, most people do, but I feel you are jumping to conclusions without insight into the situation.)
Re:You haven't defended Free Speech until... (Score:2)
I wasn't flaming him, I was simply alluding to my opinion that Freedom of Speech is an all or nothing thing - either you support the proliferation of any thought or idea, or you are against it. As far as freedom of speech is concerned, there is no difference between a Nazi and a person who tries to shut one up.
That is not to say I do not hate a Nazi. One of things that drives me is the thought that if there had been a system doing what we are tyring to achieve in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, the Nazi's would never have been able to silence the voice of dissent the way they did. Is letting them talk such a large price for the goal of never letting them making reality of their words again?
Re:How can I assert my own ethics on FreeNet? (Score:2)
--
"it's about taking away the ability to censor" (Score:2)
Freenet, it seems to me, is not about giving people the right to see what they wish; it's about taking away the ability to censor.
And there lies the rub. If you're a FreeNet host, you have lost the right to control your own computer. You will be forced to traffic information you do not agree with. You will be complicitous against your will.
Doesn't sound so free to me.
"p-2-p concept" (Score:2)