On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 10:22:31AM -0400, Colin Davis wrote: > I'd like to use this opportunity to disagree with the current .7 > strategy of the darknet- I've done it before, but this is the Chat > list, so It's not Off-topic to have a discussion about it. > > I'd like to start of by admitting that I probably know the least > about the subject, compared with anyone else in the room. This isn't > a pissing match, I just want freenet to be the best it can be. > We all do. That's why we're here. > > The darknet model should be supplemented with an opennet SOON- I > personally know 4 friends of mine who I have spoken with in person, > who have not wanted to use freenet in it's current state. I'll > attempt to discuss some concerns below.
"in its current state" We've been getting these stories ever since freenet began. There isn't enough warez, there isn't enough straight/gay/whatever porn, there just isn't any original content, there's too much child porn, it's too slow... What exactly were his reasons? > > I've tried to intend my thoughts below, for ease of reading. > > > > The first is the idea of trust in Freenet .7 is complete- You argue > that you should only join with your real life friends, > That your peers are people that you trust, but this breaks down for a > few reasons. > 1) The first is that it doesn't fit the Social networking model that > we're looking to model after. > In Milgrim's experiments (which, btw, were seldom as successful as > his first attempt), he found that the best results came from the > occasional long distance link. Best results come from many short links and the **occasional** long link. If it was all long links then it wouldn't work. We know this because it has been simulated, and mathematically modelled. > a) In real life we often have these- For example, I > am < 4 steps from Bill Gates- My Pastor knows a friend > of a friend, etc. Right. I have a shortish path to the president of any country in the world. :) But this is not necessarily a high capacity path! So yes, some traffic might be routed through your pastor - but most of it would be routed around him rather than through him. Freenet does NOT rely on "hubs". Watch oskar and ian's presentation again. If you cut the hubs out of the orkut data, the network is still navigable - in fact the probability of success increases, although the path length increases slightly too. Freenet can use hubs - but because of load issues, we may have to ensure that it doesn't in general use hubs more than absolutely necessary. > The problem is, these long distance links, > such as My Pastor, aren't necessarily people I > trust on a deep level. Well, I do trust my pastor, though I disagree with him on many things. If I go through some of my other church friends to him then there is a high trust path. > b) These weak links are often Largely grouped- > Again, My Pastor- There are several hundred people in > his congregation. > If each of these people linked to him, we'd > get ubernodes, which you disagree with (See my > other e-mail). Well, he probably doesn't have the sort of internet connection he'd need to sustain that sort of ubernode, and he'd become a Big Fat Target by attempting to do so. This is the problem with scale free networks - networks which are navigable precisely because they have a power law distribution of node degrees - they are extremely vulnerable. Whereas small world networks (with triangle property/kleinberg clustering) are very resilient. > 2) Trust isn't universal > a) The freenet .7 model gives them complete trust- I At present. We will improve on the current rather low level of security against treachery, but you will always be far more vulnerable to your direct peers than to somebody you're not connected to. > trust my flatmate not to download CP, but I don't > trust him not to > download an > illegial MP3 file. Do I link with him? Do I > need to find people with whom I agree about > everything? Not necessarily; you have to make your own judgement, just as you would if you were offering to share your internet connection with him over wifi. > b) People are desperate- Think about our chinese > dissident- He wants to learn more about the Western > world, and to write > and publish > about democracy. So he links with other > people who are writing about democracy.. He > wants the information. But he > knows that a number of them > are otherwise untrustworthy people. Even > though they all share a love of democracy, > should they link to one another? Well, what's the alternative? There isn't one in a hostile regime. Either you connect to people you trust, or you don't connect to anyone. Because an opennet is harvestable, and with a national firewall (coming soon to a seemingly democratic country near you), it is very easy to take sanctions against known opennet nodes - blocking foreign ones completely, and suspending the internet access of domestic ones (or worse). > 3) We may never get to the point that freenet is "Big enough" I don't see why a certain low level of organic growth cannot occur even with a small network. All that is required is good tools, and enough content to spark people's imaginations. > a) Sanity has argued on a Gmail model, where freenet > is the "in- thing", and people are looking for ways to > get into it. > I) The number of people who want a truely > anonymous network are far fewer than the > people who want a GB of free > e-mail. Unfortunately true. > II) And even if we DID get that level of > success, those links weren't traded to people > that were trusted. there > were automted gmail invite traders > Gmail invites were sold on eBay, > etc. It's not the best model for > emulation. Well, some people were invited. But there was no benefit to inviting your friends. On a darknet, there is every reason to invite your friends, because inviting random people is far more dangerous. > b) People go to the path of least resistance- > I) It's always going to be easier to go to > #freenet-refs, than it is going to be to find > friends who use the service. Maybe so. We can make it easy to connect to people on darknet through e.g. AIM plugins... > Promiscuous linking is just easier! > II) More people care about speed than > absolute privacy- Look at how popular > BitTorrent is. So they can use bittorrent. Our overriding goal has never been to be faster than bittorrent. Although IMHO we should be able to achieve reasonable speeds for big medium popularity files. > * The best model will allow > top speed for people who > don't care as much, but more > privacy for people who do IMHO even if we do have an opennet there should be material benefits to having darknet connections. Security is a significant advantage, but if opennet is many times faster than darknet then there will be very few people on the darknet. BTW I expect an opennet would have exactly the same bootstrapping problems that 0.5 has, although maybe not quite as severely. > * The right way to bring > this about is be KEEPING THE > DARKNET, but layering an > openet on top of it. "On top of it" ? In addition to it, surely? > * People who care a lot > about privacy use the > darknet- People who are > desperate or want speed, use the OpenNet. The result will be that NOBODY uses the darknet. And then freenet will be banned. And there won't be any opennet, and there won't be any darknet. Oh and those folk in the hostile regimes - we won't be able to help them either because we'll never have had a large darknet to test out our technology on. > 4) People are afraid of the Darknet > a) People are afraid of manually choosing to link- > I) For the reasons we outlined earlier, > people don't know 100% that their friends can > be trusted in every domain Why do they have to be 100% trustworthy in every domain? You need to be able to trust them not to mount statistical attacks on your node or DoS the network, sure, but I don't see why you need to be able to trust them not to download illegal materials. > II) Because of that, they are afraid to link > with people. they don't want to be associated > with a "Bad Guy" This may be true. > * Rightfully or wrongly, > they are worried (I've had > actual potential users say > this), that they will link with a person who, Actual potential users who knew you, or actual potential users on #freenet-refs ? > unknowingly to them > when they linked to > him, does Bad Things. > * Freenet has always had a > bit of a public scare > because of CP concerns. I'm > not going to debate that here. > But people don't > want to > SPECIFICALLY, and > KNOWINGLY ---- > CHOOSE--- to link with a person who might do CP. It's not "knowingly", unless you know that that person is likely to "do CP". If you know they have a history of downloading child porn, abusing children etc, then you may be liable for assisting them in that. But if you don't have any reason to believe that they are a bad guy then I don't see how you can be held accountable for their misuse of the facilities you have provided them with. > b) We need money! > I) We need users to get donations. > II) Users are afraid of the darknet > III) It's worth spending developer time on > things that will improve the number of people > in the network, and number > of people donating, > c) Implementing Opennet will help get more users, > which helps get more donations. Not if the opennet that we implement performs as poorly as 0.5 did, and plunges us into yet more years of wandering in the wilderness. Which it will if we rush into it. > > I'll be happy to discuss this with anyone who's interested. It's a > serious issue, and I'm trying to go about things the Right way. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
_______________________________________________ chat mailing list chat@freenetproject.org Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general Unsubscribe at http://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat Or mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
