On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 01:52:05PM +0200, Zenon Panoussis wrote: > >People have run public nodes before, but Google never indexed them > >beyond the main Web Interface page, so their audience consisted of > >people who a) were already Freenet users and b) knew exactly what to > >search for in Google to find a public node. > > Well, this contradics what you just wrote above. If you are right > on this point, then your fears about thousands of users leeching > and burdening freenet without giving anything back are unfounded > already because of this, even disregarding my arguments above. Or > vice versa. Of course, if you're right on this, then running the > thing would be fairly meaningless. However, as long as it's not > damaging, it doesn't matter much if it's meaningless; when I > realise that I'll just take it down.
No, because they are not indexed, because we send a robots directive on fproxy IIRC. > > >They also don't have a > >tendency to be very reliable. Bringing Freenet to the entire web would, > >I imagine, have its own unique set of issues. > > Of course it would. Reliability is not my main concern though; > Freenet itself is not very reliable either, and it's easy to reason > along the lines of "if you want it more reliable than I can offer, > then go run your own node". What worries me most is the legal/political > side of things. > > To be precise: when the yellow press picks this up (not if; when), > they'll make angry headlines of it in the style of "And what is > the government doing? Nothing!" And of course the wolves will > then move in (Miguel, this is in reply to you too). From that > point on there are many possible scenaria: > > A. My upstream cuts me off and the p r o x y dies silently > (along with everything else I host), or I move to a new ISP > time and over again until I find one solid enough to carry > the service. > B. I get a prosecutor's order to block one or several specific > and named freesites. The law says I have to comply first and > can seek reversal in court afterwards. > C. I get prosecuted for serving some specific freenet content. > D. I get sued in a civil lawsuit by someone who doesn't like > some specific freenet content. E. You get slimed in the press and elsewhere as a paedophile because you provide child porn. > > Let's examine all this in the light of the purpose of freenet, > which I understand as "the promotion of free speech irrespective > of the content thereof". Please correct me if this definition > is skewed or incomplete. > > To begin with, free speech in a solitary cell is no free speech > at all. You only have free speech if you can say what you want > *whenever you want and to whoever you want*, provided that they > want to listen. Thus, the notion of "let's keep it quiet so they > don't come down on us and crush us" contradicts the very purpose > it's supposed to promote. The greater the pssibe audience, the > freer the speech, and that includes Joe Surfer in the audience. > Of course, foolishliy provoking your powerful enemies when you > know that you'll lose is counterproductive too. As with every > kind of resistence, one needs to strike a good balance between > secret and open, based on what can be gained or lost. The utter > goal must be full openness though, or else there is no point in > doing anything in the first place. Perhaps so. I suspect that Freenet will gradually have to get less open, but we'll see. When it's fairly closed is exactly the time when it's most vital. But right now, openness is good. My concerns are: a) False sense of security on the part of the browser. b) Likelihood of proxy nodes to get taken down. Probably others... > > Thus, edging the limits a bit, allowing Joe Surfer into freenet > - even if only temporarily, even if he actually doesn't care > about freenet content and will go straight back to msnbs and > cnn.com - does increase the degree of freedom of speech of those > who publish on freenet, as well as the degree of freedom to acquire > information of everybody. Therefore I'd say that in all four > scenaria above, the purpose of freenet would be served by a > p r o x y at least up to the day the wolves move in and, > depending on the amount and kind of noise that ensues, perhaps > also past that day. > > Scenario A is the most likely and at the same time the most > difficult to deal with [1]. Censorship, which used to be a > task for governments and the target of political protest, is > rapidly being privatised. It's being moved from the law and > the courts and the political responsiblity that comes with > that to AUPs and to the quick judgement of unqualified and > anonymous abuse desks. Gone is the right to fair trial, gone > is the right to appeal, gone is even the right to defend > yourself [2]. And most governments, who see the great > advantages in this system for themselves, are promoting it > all the can under the motto of "self-regulation". The fact > that there is no "self" part whatsoever in ISPs regulating > the rights of their users is just a negligible detail in > the context. The really nasty governments are of course the worst in this. Chinese ISPs etc are encouraged to censor their clients, without generally having any explicit idea what the rules are. In the West, ISPs generally don't go looking for content they don't like on their customers' sites. The way this happens is simply that they have all-encompassing AUPs so that if they get a threatening letter they can dump you with no liability themselves. Which of course they do. > > The way I see it, the risks involved in A are well worth > taking. Any other approach would just confirm and reinforce > the regulatory powers of private businesses whose trade > is to carry bits, not to make law. I'd say let it happen, > use the results to create political noise, and hope that > something good comes out of it. At least there will always > be some ISPs (xs4all.nl is an excellent example) who profile > themselves by taking the opposite stance and can then profit > from that. Conversely, if A happens, no damage will be > caused to freenet itself or its content. Well, I don't know. It may not be strategically sensible to have too many proxies at this point. > > I see quite some advantages in scenario B. Establishing > that censorship is the job of the law and not that of ISPs > is one. Establishing that complaints need to be specific > and legally substatiated is another. Establishing that Freenet is slow and only used to distribute illegal content is a disadvantage. > Establishing for a > fact that the middle-man (be it an ISP or any other kind > of carrier) is not responsible for content and does not > have to monitor it and regulate it is yet another, and it > would benefit freenet itself too: it would establish that > a node has no responsibility for what it stores or shuffles > unless it has received orders to remove it *and* is capable > to comply. Heh. Sadly, all nodes are capable of compliance with "don't serve key X" orders, they just have to modify the code. Since it is open source, this is easy. > > In other words, I would welcome B as the best of all > scenaria and I would probably actively invite it. Of course, > when I say "establish" I mean it realatively; what might > be true in one jurisdiction will still not be true in > another. Yet, a "one down, 199 to go" situation is always > better than "200 to go". > > Scenario C is very possible, but carries risks for both sides, > not only for me. If I lose, I go to jail and all ISPs become > responsible for what passes their p r o x i e s, their news > servers, perhaps even their mail servers and their downstream > dial-up lines. No. You go to jail, your ISP gets away with it. Because you're not an ISP. They'd find some way to fudge it. > Of course, a precedent like that would make the > job of any ISP impossible. It would force ISPs to realise that > the "self-regulatory" tasks the have taken upon them backfire > severely, and it would lead to very powerful lobbying for a law > to change the situation, which is probably a good thing in the > long run. > > If, on the other hand, I would be aquitted on the grounds > that I'm not responsible for what only passes a p r o x y > and/or because the prosecutor failed to serve me an order > as described in B, then a good precedent will have been > set and the whole thing will not have been in vain. The > advantages for freenet itself would be the same as in B. > > Finally, scenario D would contain two parts: a request > for a court order to me to block access to a specifc named > page or freesite and, most probably, a demand for damages. > The former works exactly as B and has the very same effects, > so I don't see any damage there. In any case, the material > that gets blocked by the web-p r o x y continues to live > on freenet itself, so no censorship will have taken place > compared to not running the p r o x y in the first place. > As for the latter, well, I'm pretty much immune. A certain > "church" has seen to that, so all I can say is "please > stand in line, your turn to collect will be in approximately > 380 years". LOL. Co$ strikes again! ;) > > >Don't let me sway you one way or another on the idea, it sounds like an > >interesting project and would certainly be a challenge. > > Yes, and I guess technically too. The people who hacked the > real Al Quaeda site and the Al Jazeera site etc are probably Uhm, there's a real AQ site?! > capable and will be willing to hack me too. If this thing > ever goes public, I'll need a completely different approach > to security than I have now, even though my current approach > is not at all sloppy or light. > > >If you get it up > >and running, it would be neat to see the pr0xy's stats, e.g. which > >countries are sending traffic, which Freesites are viewed most often, > >etc. > > I'm afraid the only thing anyone can see is keys, i.e. > requested freesites. I don't log anything else, so nobody > can order me to hand out any other logs. No, but they can compel you to keep more logs. In UK law, they can compel you to keep more logs and require you to continue running the node, and not tell anyone (including the judiciary) about it. > > Now then, I might be good at arguing, but that doesn't > mean I haven't missed anything. Will someone please try > to still punch a hole in this discourse? > > Z > > > [1] Google for 'flashback, sweden, upstream' and see how well > a few backbone ISPs managed to censor and completely destroy > the first free ISP in Sweden. Mind you, the controversial > content (one or two neonazi sites) was fully legal and had > already been examined and deemed legal by the public prosecutor; > nonetheless Flasback was kept off the air for a year or more > and could only return without its free hosting part (the partial > fucked-up mirror mentioned in the pages you found on Google > is mine and is still up and running on the same server that > the freenet p r o x y runs on). Flashback tried all the > possible legal avenues to fight back, including an anti-trust > complaint, but lost everywhere. You will get exactly the same problems with child porn, and probably other sites, that may be on Freenet. The trouble with democracy is that the mob generally want what you don't want. > > [2] Personally, I think that in a democratic society based on > well-balanced law, freedom of speech and anonymity are, to a > great extent, incompatible with each-other. Everyone should > have the right to say what he wants, but others (e.g. the > victim of libel) should also have the right to complain and > seek redress. Ironically, the promotors of completely one-sided > IP laws and of the privatised censorship I just discussed > are those who force free speech to rely on anonymity, and > thus end up frustrating their own goals: now not only is > what they wanted to avoid happening anyway, but they can't > seek redress either. -- Matthew J Toseland - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/ ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.
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