> Bullshit. Freenet will not work in hostile environments because a truly > hostile regime would ban it and set up a node harvester.
This attitude is fine in a world where Chinese and other dissidents will patiently put their efforts toward freedom on hold until such time as someone comes up with a theoretically unbreakable anonymous publishing system, but unfortunately we don't live in such a world, and we may never have such a system (even Mixmaster-like systems have weaknesses). Right now, today, people in these countries are using primitive and trivially tracked mechanisms such as HTTP relays whose IP addresses are distributed via mailing lists (to which the authorities are undoubtedly subscribed. The question is not whether Freenet is indestructible, it is whether it is better than what people are using today, and the answer to this is an unequivocal "yes", node harvesting would be orders of magnitude harder than simply tracking or blocking access to the HTTP relays that people are using at this very moment. Those that view Freenet as a theoretical exercise in building a purely anonymous system need to realize that people in these countries are already using extremely primitive systems which are easily tracked, and any improvement we can deliver over these systems is valuable provided that our users are clear on the risks involved in using Freenet and how those risks can be minimized. Ian. -- Ian Clarke [EMAIL PROTECTED] Coordinator, The Freenet Project http://freenetproject.org/ Founder, Locutus http://locut.us/ Personal Homepage http://locut.us/ian/
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