> Why are clusters better than just finding a server that you trust and
> connecting to it using your client? This is functionality that is already
> in Freenet and which doesn't create these crazy mini-gnutellas.
Good question. Because you can have a thriving network inside of a
cluster that exists partially independently from the public network. You
can do a good bit of file sharing without having to reach out into the
public network at all. This limits visibility. If you just use a bunch of
clients connected to a central trusted node, you have a central point of
failure and a bottleneck. If you have a cluster with a gateway you only
need to go through the gateway to get things not in the cluster (and the
cluster might be large). If the gateway goes away, you are not totally cut
off. You have the contents of the cluster. A new gateway by a single node
and instantly everyone in the cluster has access to the information in the
public network again. And of course you could have multiple gateways
connected to by various nodes (splits trust that way. I don't have to
trust the node you gateway to, I just have to trust you).
The point of bringing up China is that the most scrutiny comes when things
are passing over the firewall. If there is a large internal Chinese
Freenet then if *one* person can get a piece of information across the
firewall, it is now available to the entire Chinese Freenet. This is much
better than each user in China using a client to connect across the
firewall to retrieve each piece of information. But of course the entire
Chinese Freenet needs to be constructed so that it is hard to tell that
you're running a node.
> > A cluster acts just like a node, so it doesn't mess anything up.
>
> So why should it not just be a node with clients hanging off it?
A cluster acts just like a node to the public network. A cluster acts like
a mostly self-contained Freenet that is undetectable by Enforcers and the
Chinese government from with the cluster.
> > Freenet will not become widely deployed if people are scared to use
> > it.
>
> Just like people were scared to use Napster?
Nobody was afraid to use Napster! This is entirely different! There was no
threat when using Napster. The worst that happened was that people got
kicked off Napster. I'm sure if we kicked people off of Freenet they'd be
back within minutes. I'm talking about threats to my person, my property,
and my freedom. Maybe you don't think such threats will ever occur. I
think they will.
> If someone wants to create such a system then they should write some
> software which uses steganography to allow the transmission of hidden
> encrypted messages through phone conversations which is resistent to
> third-world quality phone-lines, and with precautions against
> Tempest-style monitoring etc etc.
Or I could add 10-20 lines of code to Freenet.
> My second answer is that there is safety in numbers. Widely deploying
> Freenet all over the world is the best defence against this.
Wide deployment requires protection of operators.
> My third answer is that this is a much bigger issue than whether people
> can run Freenet nodes. Internet access is increasingly important, an
> essential service. Your water company cannot arbitrarily cut-off your
> water without a darn good reason. Internet access should be the same, and
> I don't think that this is something we should just work-around in
> software.
I'm not worried so much about people loosing Internet access. The
MediaEnforcer thing is just a wake up call to an serious flaw in our
system which we need to patch up.
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