Re: [Tech] Crazy idea: How trust in darknets enables secure democratic censorship

I'm not getting sucked into this, mainly because I share Matthew  
Exon's position on this and he is doing a pretty good job of  
defending it.  Censorship by majority is just as bad as censorship by  
your government, if not worse in many cases.

Toad, if you lived in Iran just how far do you think you would get  
sharing information about Christianity if you could be censored by  
those around you?  Is that the kind of Freenet we want to create?  It  
certainly isn't the kind of Freenet I have been working towards for  
the last 6 or 7 years...

Ian.

On 13 Jul 2005, at 14:48, Matthew Exon wrote:

> Matthew Toseland wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jul 13, 2005 at 02:01:15PM +0200, Matthew Exon wrote:
>>
>
>
>>> Why do I, or Chinese christians, care whether the content is  
>>> being distributed openly or secretly?  It's still being  
>>> distributed, right? It's entirely possible that Al Qaeda are  
>>> swapping jokes about the London Underground through my node right  
>>> now.  The fact that it's invisible to me doesn't make me any  
>>> happier about it.
>>>
>> It would be distributed primarily on paedophile only darknets. And
>> although SOME might be distributed on the open-ish darknets, they  
>> could
>> not be used for recruitment. It would be a MAJOR improvement on the
>> current situation.
>>
>
> So it's a reduction in the volume of bad stuff, not a complete  
> solution.  I can buy this argument, but I'm not sure it's going to  
> convince very many people.  You guess that you reduced the problem  
> by 90%, but the problem was unmeasurable both before and after, so  
> what can you really promise to these people?  Only that you're  
> pretty certain you haven't solved the problem completely.
>
>
>>> I thought you were trying to set it up so that porn can be traded  
>>> as easily as now, but that I could still ensure that no porn  
>>> passes through my node.  So I'd have a clear conscience, without  
>>> anyone being cut off from the data they want.  In theory.  In  
>>> practice, it looks like it won't work out so neatly.
>>>
>> No, that would be pointless.
>> I want to set up a system whereby a darknet can have its own  
>> standards
>> for content, which are determined democratically. If paedophiles  
>> aren't
>> welcome, they have to go elsewhere. They may be able to set up  
>> their own
>> network, but the main network wouldn't be helping them, and obviously
>> it'd be a smaller network (and not usable for recruiting).
>>
>
> OK.  This is a philosophical disagreement.  I'd go so far as to say  
> I'd rather have the government censoring my communications than a  
> simple majority of freenetters.  At least with the government, mob  
> rule is moderated somewhat by courts and constitutions.  To really  
> climb onto the soapbox for a bit, democracy is horribly overrated:  
> the real source of freedom in our society is the humanist  
> philosophical underpinnings of a legal system built from the  
> experience of hundreds of years. Democracy is an important piece of  
> the machine, without which it doesn't work very well, but democracy  
> on its own isn't much better than nothing.  I'm not ready to submit  
> to the tyranny of the majority yet.
>
>
>>> As an aside, I wouldn't put too much faith in Chinese christians  
>>> spending a lot of time worrying about child porn.  I'm sure  
>>> they're not in favour of it, but it's just not the hot-button  
>>> issue that it is in the West.  Porn in general, maybe, but  
>>> probably not enough to stop them joining the students' porntastic  
>>> darknet.
>>>
>> Well it's certainly a big deal in the West. And the future of  
>> democracy
>> in the West is by no means assured.
>>
>
> Democracy isn't looking particularly healthy in the USA right now,  
> but comparing it to China or Burma would be a gross exaggeration.   
> If Americans struggling against oppression in the US are too  
> worried about the possibility of child porn to use Freenet,  
> frankly, screw 'em.  They can use bittorrent.  I'm less than  
> convinced that those worries would stop Chinese christians or  
> democracy activists, and they're a far bigger concern for me.
>
>
>>> Tibetans would be free to set up their own darknet within Tibet,  
>>> but what's the point if they can't smuggle footage of human  
>>> rights abuses out to Amnesty International?  And the new darknet  
>>> would be such a tempting target for the Chinese government; much  
>>> more so than a million students who, at the end of the day, much  
>>> of the government regards as pretty harmless.
>>>
>> So harmless that they murdered 2000 of them in 1991.
>>
>
> Obviously I don't want to get backed into the position of seeming  
> to minimise the horror of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and I  
> don't want arguments about that to get in the way of my arguments  
> about the accessibility of Freenet.  But there's no comparison  
> between the level of oppression in the west and in the east of  
> China today.  And I stand by my comment that much of the government  
> regards the pro-democracy movement as pretty harmless.  The  
> military doesn't, because they fear being locked up for what they  
> did in 1991; but any move to round up students wholesale and throw  
> away the key is going to be tough to get through the Politburo as  
> it stands now.  More because the students aren't the threat they  
> were in 1991 than because China has liberalised, unfortunately.
>
> Tibetan and Uyghur activists, on the other hand, are still  
> considered very much a threat.  Their need for a link to the rest  
> of the world is more important than the problems democracy  
> activists and christians have with Freenet, much as I sympathise  
> with all of them.  And they really are far more likely to be hunted  
> down and disappeared, so their security has to be protected more  
> carefully.
>
> To generalise: the weaker the minority the more important I think  
> Freenet is.  The more oppressed the group, the less likely they are  
> to care about what else might be going through their nodes.  It  
> seems like this proposal tilts the balance too far towards  
> majorities who can probably take care of themselves.
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