It is amazing what one misses on this list when gone for a three short
days, and if it was not that mailing lists are like goldfish, and that
this conversation has been had here before, I would almost wish I had not
opted for a disconnected Christmas. But we have discussed this before,
parties even went as far as to post segments of the DMCA text and the
conclusion was then, as now, that if the enemy wants to fuck with somebody
running a Freenet node, then they will.
With that in mind I would like to say that in theory I agree with Brandon
and Mr. Bad's point on this issue. We cannot count on plausible
deniability and due process where what was once our democratic states are
heading. Freenet aims to guarantee free speech, while the overwhelming
current political and economic force in these matters has made it very
clear that free speech cannot be tolerated - so to think that taking part
in Freenet will not be considered illegal in one way of another is at best
a temporary naivete´. In fact things are much more grim than that the
current entrapment approach may be successful - I am quite convinced that
before this is over we will reach the point where running a node is
considered illegal regardless of whether it can be proved to be providing
censored information (Mr. Bad sent examples of ISP AUP's, but I didn't see
anyone note that those same documents forbid people from running servers,
regardless of whether they can be entrapped to provide censored
information). Indeed, a design where the very existence of the nodes is
kept as the most closely guarded secret may be the only sustainable model
under these bleak forecasts, even with all the issues of design and
usability that that entails in mind (Hal Finney predicted that this would
be the only viable approach almost a year ago regarding the the threat of
massive DOS of the network).
However, in regard to practical viability of the suggestion in question, I
side completely with Ian and Scott's objections. I consider it highly
unlikely that you will see any sort of worth while natural organization
within the closed "clusters", but that the best case scenario is as Ian
predicted that it will bring no benefit over the "private" node operators
simply using a client or transient node instead (adding a list of allowed
hosts for transient nodes might be worthwhile.) The worse case, and one
that is likely should a significant number of the users choose the
"cluster" approach, is that this will be severely detrimental to the
performance of the network. I have not seen one hint of an actual
refutation of this in the arguments given, and I'm afraid that the burden
of proof falls on Brandon and Mr. Bad here - there are several bases for
simulators out there (Serapis, that which Theo wrote for his analysis, and
little birds whisper tails of ones greater still), so there is nothing
stopping you from proving that artificial separation of nodes does not
disturb the (at least somewhat) natural order of the network.
To battle the matter at hand with the loosers and the "media enforcer"
(hah, they have an even worse name then we do!) I suggest we continue as
planned. With 0.4 we had already planned to close nodes off to anyone who
does not know the public key, which will make it considerably more
difficult to scan targeted individuals and computers and attempt to entrap
them. We should also move the random decrementation of HTL up to the top
the list, which should not be a problem as it fits rather nicely with the
protocol changes I was working on before Christmas (eliminating the
"depth" field). And most importantly we should not get frightened into any
rash decisions by this. The author of program had earlier claimed that he
knew how to break Freenet - but in fact all he has figured out is that
Freenet works. This has not opened any new lines of attack that we were
not previously aware of, except for Mr. Bad who by his own admission was,
until a few days ago, living in a dream world where things like "due
process" and justice had not been thrown by the wayside together with
freedom in the quest to fulfill the ultimate goal of our society -
securing corporate revenue streams.
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:
<>
--
'DeCSS would be fine. Where is it?'
'Here,' Montag touched his head.
'Ah,' Granger smiled and nodded.
Oskar Sandberg
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