Re: Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure de

On Mon, Jul 11, 2005 at 11:33:15PM -0400, Juiceman wrote:
> If you really feel the need to do something like this:
>  Why not just support blacklisting of CHK's that are known objectionable 
> material. If the node comes across a request for one of these, it will pass 
> it along but refuse to cache it thereby making people feel all warm and 
> fuzzy about not helping the c.p. or whatever spread.

Because this would be a token gesture. It would not be useful, it would
tend to undermine routing, requests would be redirected by per node
failure tables, there would need to be constant maintenance of
blacklists rather than occasional verification of objectionable content,
and above all it would not seriously discourage the poster. What I
propose is a means by which a darknet community can produce a deterrent
(which is not to blow the anonymity of the original poster - except to
his friends - but to sever connections with him), and when a poster is
an entire subnetwork, it provides a means for the network to fork.

> Freesites could catalog 
> and create a text file that lists known "immoral/illegal/unwanted" CHK's and 
> visitor's to each of these "list" Freesites can chose to download these 
> files every so often into the Freenet directory where the node will check 
> for a changed file and enter the CHK's found in the file into the "don't 
> cache" routing table. Users of each "list" Freesite could submit CHK's they 
> have come across and they could be added to the list. Then communities can 
> form around these sites based around different ideas of what is "acceptable" 
> and they can all be mind numbingly uniform and bland "together" without 
> affecting the rest of us thinking individuals. This could be configured 
> on/off in the config file. 

This is meaningless as discussed above.

>  Of course even this route has many dangers:
> 
>    - The fascist/communist/ideological dictatorship that forces its 
>    citizen's to all use it's lists blocking free 
>    speech/Christianity/Muslim/(insert your religion here) 

They can do that _now_. All the darknet stuff is assuming that the nodes
are illegal in the first place.

>    - The Freenet Project could be forced to block all known 
>    "illegal/copyrighted material" thus becoming a huge burden on the project to 
>    pay to hire people which it can't because it doesn't make any money off this 
>    product 

We absolutely must not take on the role of censor!

>    - Freenet users could be forced to "make a reasonable effort" to 
>    download the above CHK lists or face criminal charges for "distributing" the 
>    content in those files

Legality is irrelevant, the whole point of a darknet is that it is
hidden and has a reasonable chance of survival despite running a node
being illegal.
> 
> I am not a lawyer, I am just looking at it from a "what if" point of view a 
> few years from now...
>  In my opinion, you shouldn't implement ANY kind of feature/tool that could 
> be used to limit free speech WHATSOEVER because the slippery slope is the 
> enemy of free speech everywhere.

The State can mandate the use of such a tool even if we don't implement
one. What I have proposed is a means to do it in such a way that
censorship is controlled by the people rather than the Authorities, and
in such a way that it can present a real deterrent, and communities that
don't belong together can separate themselves.
-- 
Matthew J Toseland - toad-EI5O+8PHWbJeeLb3ft/[email protected]
Freenet Project Official Codemonkey - http://freenetproject.org/
ICTHUS - Nothing is impossible. Our Boss says so.

_______________________________________________
chat mailing list
[email protected]
Archived: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.freenet.general
Unsubscribe at http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/chat
Or mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFC05XHHzsuOmVUoi0RAj8+AKCPOvfNcpnzoEREfImg9KULfHee1ACgn7sM
kHzF3KAyv3yEQuJrwSQwFWU=
=x10J
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----