There also is MUTE p2p network, completely anonymous. Darknet is not something really new.

God I cannot believe how selfish and self centred most people are today. The reason p2p is so popular is due totally to the price of CDs and DVDs to buy. Poverty in the U.S.A. and Europe is on an ever increasing spiral and the select top 10% are paying themselves more and more and more. Before criticising the poor (which you are doing) give a thought inwards. What would happen if you could not afford things? Would your moral standards still be so high? I don't think so!
I am all for anything that hits the rich and NO its not the politics of envy - its me just thinking that we should all be playing on a level playing field. Movie stars $20 million dollars plus just to make a movie, Sports stars $100,000 dollars every week, Top executives millions of dollars in bonuses every year let alone the salaries, the list goes on and on - NOW THAT IS OBSCENE!
Don't forget the legions who die worldwide every day because they cannot afford food or the most basic medicines.

Sorry but that's a load of crap. People pirate simply because it let's them get stuff for free. Don't believe me? Find any cheap shareware program you like, I don't care if it's just one dollar. Then look around and you will find cracks for it. People would rather pirate a program than pay one dollar for it. Now I agree CDs and DVDs are overpriced, but that's not the sole reason for piracy.

Well at least you still have a democratic right to express your opinion BUT cherish it now - because that is being taken away too!
Just so you can express your deminishing democratic right a little further, is it "a load of crap" that millions die every year through starvation and lack of medicines? Is it a "a load of crap" that these so called stars and executives are a bunch of greedy pigs paying themselves exhorbitant amounts of money, while the vast majority struggle to get by from day to day? Could the world not do without them? Given the choice, I would put far more importance on the people who take the garbage away! - now that we cannot live without.

jofin, don't look just know, but I think there's a black helicopter just over your rooftop.

'They' are out to get you.

you cannot see further then your own little nose and your insult is a classic lack of respect.

i agree with jofin 100%. it would be better for society to get rid of the rich then the poor. i wonder witch would be better off without the other, well i dont actualy wonder, i know.

witch is a worse crime? a guy raping a minor, or a guy getting 1 million dollard by frauding a bank? i think the rape is worse. then why is it that a rich guy raping a kid gets 4 years in jail and the poor guy who fraud the bank gets 18 years? that happend in Canada...there's the black helicopter your was talking about!

As long as it is not the grim reaper arrived to get me, I don't mind! Right is might as they say!

Many thanks for your support Zagin. At least two of us can tell the difference between greed and fairness.
I think you have hit on the most damning thing in society today and that is the lack of respect. You are also 100% correct with your example of how crime is dealt with today. Steal money from the rich and they throw the book at you. Did you see the other article on this site about the guy who used a webcam to copy two films and then attempted to distribute them on p2p. O.K. he was out of order trying to make money from them but as the article states, "Under federal law, he may be facing up to 17 years in prison". Crimes against children amongst many are not dealt with as harshly as this. Yes he has committed a crime BUT 17 YEARS is out of all perspective.

I like Ian Clarke, his thinking is right on with my own. Sure there will be lots of people who use this for bad things that i myself find disturbing, there is also some good use for something like this in this day and age. Hell isn't the internet already like that? Some good stuff, and GOBS AND GOBS of porn, piracy, spyware, trojans, scams etc.

My personal prediction is still that even the use of this software on a machine will probably wind up being illegal reguardless of the content. It's just to dangerous to let the little people have this much power. If it is even possible, but Ian is trying it must be a challenging thing to provide such privacy over a network not designed for it. Time will tell how well this works, last i checked the freenet was way to dam slow to use without wanting to punch your monitor.

[But Clarke added that having both freedom in communication and following copyrights is not possible, as "the two are mutually exclusive."]

Ian is right, in the end they can not coexist happily. If you think they can, you're fooling yourself. Oh sure you can make all the copyright laws you want, and even apply death penalties, but information longs to be free. And it will always be that way. The music industry has done just fine over their lifespan despite all the piracy and their b****ing and moaning. Why? Because there were enough suckers out there to feed them for the latest pop crazes. Maybe now there is just less suckers in the world, and the music just isn't worth the plastic it's encoded on.

The industry has started to come down hard on EVERYONE, waving around the FBI seal and copyright education gimmicks. It used to be they would go after those who profited from it, now they have decided to wage war on all those who shares anything reguardless of profit motive. They went too far, stuck their business in something they had no business in (the internet) and it's comming to bite them back. Ill just sit back and enjoy the show, but im rooting for Ian.

QUOTATION:

and though the rules of the road have been lodged,
it's only people's games that you got to dodge
and it's alright, ma, I can make it.

although the masters make the rules
for the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, ma
To live up to.

and if my thought dreams could be seen
they'd probably put my head in a guillotine
but it's alright, ma
it's life, and life only.

bob dylan 1965

On the piracy concern, the bottom line here, is that whatever RIAA and the like will do to try and stop it, people will come up more exotic systems to make their lives more diffucult.

Why don't these companies make more of an effort to persuade people to BUY their products rather than download them. People only resort to piracy, because the product is not worth the official asking price.

So basically it will be like Waste but on a bigger scale?

What we have here is a case where a human like MightyMouse (hehe), with a clear clean thought about the freedom that constitutes our existance getting bullied and told off by WinCemented species (hehe again, i guess it means stuck to windoes?!) using the same arguments that the governments of the FREE world use to send our kids to die in a remote location just to suck oil.

Free humans are free to do whatever they like whether cement companies, the feds and the pop like it or not. Now if someone steals your cement, well, go and sue em mate... Just dont even think that your ideas are worth a cheese in the eye of a mighty mouse. Bleedin He11... WAKE UP

AND... anonymous doesnt mean that you can commit a crime. The moment you cross the line, you lose your right to be anonymous, and me with all the other mice will be supporting the court to sue your a$$ off. But till then, you be fair, and no more $tupid comments on how cement is better than green grass.

Freenet is dreadfully slow. There's more bandwidth in burning something on a DVD and sending it via snail mail (of course, the postal system is a devious mechanism for the propagation of copyrighted materials).

Seriously, when I like something, I pay for it. Not paying for something I like makes no sense to me. I want to reinforce and nurture artists/programmers/etc. that I like--not cut off their air supply.

Freedom is made exclusively for everyone. Crime is the worst reason to have for taking away freedom from people. Don't stop freedom, just go after the criminal.

I don't get it. How on earth could this be "completely anonymous"? It's simply impossible. If the program knows where to send the dang file, it knows where to find you.

There's no way you can be "completely anonymous" on the Internet without pulling the plug on your computer, and then you're not on the Internet.

Encryption. Remember phones that had a scrambler so no one could listen or trace a call?

some day, we will not need ISP to connect to the net, hundreds of thounsand of users computers will be linked together using p2p tech and acting like servers. there will be 2 internets, one that you pay for, and one that is free.

ok. I get the encryption, but they still know where the encrypted info is being transmitted to and from. And if they want to, they can decrypt the data.

i agree, once its decrypted your isp is god.

It could redirect every packet through 10 different "hosts" before it gets to it's destination.

I have a simple way to do it (though, it's thought process, not technology)

SO, you ask for a file, it sends the request to another client which forwards the request to the host. The host then looks for a number of clients to proxy sending the file back through.

Chews a bit of bandwidth, but it would help keep the client and the host anonymous.

The RIAA/MPAA would have no one to sue, if they did it would more than likely be thrown out of court because the person they would see wouldn't be downloading anything, the software would be using their computer without their knowledge. As long as the EULA states that they agree to connect for lawful purposes (and hopefully that's all they would use it for) they would have an easy out.

They they know where it's going, but they don't know what it is. It could be a recipe for meat loaf for all they know.

Actually, even if data can be decrypted by people trying to crack freenet, they still have no idea what data is inserted by who at what point. Just as they cannot determine the origin of the data, they cannot determine the identity of the downloader of that data.

As for cracking encryption, I seriously doubt that. There are encryption algrithms that exist in open source public domain that would take literally hundreds of millions of cpu years to crack.

I doubt seriously that even the NSA could decrypt something encrypted with AES256, Twofish or 448 bit blowfish without having the encryption key and the passphrase.

On another note. Freenet is not really intended as a file sharing mechanism so much as it is an "anonymous web", where web pages and documents can be published with 100% anonymity a certanty for both the publisher and the reader. Yes, lots are using it for file sharing, but not many hang in there because freenet is a LOT slower than normal p2p filesharing programs.

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Yes, Freenet can be used for things that are illigal. But that is the price you have to pay to have a place where is freedom of speech.

so stealing copyrighted material = freedom of speech

That's the weakest argument for file-sharing I've ever heard.

echange of information and freedom of speech is the best and only defence that poor folks have against rich folks.

so stealing someone else's work is a battle exclusively between the big bad rich people and the innocent altruistic poor people.

riiiight...

people rip off music, movies, and software to save a buck because they are greedy. poor vs. rich is an extremely small part of it.

yes it is, would you steal or take from someone that is poorer then you? the more you go up the chain, the more they do it. when a boss forces you to do something you dont want, you have two choices: you quit, or you use the information and your ability to speak against him, hence freedom of speech and sharing of info.

and personnal, i get my share of "downloads" not because i am greedy, but because i feel the other guy has gotten enought of my bananas.

You took it his statement straight on. The program is created so people can share files without being traced. If someone uses it to move copyrighted material that is none of the creators business because the USER said they would not move copyright stuffs when they agree to the EULA on the programs first run.

If you stopped everything because people would abuse it you would not have anything! There are always going to be people who use a product for something it was not designed for but has the ability to do so.

Like the number one stolen car, what if for some reason the American Goverment banned the 2000 Honda Civic (http://www.statefarm.com...o/nicbcars/grndthft.htm) just because it was the most stolen car? I mean why should it be legal if people are just going to steal it?

No, Stealing copyrighted material != freedom of speech.

freedom of speech = being able to publish and / or communicate ideas and information that the 'powers that be' don't want published or communicated.

the fact that some people are trying to use freenet to share music/movies/software/etc is actually a minor side effect of freenets existence, not it's purpose. one can also say the same thing about the porn that one can find on freenet, it's not the reason for freenet, it's a byproduct. In both of these, freenet is no different than the traditional internet, except that freenet is anonymous.

(and popular, I understand that to date it's been downloaded over 2million times, with a rough estimate of 20,000 nodes active at any given time. [of course, this is me guessing, for accurate figures, check with the freenet people])

yeah - there's never a lack of thieves and never a lack of feds who chase 'em.

This is just boring news.

Only interesting to those whose sport it is to download tons of stuff they actually won't use at all. But they can boast of having software worth of so-and-so-thousands bucks and films who are not even in the theatres yet.

bah - !

Just immature collectors, no matter how old.

Every junkie needs his pusher.....

he! he!

Look for "Lampoonics Unlimited". This underground publisher had a catalog, full of books about forbidden subjects. They dealt with automatic weapons, making drugs, spying and more.

I haven't seen their catalog for several years and don't know if they ever went on-line. Maybe they finally went underground...

Everyone has heard and/or said this a million times before, but software and music is just too expensive. I won't by a CD from a band I don't like - or I don't know. I download the music to have a preview first, to listen if it's worth my money. Good artists have the right to get money for their work.

I agree and hollywood is pure crap now. There is no longer an "art" to making movies.... it's just a money making scam

If you're going to download a song then dowload it and keep it. Why give the "I want to try before I buy" excuse? It aint true. Music is expensive? Please, as far as I remember CDs have always been in the $10 - $20 range (depending on the number of discs in the package and if its new/old). P2P is just giving ppl the excuse not to pay for something...

sure, it gives an excuse to not buy something when you can get it for free, it also gives an excuse to listen to something before you buy it, so it's up to you :-p

not a very good excuse for stealing imo.

Well maybe we just don't like the system :P

Music IS expensive. I own about 500 CDs at $10 - $20 each that's $5,000 - $10,000 worth of CDs. I can think of about 500 more I would like to own. I love music. I bought a lot of my collection before the internet was popular and before MP3s were main stream. Downloading music wasn't an option. A large number of the CDs I have only have a couple of good songs on them because there was no way for me to know if a CD was good or not other than the songs that were played on the radio. Now I download an album and check it out first. If I like songs I will buy those songs from iTunes or somewhere. If an album has a lot of good songs I will go to Best Buy and purchase the entire album. I think most people are like this these days as well. The copyright infringement is not really as much of an issue anymore as the RIAA makes it out to be. Recent studies have shown that of the music being downloaded on the internet, more than %50 of it is now purchased and not pirated. I think the piracy was an issue because the music industry did not want to update to the 20th century and for a long time fought the whole download business model with lawyers and lawsuits. Now they are embracing it. If anyone has tried Yahoo Unlimited or the new subscription based Napster, these are great services. I can download as much music as I want, play it on my mp3 player, and listen to it on up to 3 computers. This is the kind of thing the music industry should have embraced 5 years ago and all this talk of music piracy would have been pretty much non existent.

As far as the argument for or against P2P, it has it's uses and should not be shut down just because some people use it to do bad things. Some people use cars to purposely run other people over and kill them. Does this mean we should outlaw cars because they can be used as a weapon to do something illegal? Of course not! That's ridiculous, and the same thing goes for P2P. Just because it CAN be used for something illegal it shouldn't be made illegal. Hold the villains that are doing illegal things accountable and let the people that aren't doing illegal things have their P2P system.

Money shouldn't exist in the first place! :P

sounds great. i cant wait untill the day when i can no longer worry about getting busted.

Can't wait! ;)

I'm getting bored of stealing bread...

sounds good to me ;-)

Just for the sake of asking, why are lockpick tools legal? Do they not draw a direct corrolary to a good&bad use situation?

How about knives? They're legal.

Imagine all the things you could buy at Wal*Mart that can help you commit a felony. Should W*M be shut down then?

Just stirring the pot...

If Wal-Mart advertised how to use the tools to commit a felony and gave you a manual about illegal stuff you could do with them, then yeah, they could get shut down.

That's the real difference and why the Supreme Court found against Grokster.

http://www.amazon.com/ex...mp;s=books&n=507846

Shut down Amazon then? Or is the Anarchist's Cookbook not the same?

If Amazon supplied the ingredients to make a homemade explosive and then offered free shipping for the bundle, you better believe they would be shut down faster than you can say Patriot Act.

The Anarchist Cookbook falls under free speech, but it has been to court numerous times for its contents. And I have a feeling anyone who buys that book from Amazon may find themselves on the United States Watch List.

I own the A.C. When I bought it, it came with a big red disclaimer warning that most of the bomb-making "recipes" were more likely to blow up in your face, taking your hands with it, than create a useful explosive device.

I have a small explosives background from the Navy, and they weren't kidding—I wouldn't want to stand next to the guy following this book's instructions.

That and some of the articals in that book are from 1969 for the love of god. The Jolly Roger is a thing of the past.

"Ian Clarke, who heads the Freenet project, said that the group does not intend to encourage copyright infringement with the new software. But Clarke added that having both freedom in communication and following copyrights is not possible, as 'the two are mutually exclusive.'"

What a moron. First of all, Feds very well can track just about anything on the internet, legit or no. Second, sharing copyrighted files is not what I call "Communication" or "speech". Third, even a half-brained idiot would not openly support illegal file sharing anymore, thanks to the 9-0 Supreme Court decision.

What is really bugging me here is this guy's nerve, or anyone else's nerve who makes a P2P app and lies about their intentions. The ONLY reason someone would use anything anonymously is if they had something to hide or if they have personla information or data that cannot be compromised. Thus, the very fact that they are designing this to be anonymous and advertising it as thus, directly or not they are condoning illegal file sharing. Everyone reading this who thinks I'm full of ^%$$#@!, this'll jump to court in a heartbeat, mark my words.

You work for the RIAA don't you?

Nope, can't stand the RIAA, they've made themselves to be complete idiots. I also can't stand people who steal in the name of "free speech" either.

"this'll jump to court in a heartbeat"

I don't see what the courts can do about it. Make it illegal to download the program? How can they enforce that? If this program does truly what it says it will do, I don't think the courts can do anything about it.

Ya I'm sure an advanced computer programmer is a moron.

WELL PUT.

"this'll jump to court in a heartbeat"

Yes, it likely will, but maybe not because of MGM/Gronkster's rulling. Instead they may claim that it does not have the sufficient non-infringing uses.

Don't get me wrong - I think for the most part file sharing has plenty of potential legal uses, making it legal for people/companies to develop and release them, just like VCRs after the Betamax case. But I'm not so sure there are enough "legal" reasons why you would want to transfer files to/from stangers without it being tracable.

This type of software was bound to be constructed eventually. Not because the software is necessary, but because developing it is a challenge or even a game. Bragging rights. Eventually code will be written to break the 'anon' status. A neverending cycle that is both fun and frightening(RIAA's mass suings) to track and watch.

This type of software has existed in Japan for quite some time, in the form of Winny and Share. Both encrypt the user's information, and the files are stored as encrypted pieces in cache until the download is finished. When all the encrypted pieces are available, the program decrypts and compiles them together. Until that happens, though, the user has nothing but a huge cache of encrypted information for an equally huge variety of files. So it's difficult (I won't dare say impossible) to tell what someone is downloading or who they are.

I'll admit that I don't know how Freenet works, but I assume it involves some type of encryption?

Yeah probably. Though I'm sure the Feds could decrypt it, they wouldn't do so just to bust for copyright infringement--only for someone sending nuclear weapons details to Iran or something like that would be cracked...I knew this was bound to happen. That's why if it is possible at all for RIAA or the Feds to prevent this I'm sure they will prevent it from coming--however this is a tough one.

I find it odd that RIAA is mentioned so much when the Feds are doing most of the crackdown on illegal P2P downloading. I personally know a doctor who had a visit from the Feds over downloading and sharing movies that were not yet released...

I hear UMG is going to start bottling oxygen and selling it at 19.99 a bottle next year

I just wanna chime in here and say you are seriously misunderstanding the intention of the programmers. Programmers (who write software that gets stolen daily) aren't doing this to support illegal p2p, they are doing it to prove that it can be done. It's a challenge to create software that allows completely anonymous p2p since it has not been successfully done as far as I know of. I myself work as a software developer and I'll admit the idea sounds enticing, this is something I would enjoy working on.

On another note, the feds could probably crack whatever encryption this software uses; however if you know anything about encryption it takes years for our computers to perform the calculations required to brute force a 128 bit encryption. Without the key to decrypt the data, the feds, or anyone else for that matter, will be wasting too much effort to acomplish too little.

This will go to court in a heart beat, but it's not going to stop them from doing it anyways and if this software is as decentralized as they say it is then it doesn't matter whether it goes to court or not. Once you set this on the internet there will be no stopping it, lawsuits or otherwise.

Your comments are dead on.

I give it three months at the absolute most. Although, we could be reading about the lawsuit tomorrow :-p

some of the smartest people in the world are absolute morons.

"But I'm not so sure there are enough "legal" reasons why you would want to transfer files to/from stangers without it being tracable."

Exactly. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to himself.

Maybe we just don't want the RIAA, MPAA, FBI, CIA, and every other alphabet soup goverment agency watching everything we do? Forget that, the Supreme Court can take their decision and shove it for all I care.

W00t! w00t! Hexedit you know whats up man! A program with credentials like that cannot be stopped once released! If the guys making it goto jail it just gives the next guy all the more incentive to finish and make it better!

Why you thinking like that? Why do you like it when the brass is breathing down your neck?

It adds more work for them. So say they can decrypt and see what we are doing but it will take them twice as long now...the ratio of those traced and brought to court to those who just use it everyday increases. Maybe the American goverment will declare war on P2P file sharing and make magnet ribbon stickers for it!

> But I'm not so sure there are enough "legal"
> reasons why you would want to transfer files
> to/from stangers without it being tracable.

Some Chinese guy would want to be anonymous when talking about his government imprisoning people without trial, and some American may want to do the same when talking about Guantanamo Bay.

Hex, you're so right. Writing good software that alows total anonymity is a challange. The transfer of anonymous ideas, though, is also a threat to the established order (i.e., government and the powerful).

However, history teaches us that the more repressive a government becomes (on behalf of itself and/or the powerful) the greater the likelyhood that behavior will be driven underground and out of view. The world has its share of totolitarian governments aflicted by this phenomenom. In the past when geography and time could be artfully used to prevented the spread of ideas, govenments could and did with varing degrees of success control the proliferation of ideas which often undermined their authority or control and hence that of the powerful who use governments to exercise their control.

Geography and time are no longer on their side. I can instantly communicate an idea with someone 12 thousand miles away. The idea only need be protected from the eyes of outsiders (al qeada is driving that point home daily).

Some have the view that they have a "god given right" to be paid for their labor and the products of that labor. (Feudal serfs of the fifth and sixth centuries somehow missed out on this notion).

Nothing could be further from the truth. Laws created that punish theft are not for the benefit of all victims of theft but for the benefit of governments who skim profits from the many to be used to float enterprises those who support those governments politically and benefit economically (eg, Haliburton). Your deal is protected to the degee you buy into the deal set up by the powerful and the governments they set up (you might have noticed that governments are not set up by the poor and downtrodden and government programs ostensibly set up for the poor are not set up by the poor but rather by the rich and powerful to get the bleeding heart liberals off their backs).

Bottom line though, if your deal fails to fit into the larger scheme of things, you're out on your butt. The rich, powerful and ignorant call it law-n-order.

The uses for anonymous communication are too numerous to mention and to point to illegal file sharing of copyrighted material as a legit reason to outlaw it is like building a dam out of sand. This will all wash away as soon as copyright owners figure out a way to protect their content itself instead of the media package it is sold by. But really, thinking that you can prevent folks from communicating anonymously is an idea that stinks of political control of the people. We just can't have that in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Ok, the republicans own the government now, but as soon as someone releases the whereabouts of the secret memo detailing G. Bush's war plan via annoymous darknet to the country things will change in a way that the present government would bend the law to stop. We need that to stay free. Beleif in the basic goodness of communication is at the heart of this controvercy, not fear of temporary profit loss. Come on people, this is the capital of innovation. If someone is stealing your stuff with a truck you don't go get the Supreme Court to ban trucks. You pay someone to figure out a way to protect your goods.

"If someone is stealing your stuff with a truck you don't go get the Supreme Court to ban trucks. You pay someone to figure out a way to protect your goods."

Spot on!

>First of all, Feds very well can track just
>about anything on the internet, legit or no.

If you believe that statement, then you have no understanding of the nature of freenet. It's design insures anonymity. (see http://freenetproject.org for explanations)

when data is inserted into freenet, it's broken up into pieces which are then sent as encrypted data blocks through chains of nodes. each node may or may not make a copy of that data as it passes through to the next node.

requests for data operate in reverse, the requests are sent out through chains of nodes and each node may or may not have the data block, and if so it may or may not send it on.

As I stated earlier, freenet's aim is not to encourage illegal file shareing, it's aim is to make possible communication and expression of ideas and data that 'powers that be' dont' want available.

I hear it's being used in China by people who have this wonderfully silly idea that they have the right to freedom of speech and religion dispite what the Chinese government says about it.