Freenet 0.5 Released 406
An anonymous reader submits "After over a year in the making, Freenet 0.5 stable has been released. This new version is far superior to previous versions of Freenet."
The announcement specifically thanks Matthew Toseland, "without whom this release would still be vaporware," noting "On the 11th of November, Matthew will no longer be able to work full-time unless more people donate, so please give whatever you can spare at our Donations page."
Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
When I first heard of FreeNet, I thought, "I live in America, what would I need of this?" No, this isn't a troll. I was happy and complacent and slightly distrustful of the Big Bad Brother. Now the purpose of a network like FreeNet has become quite clear, as I'm neither happy nor complacent and I'm more distrustful of Big Brother with each passing day, as he takes further swipes at the freedoms my Constitution tells me I'm supposed to have.
Thanks, FreeNet, for standing up. More importantly, thanks for the foresight. Imagine if they'd waited until it was really necessary.
Re:Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
Article I, Section 8. Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have the power ...
[paragraph 8] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Re:Thank you! (Score:4, Insightful)
to authors and inventors
In other words: NOT to the people who make mony off of the authors and inventors.
Re:Thank you! (Score:3, Insightful)
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, (NOT the authors, inventors, or corps.s)
by securing for limited times (not effectively forever)
to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Re:Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
How ironic that you mention the Constitution, when Freenet's de facto purpose is to subvert the following:
I might almost agree with you, had Congress not already subverted it by turning copyright from a limited monopoly into an effectively unending one. So now it becomes a question of "which subversion of the Copyright Clause is better?" My vote goes to Freenet & P2P.
Michael
Can someone educate me? (Score:3, Interesting)
Freenet is free software designed to ensure true freedom of communication over the Internet. It allows anybody to publish and read information with complete anonymity. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning that the system is not vulnerable to manipulation or shutdown.
Yeah.... but what is it? P2P? Blogger? Messenger?
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:5, Informative)
As I understand it, it is none of those things... but it can facilitate those things. What it is is kind of a different paradigm for the internet. At the moment with the internet I type in an address and I get data from the person who has registered that address - if he has the bandwidth. I know who is sending the info and who posted it. And if that person has spare bandwidth or is being
If I'm wrong anywhere please correct. Or if I'm right but kind of shaky please reassure me. Hope this helps
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:4, Insightful)
The one thing that always makes me wonder with Freenet is the potential liability for hosting 'questionable' content. If for instance, my node is used for storing some part of some kiddy pr0n and the authorities decide for whatever reason to inspect my PCs, how am I to prove that I didn't source the file myself. In fact, by hosting a node, it could be argued that I am soliciting for files of that nature.
Whilst the files are presumably encrypted in transit and on disk, its still an illegal file stored on my system.
Makes you think anyway....
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:3, Insightful)
What algorithms do they use? Do you know for sure that there aren't backdoors in those algorithms? I mean personally I dont think that the NSA permitted 128 bit encryption to be exported outside the states if they didnt have some backdoor to decrypt without brute-forcing.
Add to this that there are some legislatures in the world who arent keen on people having ANY form of encrypted file on their systems. The existence of anything encrypted thus points a finger of guilt regardless of the content.
Take for instance China, where Freenet's benefits would me most keenly appreciated. They arent even permitted to download the thing under export restrictions. So someone who _did_ download and use it would be easily detected; just follow the encrypted traffic flow.
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:2)
Believe me, the rest of the world doesn't care what the NSA does. Encryption technology doesn't always originate in the USA you know!
Besides, society has enough problems trying to regulate international trade in drugs, weapons and even people. No one is going to care about breaking these stupid, internet-ignorant anti-export laws.
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:5, Informative)
If for instance, my node is used for storing some part of some kiddy pr0n and the authorities decide for whatever reason to inspect my PCs, how am I to prove that I didn't source the file myself.
Your question should be modded up. It's one of the most important ones.
The idea behind Freenet's anonymity is plausible deniability. But before I can go into what that means, I need to describe how Freenet works in a little more detail.
There are two different types of Freenet nodes: permanent and transient. If you run a permanent node, it means that you're a full participant in the Freenet network. Your node acts as storage and as a router for requests and inserts. Data moves through Freenet in the form of keys, which are basically the same as files (or in some cases, segments of files) but with cryptic names. Your node caches all the keys that it sees (with least recently used keys being deleted when the node's data store is full, with "full" being defined by the amount of space you choose to let it consume).
Let's say Alice inserts two files into Freenet: the text of Mein Kampf and a picture of Adolf Hitler. She does this using her Freenet node, specifying a hops to live value on the insert. This HTL value is usually around 10 to 15, and is the number of other Freenet nodes that must be talked to. Each node that processes Alice's request decreases the HTL and passes it on to another node. When the last node to get the request sees that HTL is 1, and it still hasn't found Alice's file (because she's the first person to insert it), it returns Data Not Found to the previous node, which passes it to the previous node, etc., all the way back to Alice.
Alice's node gets the "failure" message back, and then sends actual copies of the data files back down the chain. Thus, the files are inserted into Freenet.
Now, this is where the plausible deniability comes in: the data coming from Alice's node looks just like the data coming from all the other nodes she talked to during the request/insert process. There's no way to distinguish between the node that originated the request and a node that's simply passing the request along on someone else's behalf. So if someone were to sniff the traffic coming from Alice's machine and decrypt it and discover that her machine was inserting Mein Kampf, then she could claim that she had no knowledge of it; that her machine was simply routing an insert by someone else.
The same goes for requests. Suppose Bob stumbles upon a key which claims to be an ISO image of Windows 2000 Professional and requests a copy of it. His node generates a request with a certain HTL (generally 15 or more for requests), and it's passed along to other nodes until one of them either finds the key, or runs out of hops. The final result (either an error condition or the key he requested) is sent back to Bob's node.
But Bob could claim that he wasn't the person who originally requested that key -- he could say that his node was simply routing someone else's request, and he had no knowledge of it.
The same thing goes for files inside the local node's data store. Just because your node is storing a copy of a nude photo of Ronald Reagan doesn't necessarily mean that you either inserted or requested that file. Your node might simply have acted as a router for someone else's activity, and cached a copy of the key.
Now, all of this protection goes straight out the window if you run a transient node. Transient nodes don't ever act as routers for other nodes -- they're pure leeches. Anything on a transient node is there because you, the node operator, requested or inserted it there. You have no plausible deniability any more.
This explanation is a bit vague, and for that I apologize. The actual routing algorithms and encryption ciphers are a bit beyond my understanding at this time. If you have more detailed questions about how Freenet works, please check the Freenet mailing lists.
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:4, Interesting)
Uhh, yes there is. Just correlate requests going into and out from the node, if you're snooping all the traffic anyway. You can probably even do this by looking at the timings, if it's encrypted. If you see an outbound request with no inbound request in the n preceding milliseconds (established empirically) then it's pretty obvious that it was a request originating at that node. Want to know what the content is? Just replay the same request yourself, see what you get, and see which nodes talk to you.
Freenet might work if you only look at one-way traffic from one node at a time, but the people that it was built to circumvent - governments - have the resources to take a wider view.
Re:Can someone educate me? (Score:3, Informative)
Ok, you're wrong here on some points. First off, it's encrypted traffic so you can't just sniff. You'd have to be running a node yourself and hope they contacted you. Secondly, an inbound request can (and often does) make multiple outbound requests. If a node returns DataNotFound, and the node has another reference to try, it detracts the HTL and shoots it in a different direction. (Explanation simplified)
That foils straight-up traffic analysis. Also, it takes time to route requests in freenet, and the average node is getting 1-2 requests/second, so it's pretty tough to correlate.
Nice try. Freenet keys are composed of two parts: the address (content hash, name hash or key-signed name hash) and the decryption key. If you sniff, you have nothing. If you're a cancer node, you have a routing key and no way to decrypt it.
Governments generally have found it's cheaper and easier to boot a door down then spend months trying to crack encrypted traffic. Even to the point of putting keyloggers on a machine to get passwords rather then trying to crack it themselves.Some small things (Score:2, Informative)
You should also visit Nubile-freesite (site in freenet) for which you can find a link from many freenet sites.
Basic information in freenet is stored in CHKs (Content Hash Keys) - they can be found when requested with their contents hash key. Content itself is encrypted and encryption key is stored in CHKs.
This means that unless you know what you're looking for, you can't see it.
There are also KSKs which are basicly named redirects to CHKs. They are not secure as they are not signed by any keys and everyone could change them by inserting a new KSK with the same name (and hope they do not collide in the network).
There also also SSKs which are protected with public/private key architecture. They are requested with public key and inserted with private key. All freesites use SSKs (with at least one exception, the anarchy-freesite wich is a KSK keyspace).
Large content can be split to multiple parts and then clued together using 'standard' format splitfiles. This basicly is that you insert all the parts and one additional file that tells
Program listening in 127.0.0.1:8888 is fproxy (internal in fred - freenet reference daemon) which does most of the nasty work with keys. It accepts request fot all previously mentioned key types and passes them to browser.
Other programs which want to access freenet should do it with another port that talks FCP (Freenet Client Protocol). FCP is an ASCII protocol - very easy to use.
Read more from fine manuals
Donation's Page?? (Score:5, Funny)
Usability Engineering ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Usability Engineering ... (Score:4, Funny)
hope you don't run Linux then
Now that many people have FreeNet... (Score:5, Informative)
Really. There is nothing more annoying than broken links on Freenet which takes ages to resolve.
wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Now that many people have FreeNet... (Score:2)
I love the idea though, the power for anyone to publish everywhere without restriction.
On remembrance day... (Score:2, Funny)
On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, let's take this time to remember our veteran programs, without whom we wouldn't have freedom of software. Don your antiquated RAM chips on your lapel and be proud to be a programmer.
Re:On remembrance day... (Score:2)
A few tips for those trying to get this up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A few tips for those trying to get this up (Score:3, Informative)
A quick description (Score:5, Informative)
FreeNet is essentially the bulletproof P2P data exchange. It's practically impossible to destroy, or track down people who are on it. It is NOT designed for swapping MP3s or porn for those who have got the wrong idea, it's purpose is (as the name implies) to guarantee freedom of speech by allowing totally anonymous yet scalable publishing.
Scalable? Yes, one of the more interesting aspects of Freenet is it's intelligent caching and retrieval system. This isn't Gnutella, when you request a file it traverses the nodes being cached at each level. Therefore, the more a file is requested, the more distributed it becomes and the easier it becomes to get to - the opposite of the web.
FreeNet takes the form of a web for new users, you can "surf" the FreeWeb, and there was at one point a google-style search engine for it, I have no idea if that's the case. Some of the problems I remember were that it was often hard or impossible to reach certain pages as they hadn't propagated enough to be found before the timeouts were hit, and even then the timeouts were pretty high (like 2 minutes). On the more popular sites the owners would have to manually request it from different parts of the FreeNet in order to make it accessible.
Another problem was that because nothing can ever be deleted from the FreeNet once published, it was hard to do news/blog style sites: at the time they used JavaScript date based redirects, I think that shows how long ago I used it. Suffice to say that I'll be trying this release with interest.
Re:A quick description (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I cannot see how anonymous posting would be useful for porn or MP3's.
Re:A quick description (Score:3, Informative)
Although of course you could use it for trading porn/mp3s, in reality the upload/propagate nature of it means that it's not simply a case of "publishing" a folder, you have to explicitly upload files to it. Due to the lack of a built in search protocol (hence the existance of search engines for it) you'd be much better off using Kazaa.
Re:A quick description (Score:2, Informative)
Incidentally, I don't run freenet - before the police come knocking down my door.
Re:A quick description (Score:3, Informative)
That's not how I understood it. AFAIK, everything disappears automatically if nobody requests it. Even your own files, because instead of sharing a folder, you upload stuff to your datastore, which is part of the distributed cache that is Freenet. Am I wrong ?
Re:A quick description (Score:2)
Re:A quick description (Score:4, Informative)
The algorithm removes the least recently used file in the datastore when the store fills up, and has a bias towards larger files.
If you insert content that is popular and gets requested though, it's not possible to delete it even if you (the author) wants to
Porn (Was Re:A quick description) (Score:3, Informative)
It is NOT designed for swapping MP3s or porn for those who have got the wrong idea,
Before anyone gets misled, let me state for the record that Freenet does have porn and MP3s in it. In fact, it's quite a good platform for publishing collections of pornographic images. (It's not quite as good for MP3s and Oggs because they're much larger files. But it has been successfully used for that purpose. It may even have been used successfully for the next order of magnitude (ISO images, movies), but I can't confirm or deny that.)
So if you're reading this wondering if Freenet is going to have any pr0n -- yes, it does. But you may be somewhat disappointed if you're looking for huge MP3 collections.
uncontrollable network? (Score:3, Interesting)
6. Isn't censorship sometimes necessary?
But what about questions that are not answerable? For instance, some anonymous person "places" a file containing the source codes for all the windows operating systems+MATHEMATICA source code+xyz corporations major software. The software companies attitude could be bad, and mainly oriented towards profit and monopoly. But do even such companies deserve such a death blow? At one stroke, their entire product goes down the drain.
While I am not against freenet, it is not without its disadvantages. Taken to its limits, nobody can control us, yah, but nobody can control this "network" either!
Re:uncontrollable network? (Score:5, Insightful)
Information (knowledge) itself isn't good or bad. It's just that: human knowledge. It's entirely upon human being what he does with the knowledge. Man should be held accountable for his deeds not for what he knows.
I know how to make explosives and yet I don't make them. Almost every high school student knows how to make nuke and (surprise, surprise) almost nobody is trying to make one. Just because I possess the information (in your case the source code) it doesn't mean I'm criminal. Nobody has the right to tell me what I'm allowed to know. And that's exactly what Big Brother is trying to do - prevent people from having the information he doesn't want them to know, and to criminalize people who possess such kind of information. Freenet is designed to fight this information slavery.
Re:uncontrollable network? (Score:5, Insightful)
This observation is inevitable. Let's do some basic business logic:
- [Assume] Businesses need recurring revenue (i.e. you can only burn VC $ for so long)
- [Assume] As long as your hardware doesn't crap out, software lifetime is infinite
- [Assume] You have a finite customer base
- [Assume] If you keep improving your software, eventually it will do everything your customers want
- [Therefore] You can only sell so many copies of software to your customers before they don't need you any more
- [Therefore] Software as a product is only good for a limited amount of money, and that isn't recurring
- [Conclusion] Software as a product is not a viable business model in the long-run
Microsoft is having this problem right now with their operating systems. See, Windows 95 is good enough for most people. It runs AOL/MSN, Word, Outlook Express, Solitaire, and their printer. What more do they need? The MS solution has been to release a new OS every 2 years and hype the hell out of it, as well as purposely not provide patches for their older versions to support newer hardware, thus forcing software upgrades when old boxes die (since the older hardware isn't sold any more). The problem is, people are catching on, and new OS sales are fewer and fewer these days. The same could probably be said for purchases of Office. Who needs more Excel or Powerpoint templates? Anyone?The product business is fine if the product has a finite lifetime. Take housing, for instance. People will always need to repair and build houses, because they weather. Software doesn't, which means the only money to be made long-term on software is in support. The same argument applies to patents and other 'intellectual property'. Dolby has the right idea: come up with an idea, and license it until the end of time.
Companies that sell a product that doesn't break have already signed up for their death blow. Distributing the software online only speeds it up.
DMCA RIAA Bush... (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO there are three optional futures:
* It is deemed illegal and shut down.
* It is stopped by Palladium and shut down.
* All developers and users are sued and it is shut down.
I still wounder why everything good has to go.
Re:DMCA RIAA Bush... (Score:2)
Yes, probably. The FreeNet site says "Uncensorable dissemination of controversial information". At least we living in the free world (not the USA, China, etc.) will be able to enjoy it! 8^P
Paypal . (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Paypal . (Score:3, Insightful)
Give them a break. They didnt deliberately do it. Crackers have brought down the internet a couple of years back. Do yo u stop using it? OpenSSL had a security flaw.. Did people stop using it. The mantra "if it is cracked stop using it" is not in the spirit of the net. If it is broken, get it fixed, find out why it got broken.
This is the first incident of its kind, so dont write of paypal, unless of course they are not at all willing to take any corrective or remedial action.Why I don't use it (Score:3, Interesting)
1) I cannot control what is in my datastore. Free speech or not, I'm not going to cache your kiddieporn for you. So if I know that there's a file I don't want, give me a way to blacklist it. If it's encrypted then it's another story.
2) My files aren't shared permanently. If nobody requests the files I injected, they are thrown out after a while, even if my node is online 24/7. That's just plain stupid.
If I'm wrong or this has changed, please feel free to correct me.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole point of freenet is that all speech is free. Your first point goes against those ideals by judging what should and should not be on freenet. By allowing people to filter their content, you would break the system. Doing so would limit material from ever even getting the chance to spread, which according to you would be good in this case, but how could you limit it to just kiddie porn? Can't happen.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:2)
That's the whole point. If people could figure out what was in your data store, then the concept of free speech would be meaningless as you could be forced to hand over lists of content and then have it removed. Having the owner not able to see is the only way of guaranteeing that content cannot be deleted.
2) My files aren't shared permanently. If nobody requests the files I injected, they are thrown out after a while, even if my node is online 24/7. That's just plain stupid.
If you run a non-transient node this isn't the case, but this is like running a web server, so you need a 24/7 machine with lots of bandwidth. If you publish data that is popular, and then go offline however, that data is still available - it's more like the web than Gnutella.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:5, Informative)
It is. The store is cryptographically opaque; you don't know what you're hosting. Whether it's possible to identify whether a particular item is in the store when you know its key, I'm not sure.
2) My files aren't shared permanently. If nobody requests the files I injected, they are thrown out after a while, even if my node is online 24/7. That's just plain stupid.
It's necessary for a distributed-storage system where the injection point needs to be distanced from the storage points. Data flows to where it's being requested, so you could keep an item in your own store by requesting it automatically every so often. It won't go anywhere else, but it will stay in the keyspace should it ever be requested later on. You could do much the same thing to prolong the longevity of someone else's data that you valued -- but again, it would tend to live only on your own node if no other nodes were requesting it.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:2)
Well it must be, otherwise how would a server know whether to answer a request?
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:2)
They also adress the "I don't want to have kiddyporn on my computer" in the FAQ:
There has been attacks suggested though. E.g. using the "time to live" variable in order to probe a specific node for what data it stores. The same technique could be done to probe your local store. I'm not sure if these issues have been adressed yet.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:3, Insightful)
Hosting kiddie porn is not a freedom of speech issue, it is a legal one. (and etchical one, and moral one). Criminal activity is not protected speech under the 1st Amendment.
It sounds like they should replace Freedom of Speech with Anarchy in the FAQ.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:3, Insightful)
Umm... you would be referring to the extent to which the U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech. Don't confuse that with free speech itself. How would you classify a communist pamphlet?
Your viewpoint is also very U.S.-centric. Mathew Toesland is in Britain, btw.
If your definition of free speach is legal speech, what will you do if your government outlawed criticism of its policies, or makes it illegal to greet anyone with anthing besides "Heil Hitler"? Do you think the U.S. will never go through another period of McCarthyism?
Don't get me wrong... I can see where you're comming from. Personally, I think think there's no lower form of human being than one who takes pleasure at the expense of a child. I would not be at all opposed to life sentances for producers of child pornography. However, when you step back and look at all of the things they would like to make it illegal to say, (talk to Emanuel Goldstein, Eeeeeed Felton, Dmitry Sklyarov, et. al.) you begin to wonder what fundamentally makes us different from the Taliban.
Look at all the crap Phil Zimmerman went through to bring you PGP. That was legal speech, yet the U.S. Government harassed the hell out of him. Let's not forget what happened to Communist and even suspectedCommunists durrin the Red Scare. Don't forget that Communist propeganda was outlawed then too.
Re:Why I don't use it (Score:3, Informative)
Yes but these aren't bugs they are a fundemental parts of the design.
1) I cannot control what is in my datastore...
Then neither can anyone else, if a blacklist was implemented (keys a node should not cache) then Evil Organisation of your choice (RIAA,FBI,MI5), could publish a blacklist that you MUST use.
2) My files aren't shared permanently..
Because its not just about storage but about routing. The requesting of files should cause data to "migrate" across the network allowing for specialisation. The caching and expiring of data is a fundemental part of this process. It is this that gives the scalability thats I feel is lacking in other P2P networks.
no legitimate use (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider for just a minute that given a situation in which one individual distributes material to which another individual or group objects, most of the time there's a good reason for the objection. Maybe the material being distributed is copyrighted (like movies or music), maybe it's dangerous (like blueprints to a nuclear reactor), maybe it's offensive (like child pornography). Most of the time when the distribution of material is opposed, there's a good-- or at least understandable-- reason for it.
Now, it's possible to imagine a scenario in which it might be justifiable, or even imperative, to distribute certain pieces of information. "Soylent Green is people" is a silly example, but a more realistic one might be distributing news of the outside world to a society whose media is heavily controlled. But in that sort of scenario, is the Internet really going to be a useful communication pathway? Assuming the people who need the media have access to the Internet at all, what are the chances that they're going to have unrestricted access to the network of Freenet servers? If you think about it, I think you'll agree that it sounds pretty unlikely.
What I'm saying is this: it sounds to me like there's no realistic, nontrivial, legitimate use for this software. The idea sounds cool on the surface, but I have some serious doubts about its practicality.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:5, Insightful)
The first which comes to mind is whistle blowing.
OTOH, I think the most likely impact on freedom of speech is
On the whole, I think in resonably open societies, suc a the US and Uk still are, the only sane option is `publish and be damned'. That way they at least have to be somewhat public in acting against you. If you hide, they can attack you in hiding, perhaps by attacking everyone who looks a little like you.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:3, Informative)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only way to find something on freenet is to search for it.
Actually, you can't "search" as most people use that term. You retrieve documents from Freenet by specifying their key. You have to learn the key somehow, usually from another Freenet document.
The whole point in whistle blowing is that nobody knows about whatever you're uncovering. If they don't know about it, how can they search for it?
Some of the popular Freenet site authors have a way to send them messages using KSK@ keys. This is normally used for Freesite submission -- for example, it's how TFE learns about new Freenet sites so that he/she can list them.
So if I were going to do some whistle-blowing, I'd create my Freenet site (could even be a single text file), insert it into Freenet as a one-shot or edition site (certainly not a DBR), and then submit the key to TFE's submissions bin. And possibly a few other Freesite authors' submissions bins as well.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:3, Informative)
Source: Ken Smith's _Raw Deal_, "Whistleblower"; Blast Books, 1998. Definitely a book with some axes to grind, but good nonetheless.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:5, Informative)
On the contrary, FreeNet is used by a lot of Chinese people as it's a good way of distributing information without being traced. Right now freedom of speech may not be a problem for us, but we're lucky.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:5, Insightful)
For which reason, tools like Freenet are banned in China and a number of other nations.
There does exist a tricky bit of how to deliver such technologies to the people in need of them; possession of crypto is still a crime in much of the world, much less crypto intended to do that which oppressive regimes cannot allow.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:3, Informative)
What's wrong with usenet for anonymous publication? Posting is over SMTP, so you can put whatever you want in the from block, and you can post through any public SMTP server you want. Once you post, the document is rapidly spread throughout the world's news servers and is permenantly cached by several servers.
The only problem I see with usenet is that your local ISP has a carnivore-like packet scanner, the MIB can catch you in the act of posting. You'd need to encrypt your message and send it to a confederate who decrypts it and posts it to usenet.
BTW, usenet is great for piracy as well. They'll never shut down alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*, alt.binaries.multimedia, alt.binaries.warez.*, and alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.*. They're hosted by the ISPs, and the ISPs can use the phone company defence (ie, "We provide a medium for legitimate communication. Not our fault if people abuse it").
Re:no legitimate use (Score:3, Informative)
No, usually NNTP.
so you can put whatever you want in the from block, and you can post through any public SMTP server you want.
Which will (potentially) log where you came in from. Spooks get NNTP server people to hand over logs (or, if they have any sense, they are running most of the public posting enabled NNTP servers), talk to your ISP to see who was dialed in on that line and come pay you a visit.
Yes, you can be more indirect etc. but so can they, will you bet your lievelihood (or in some countries your life) on your ability to be better than their staff?
The penet vs scientology [eff.org] case is an example of what even a private organisation can do in one of the more free states of the world.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:4, Insightful)
How about women in the middle east being able to safely find information about women's rights in other countries, and possibly even using such a network as medium for creating political change in their own countries?
How about cuban, south african, (name your favorite country here) being able to safely speak out against atrocities performed by their own governments or provide proof of such acts without fear of retaliation?
How about americans being able to express their disagreement with current "anti-terrorist" laws or actions of the Bush administration without fear of ending up on some FBI list as a potential terrorist or disadent?
Re:no legitimate use (Score:2, Insightful)
Since 1994, the South African government has been fairly enlightened about both the safety of it's own citizens and press freedom. I would insert 'Zimbabwe' there.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm having a very hard time imagining any nontrivial legitimate use for this technology.
Free hosting for your daily web comic. You could even have normal World Wide Web URLs embedded in the Freenet page, pointing back to your web-store for merchandise, etc.
Free hosting for your own music, that you composed and recorded yourself. See above for merchandising. ("If you like these lossily-compressed songs and want to buy a better-sounding copy on CD, click here....")
Free hosting for a personal web log.
I hope you see the pattern here. In addition to this pattern, we have:
Uncensorable criticism of your employer, the Church of Scientology, the government of your country, etc.
Uncensorable expression of unpopular opinions (hate speech, underage erotica, racism, sexism, negative religious speech of all flavors). Publishing these forms of expression on the traditional Web could lead to unpleasant repercussions.
That's just "shooting from the hip". I'm sure someone with different needs and perspectives can come up with even more legitimate uses for this application. Use your imagination.
Re:no legitimate use (Score:2, Funny)
Freenet makes loads of enemies. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Freenet makes loads of enemies. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is exactly where the big media/entertainment industry should get to. Either you forget freedom of speech or you forget copywright laws over there in the U.S.
If only Europe and the Far East would let us here in the U.S. If you read the Eldred v. Ashcroft transcript, you'll see that harmonization with European copyright term was an important part of the government's argument that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was perfectly legitimate.
And then, of course, there are the RIAA Big Five:
AOL Time Warner - U.S.
Bertlesmann - Germany
Vivendi - France
EMI - U.K.
Sony - Japan
Michael
Paypal?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Paypal?! (Score:3, Informative)
Alternatively you can make donations by mail. Checks should be made payable to "Freenet Project Inc". The address for donations is:
Freenet Project Inc.
2554 Lincoln Blvd #712
Venice, CA 90291
Just fill in a nice figure (lots of zeroes), sign it and post it!
US Free Speech? (Score:3, Insightful)
in some European countries propagating information deemed to be racist is illegal.
I often hear how US citicens have a constitutional right of free speech. This i not so.
On the contrary the legal system in the US poses a number of restrictions on free speech. This includes libel, porn, patent and copyright laws. These laws all in some ways limit your right of free speech. So don't tell me that the US has free speech - because you don't.
Besides I personally think it makes sense for racist propaganda to be illegal. Look at it as a sort of class action libel case. Also rasism is one of the key points governed by the UN Human Rights declaration.
How? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:4, Informative)
Whats new in 0.5
Far too many improvements have occured between the 0.3 series and the newly stable 0.5 release. A few highlights are in order, though:
* Security
o Strong public-key cryptography used for inter-node communication which prevents man-in-the-middle attacks.
o Node announcement protocol which eliminates the need for any central directory.
o File-sizes enforced to a power-of-two to prevent traffic analysis.
* Publishing
o Support for splitfiles and redundant encoding (improves reachability of large files)
o Enhanced Freenet Client Protocol (FCP) for application developers.
* Usability
o FProxy (The Freenet Gateway) beautified and improved
o Node Status information readily available
* Resource Utilization
o Improvements made in performance, memory usage, and threading.
* Tool Support
o Many third party tools ready for website authoring, bulletin-board style discussions, and some near completion like Internet Streaming Radio, and more.
And perhaps most importantly, It Just Works!
quotation (Score:3, Insightful)
"'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
"Daddy, where were you when they took pictures of me playing naked on the beach when I was five, and when they posted me to the pedophilia board."
The concept of free speech/press is not so simple.
Re:quotation (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, censorship increasingly is becoming easy (with Palladium, etc.). As information transfer gets increasingly automated (ie happens via the internet) then censorship becomes automated, too.
We get forced to a hard choice: either censorship, or freedom. Freedom means not being able to censor the stuff we don't like (racism, paedophilia, etc). We have to look to other ways to fight these
If you believe in freedom of speech, then your're defending that right for your enemies, too. Free speech means spending some of the rest of my life countering the arguments of holocaust deniers,etc.
But I'd rather do that than live without whistleblowers, in a world where employers, politicians, etc can use technologies like palladium to convince us all is right in the world, and stop us from hearing about, and _fixing_ the cruelties that exist. I don't believe for a second that most CEO's, etc. out there, given the tech. to prevent bad news of toxic waste , pollution, etc. problems in their factories killing people, would actually fix these problems if they could guarantee their workers could never tell anyone.
Our daily quality of life is guaranteed by freedom of speech. Its not just for wierdo politicos.
the Dark Side (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not worried about nazi propaganda, I think is a good thing that the normal citizen have access to this information in order to study it. But pedophilia images and personal information can also be published through this channel with no ways to remove it. My only hope in this case is that these crimes can be pursued by police through other normal ways.
On the other hand, the fact is that the more popular information is better found, and the marginal info is hard to obtain.
Moreover, the control of the net is in the hands of users. If this technology became a widely used criminal tool, people would decide to turn off their servers and the proyect would die. The purpose of the FreeNet will be decided by the majority.
Re:the Dark Side (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the price you pay for freedom. You take the good and the bad, and hope the good outshines the bad.
I'm sure the pediphiles and crackers would find other ways to distribute their shit if it weren't for Freenet.
Freedom to only do Right Is Not Freedom! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Wrong" as defined by whom?
The Bush family thinks it is wrong to leak information emberrassing to the family out to the press, and they punish people severely (within their power) when they do so, yet what they do is clearly constitutional.
Supporters of Clinton felt it was severely wrong to have private, political groups fund and possibly incite lawsuits by private citizens for poltical ends, but clearly that was within the bounds of the constitution.
I'm not worried about nazi propaganda, I think is a good thing that the normal citizen have access to this information in order to study it.
Ah. So are you the person who gets to tell us what is "right" and what is "wrong?"
But pedophilia images and personal information can also be published through this channel with no ways to remove it. My only hope in this case is that these crimes can be pursued by police through other normal way.
Pedophilia is an illness, and people who act on those feelings are criminals. It was never necessary, nor smart, to subvert the first amendment by making information (child pornography) illegal to possess. Illegal to sell, yes (that falls under the commerce clause), but making the possession of child pornography illegal was a serious mistake.
Why? Two reasons I can think of off hand
1) Possession doesn't imply any intent or even desire. Ever get child porno SPAM in your mailbox? How about child porno popups when surfing completely unrelated adult pornography, or perusing newsgroups some looser has spammed with their vile crap? Most people have, and have immediately become guilty under the law for possessing child pornography (it is copied to your machine's memory). Worse still, that crap is cached on people's hard drives, often without their knowledge, for extended periods of time.
2) Any photographs are by definition evidence of a crime. Instead of banning information, such evidence could be routinely siezed, to be returned to its owner only after the crime (child molestation) has been solved. That would have had the twin benefit of not eroding the 1st amendment and building a strong incentive to squeel on the seller into the entire process.
The "dark side" of freedom is a red herring. If we are free, we are free to do things others disagree with. The only limits should be when those freedoms reduce the freedoms of others (that was what the founding fathers intended, after all). IN other words, in the case of pedophelia, the crime is the molestation and harm to the child (and the selling of a regulated, in this case banned, product), not the mere possession of the photographs. However, the police can and should seize any such photographic or video evidence, and keep it on hand in a file, until the case is solved and the child raping perpetrators convicted and put in prison. Of course, such evidence couldn't be returned until said perps had exhausted all appeal opportunities
A little clear thinking would go a long way toward solving many of the 'problems' that come out of people's misuse of their liberties, without eliminating those liberties altogether. And those downsides which can't be eliminated through intelligent application of the law, within the bounds of the constitution, should be viewed as the price we are obligated to pay for liberty.
A price, by the way, which is laughably small compared to that which our forfathers paid in establishing and protecting those freedoms in times past.
Okay, hate to be the first "help me post"... (Score:3, Informative)
Has anyone had any luck getting the proxy to bind to interfaces other than loopback? The docs refer to fcp.allowedHosts, fproxy.allowedHosts, and fproxy.bindAddress. I've tried all these, and fcp.bindAddress, in all possible combinations, binding to all interfaces and allowing all hosts. And yet still "telnet 127.0.0.1 8888" works, and telnet "192.168.2.1 8888" fails.
Without this, I have to run a server on every computer on the network ;-(
Re:Okay, hate to be the first "help me post"... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Okay, hate to be the first "help me post"... (Score:3, Informative)
The point is that everything is proxyed through your local server (on 127.0.0.1); then traffic analysis can't tell the difference between traffic from your node and traffic proxy'd by your node (which communicates with the other servers).
Yes, ideally in freenet there is a server on every computer in the network. (at the moment due to transient nodes, some/most aren't true servers), but of course, you're not running them, just your one.
Re:Okay, hate to be the first "help me post"... (Score:2)
Does this mean I have to run slow transient servers on every node rather than just running off the proxy for the internal server?
My network is closed and trusted, I don't see any privacy issue in distinguishing between computers (or not).
Re:Okay, hate to be the first "help me post"... (Score:3, Informative)
The docs refer to fcp.allowedHosts, fproxy.allowedHosts, and fproxy.bindAddress.
The docs are out of date. The "fproxy" service was renamed to "mainport" about a month ago.
mainport.port=8888
mainport.bindAddress=*
mai
ma
Also note that "nodeinfo" is gone. It got merged with fproxy into mainport. For more details, please read The Freenet Wiki FAQ [sourceforge.net].
I just donated 50 Euros. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some day soon something like freenet will be nessecary even in the US if you want to say something critical about bush or ashcroft without getting on some list of potential terrorists.
regards,
mrright
okay (Score:2, Funny)
What do you think it is? Beautiful artwork? Lovely poetry? pics of the goatse guy?
-Kevin
DistribNet (Score:3, Interesting)
My network, DistribNet attempts to address these issues and more. It has been a while since I have worked on it but I plan on putting some serious effort into it in the next couple of months. You an check it out at DistribNet.sf.net [sourceforge.net].
The problem with freenet (Score:3, Insightful)
practical use anyone might want to put it to. You can agree with the
ideology all you like, but fundamentally freenet is so concerned about
providing free anonymous speech that in practice what it's going to
provide is the ability to shout in the forest where nobody hears.
I'll explain. Because they want everything to be anonymous, they
made sure content gets spread across all nodes (flooding) and can
not be (easily) traced to the given originating node. Consequently,
there's no reliable addressing mechanism. You cannot, therefore,
create content and make it available at a certain address all the
time. All you can do is create the content and watch it get mixed
with all the other content.
Survivable? Sure, if you mean by that that as long as people run
nodes they'll be sharing _something_, but if you want a particular
piece of content to remain available, the only way to ensure that
is to keep injecting it again and again and again -- like the way
spammers use email. Otherwise, it goes through each node once,
in the midst of whatever other content is being injected, and soon
is gone. That model is _anything but_ survivable in practice.
Sure, it may work now, when everyone running a freenet node is
genuinely concerned about free speech and wants the system to work,
but if it ever catches on, it will rapidly devolve into a shouting
match, where injecting your content only a few times will ensure no
one can find it in the sea of _stuff_ that gets repeatedly injected.
Freenet signs it's own death warrant (Score:3, Insightful)
As I understand it, freesites proliferate based on usage; the more people who look at something, the more widely it gets distributed.
The main "portal" freesite contain several links to kiddie porn, and thus supports the distribution of it.
I would love to run a machine or two as a freenet node, but am afraid that supporting that filth and subjecting myself to 20+ years in prision because I cannot control the cache on my computer is not acceptable.
And before you say "it anonymous, nobody can see your encrypted cache"... I call bullshit. There are plenty of bugs out there, and I'm sure that governments have found flaws in encryption algorithms that the public doesn't know about.
Re:Freenet signs it's own death warrant (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Freenet signs it's own death warrant (Score:4, Interesting)
Could you control what the guy had in his jacket? No.
Read about the law. The existance of child pornography in any form on a computer makes you a criminal. Whether you put it there or not, it is your responsibility.
The end result of Freenet will be regulation of encryption.
Re:Freenet signs it's own death warrant (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think you fully understand the technology. Or maybe I don't.
I have 100 bytes on my computer [1], mixed in with 100 million others, all encrypted. It's not a picture, it might be piece of a picture, but even assuming I could decrypt the datastore and take those bytes out it's certainly not recognizable as anything. I don't have the rest of the picture and am not sure who does. I might be able to find out, but I doubt it.
That picture could potentially be child pornography. Assuming it is, am I responsible? Are the other 1000 people who have other pieces responsible? I have 100 bytes of data which I volunteered to store for someone else.
Now assume someone wants to prosecute me.
"Excuse me judge, but where's the evidence (porno)?"
[1] How many bytes is a nitpick I'm not interested in.
Re:Freenet signs it's own death warrant (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I'm assuming it's not secure.
All I have sitting here is 100 bytes. Is it a picture? Is it someone's termpaper? How could I possibly know? I don't have the rest of the pieces. How could a prosecutor know?
I think a lot of the people aren't fully understanding just how distributed this thing is. I don't just have fileX [encrypted] stored. I have pieces of files [encrypted] from all over the place. Breaking the encryption isn't going to help prove me guilty/innocent at all.
This isn't your traditional data-hiding, encryption argument. This is a plausible deniability argument. I have 100 bytes. Definitely isn't a picture. Am I responsible for the fact that it could be joined with 1000 other pieces, which I don't have, to make a picture of porno? If yes, where does one draw the line? I could make a porno picture out of any tidbit on your computer right now. You're now a pornographer and potentially prosecutable under child pornography laws?
Great "pay for development" example (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is similar in some ways to the street performer protocol.
for what?! (Score:3, Interesting)
-- BEGIN SUMMARY --
FreeNet can give anyone great anonymity.
FreeNet can give anyone a safe public forum.
FreeNet can help groups dodge oppressive governments/corporations.
Wow! FreeNet is great!
Oh wait. Did you say it might have child pornography? BAN/REGULATE/CENSOR IT.
-- END SUMMARY --
I can't believe people will use child pornography as a measuring stick for free speech. Does the magnitude of the problem even register here?
Pros: allows individuals, groups, and (god help us & china) even nations to retain their pursuit of knowledge without allowing iron-fisted governments to control their opinions and votes through censorship, misinformation, and isolation.
Cons: Allows a few deviants to propagate photo documentation of child abuse that hardly any normal person is interested in anyway.
Do these even compare? Does anyone here really want to overthrow this network because a small minority of established pedophiles have a new, very slow, and somewhat complicated way to get their jollies?
Speculation that it will be used to distribute nuclear bomb blueprints, etc, is just speculation. There's no evidence that this has been done on freenet, nor is there any good reason to believe these things couldn't be printed, put in a briefcase and walked over to the interested party.
As long as information flow becomes more automated and regulated through computers, and as long as this software does what it claims to do, the need for freenet will rise. Don't even think this should be thrown away to pretend we're sticking it to child pornographers.
Ban it All (Score:4, Funny)
New version 0.5.0.1 just out. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd guess there will be some much improved builds comming out within the next couple of weeks as they learn more about today's stress test.
In other news, supposedly the great firewall of China started filtering out http packets with "freenet" in them today. (Source is questionable.)
Re:Just some info (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just some info (Score:2, Informative)
Freenet is free software designed to ensure true freedom of communication over the Internet. It allows anybody to publish and read information with complete anonymity. Nobody controls Freenet, not even its creators, meaning that the system is not vulnerable to manipulation or shutdown.
Freenet is also efficient in how it deals with information, adaptively replicating content in response to demand. We have and continue to pioneer innovative new ideas such as the application of emergent behavior to computer communication, and public-key cryptography to creating secure namespaces. For more information please read this paper on the Freenet architecture.
BTW its also a Good Thing TM.
Re:Just some info (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not like Kazza! This is because it is not spyware and has/will never be accused of being. It is an open source (GPLed) reaction to the growing restrictions of the on-line rights of expression. The point is not that you can copy your warez and p0rn, the point is that you can express yourself anonymously.
Dear moderators, if you haven't read the article and followed at least some of the link, do not moderate! Does "...some kind of a cross between Kazza..." and "...provide efficient service and minimal bandwidth..." sound like something written by the same author in the same message?
Re:Just some info (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Just some info (Score:2)
I'm not critisizing you for copying stuff from the site, I'm trying to point out to the moderators that that info isn't very interesting as it is available on the site. If the site went down, then they could have modded you up, or perhaps you could have waited for it to come down, then posted a quote from your local cache. I feel that some sort of netiquette (not necessarily mine) needs to be added to the FAQ. The job of the moderators should be to enforce such rules and promote good replies. (Ok, sorry, I'm going off-topic...)
Anyhow, nothing personal towards the original poster!.
Re:lack of choice. (Score:3, Informative)
Some people...
Freedom to restrict freedom is not a freedom. (Score:3, Insightful)
If I publish my code under the BSDL, companies can use my code in their own products, then PREVENT ME from giving a copy of their product to other people.
Copyrights are a deliberate restriction on freedom; the GPL is simply a license that defangs that restriction.