On Wed, Dec 27, 2000 at 01:20:49AM -0800, Ian Clarke wrote:
> Ok, so there has been quite a hoo-hah over this whole issue, allow me to
> summarize, perhaps this can become the basis for something posted on the
> website to address this issue:
>
> Freenet does not, and has never claimed to, make it impossible for someone
> to determine whether or not you are running a Freenet node. Having said
> this, a number of people have suggested that we should investigate ways
> that we can, even partially, achieve this (some have failed to grasp that
> this was never an aim of Freenet and thus this can't be considered a flaw
> - some failed to grasp this initially but have been reeducated ;).
>
> It is a feature of the system that people can "fish" for Freenet nodes by
> running a node themselves and harvesting node addresses, however they
> would have little or no control over the addresses they obtain. There has
> been talk of an alternative mechanism for finding Freenet nodes involving
> port-scans, however it is very unlikely that this would be practical (and
> would not work once public/private key crypto is incorporated into
> node-communication).
>
> The thing about this fishing is that since you have no control over the IP
> addresses you can "catch", the chances are that even if you do have the
> power to shut-down Freenet nodes within your country/state/island/home,
> the vast majority of those you discover will not be within your range of
> influence, and thus you will fail to have much of an impact upon the
> network as a whole.
>
> A recent Wired News article describing the antics of a
> fuckedcompany.com-to-be called "Media Enforcer" got people thinking about
> a situation where the DMCA (a fantastic fart in the face of our freedom at
> the best of times) *could* be used by someone like M.E to persuade ISPs to
> remove someone's internet connection for running a Freenet
> node. Basically they would fish for node addresses, and (assuming that
> the node they find is within the US) would request some copyrighted
> material from that node. Since Freenet sometimes caches material on a
> node through which some content was requested, they write to the ISP
> claiming that this node is in violation of the DMCA (even though they are
> actually responsible for the content being placed onto that node in the
> first place!). While this is classic entrapment, and thus is very
> unlikely to stand-up in court, it is possible that it would be sufficient
> to persuade an ISP to take action and disconnect the user (since ISPs
> have a reputation for being spineless in these matters).
The DMCA provides intimidation, even in foreign countries. Disconnection
would normally be on grounds of "you weren't allowed to run servers in our
AUP which you were supposed to have read". ALL UK broadband ISPs, and the
vast majority across the globe, have AUPs which say "no servers". This can
ideally be changed by pressure from consumers, but such pressure will not
happen without a lot of people wanting to run freenet, which depends on a
working freenet, which depends on lots of people running it illegally.
Shadow nodes would also be illegal, but harder to detect so less
successfully persecuted.
>
> There are several issues here. Firstly, in an environment where there is
> healthy competition between ISPs, an ISP which is quick to cut people off
> will only succeed in losing customers to their competitors. While right
> now the broadband competition situation isn't great, there are powerful
> vested interests working hard to open up that market (such as the
> AOL-backed "Open Net Coalition" - http://opennetcoalition.org/). If
> Freenet is widely deployed (as it would need to be to provoke this kind of
> attack anyway), then it could make it in the ISPs interests to examine
> Media Enforcer's (or whoever's) claim of infringement. It may even come
> down to a court case, I am currently creating a non-profit corporation
> which could serve as a focus for any legal action (as the EFF is with the
> Decss case). Of course, this is only about broadband, there is
You can't sue an ISP into allowing servers!
> competition in the dial-up ISP marketplace, and in countries like the UK
> with free-ISPs which you can sign-up to in minutes, getting cut-off by
> your ISP is definitely not a big deal, and hurts them more than it hurts
> you.
Not broadband ISPs, and not many unmetered/semipermanent ones such as are
needed to run a node. Having said this, broadband ISPs also make rather more
cash from you. Again we require a critical mass of users, most of whom will
be running illegally. It probably requires a critical mass of users actually
being kicked off, for one to decide to exploit a new market. Given the
current broadband situation in the UK I don't really want to be one of these
sacrificial lambs, and many people will share this opinion. Not to mention
that the person owning the line has this minor issue about respecting the
law i.e. the ISP's contract which includes the AUP.
>
> Another point, specific to "copyright.net" - the people who seem to be
> working with Media Enforcer, is that they try to get content owners* to
> pay them to protect their content, however they cannot protect specific
> content in Freenet (in fact, their efforts will only serve to further
> propogate the content which they request from the system so there are good
> reasons why content-owners would NOT want to do business with them), all
> they can do is try to attack Freenet in-general. This is why we should
> keep an eye out for them on fuckedcompany.com.
>
> * yeah yeah - can't own information etc etc
>
> So anyway, Brandon suggested a way around this, which Mr Bad liked, but
> neither myself, nor Scott, nor a few other people, think will work. My
> belief is that there is no way to prevent node fishing, but the more
> widely used Freenet is, the less effective node-fishing will be.
>
> Ian.
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