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First...IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) You aren't the only one, but with Freenet it's fully encrypted. Let's say you had a Freenet Silk Road application. You won't

by omouse 11y ago

First...IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) You aren't the only one, but with Freenet it's fully encrypted. Let's say you had a Freenet Silk Road application. You won't know it's a Silk Road web page that's being saved along with images of marijuana to your computer unless you go through an indexer/search site and even then you still won't know that those bits of data are stored specifically on your machine. So in order for the cops to know your machine was used to store the drug listings, the cops would have to spy on your machine and crack the encryption of the Freenet protocol and essentially monitor it. This is why undercover work is important to the police. If no one reports you for the crime of buying drugs and no one discovers the drugs in transit, then the police don't know what's happening. The only way to catch mobsters was through some undercover work and hoping that someone in the criminal network would squeal. If one criminal says the other 10 criminals actually had a hand in committing a crime, the police have more to investigate and can build a case. If you're not buying drugs or selling drugs and the data related to the drug listings is encrypted when stored on your machine and encrypted when served from your machine, you may be unknowingly helping a criminal to buy or sell drugs. But I'm not sure how that's discoverable by the police and I'm not sure how it would be turned into a criminal investigation. By the argument that you're allowing this, then all ISPs and cell providers are in big trouble because they also enable drug dealing. There are some horror stories for Tor node operators though.

nekopa 11y ago
Not talking about the legal aspects, but, (and I really, really hate to bring up the "think about the children!" argument here) what about if I am unknowingly helping people who create and share child porn? It doesn't matter (to me) if I am on the hook for it or not, I just don't know (ethically?) how I would feel if I knew that was going on via my PC. Drugs I don't give a shit about, and I hate how the "think about the children" people screw our rights to privacy, but still... Honest open question. Edit: PS, I want you guys to keep doing what you're doing. I completely believe in an open free web, and I want to play my part... I hate the idea of the open web turning into a bunch of mini AOLs... Which is where we seem to be heading at the moment.
- joesmo 11y ago
  With a fully distributed model, everyone is essentially running a backbone server. If you don't feel comfortable with such an arrangement, then you'd probably have to opt out. There are plenty of people willing to put up with it, evidenced by the number of companies who have no problem operating the current Internet backbone despite knowing for a fact that their networks are used to distribute child porn and other illegal things. Generally, I think the law is on the side of the distributor, but that's only a legal consolation, not a moral one. I just don't see a way around it. To be fair though, the likelihood of this happening is probably going to be much lower than for a backbone provider, especially if users only serve up content they've consumed themselves (seems like a logical assumption in the distributed system I'm thinking about, but does not have to hold true for all such systems).
  - nekopa 11y ago
    I do feel comfortable with being a part of a global backbone server, and you're right, I don't see a way around the moral issue. But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel in the idea of serving what I consume, that is an interesting take on it. But that does also bring up the issue of creating walled gardens (ie niche bubbles) that may not foster the type of Internet I want to see in the future... For me it's a thorny issue just because of recent articles I've read about the anonymous services really allowing molesters to even set up 'dating' services. As the post above argues about utility outweighing the bad, I want the future great possibilities of an unhindered Web, but I don't want the unheard of new ways people can abuse children. (I've stated before that there are a lot of crimes I don't care about too strongly, but this area gets me, mainly because I have small kids right now) I guess I just want to have my cake and eat it...
  - bitcuration 11y ago
    Perhaps better to take the economical perspective than moral perspective. The coin miner is the backbone of bitcoin, or where all the resource of encryption needed come from, by moral supporters? Any distributed web attempt must learn from bitcoin and understand the economic ecosystem is required and essential. It beats all pointless endless arguments and find it way to success.
granos 11y ago
It's important to note that most of the horror stories involving Tor nodes are related to "exit" nodes. These are the nodes that bridge the open internet with the Tor network. As such, you can see what traffic is traveling through them much more easily. It's not recommended to run exit nodes if you don't know what you are doing and have a fair bit of resources (time/money) to spend on it. Without exit nodes Tor doesn't work, but they are risky to run because you can be held liable for the content traversing the machine.

by omouse 11y ago

nekopa 11y ago

Not talking about the legal aspects, but, (and I really, really hate to bring up the "think about the children!" argument here) what about if I am unknowingly helping people who create and share child porn? It doesn't matter (to me) if I am on the hook for it or not, I just don't know (ethically?) how I would feel if I knew that was going on via my PC. Drugs I don't give a shit about, and I hate how the "think about the children" people screw our rights to privacy, but still... Honest open question. Edit: PS, I want you guys to keep doing what you're doing. I completely believe in an open free web, and I want to play my part... I hate the idea of the open web turning into a bunch of mini AOLs... Which is where we seem to be heading at the moment.

joesmo 11y ago
With a fully distributed model, everyone is essentially running a backbone server. If you don't feel comfortable with such an arrangement, then you'd probably have to opt out. There are plenty of people willing to put up with it, evidenced by the number of companies who have no problem operating the current Internet backbone despite knowing for a fact that their networks are used to distribute child porn and other illegal things. Generally, I think the law is on the side of the distributor, but that's only a legal consolation, not a moral one. I just don't see a way around it. To be fair though, the likelihood of this happening is probably going to be much lower than for a backbone provider, especially if users only serve up content they've consumed themselves (seems like a logical assumption in the distributed system I'm thinking about, but does not have to hold true for all such systems).
- nekopa 11y ago
  I do feel comfortable with being a part of a global backbone server, and you're right, I don't see a way around the moral issue. But I do see a light at the end of the tunnel in the idea of serving what I consume, that is an interesting take on it. But that does also bring up the issue of creating walled gardens (ie niche bubbles) that may not foster the type of Internet I want to see in the future... For me it's a thorny issue just because of recent articles I've read about the anonymous services really allowing molesters to even set up 'dating' services. As the post above argues about utility outweighing the bad, I want the future great possibilities of an unhindered Web, but I don't want the unheard of new ways people can abuse children. (I've stated before that there are a lot of crimes I don't care about too strongly, but this area gets me, mainly because I have small kids right now) I guess I just want to have my cake and eat it...
- bitcuration 11y ago
  Perhaps better to take the economical perspective than moral perspective. The coin miner is the backbone of bitcoin, or where all the resource of encryption needed come from, by moral supporters? Any distributed web attempt must learn from bitcoin and understand the economic ecosystem is required and essential. It beats all pointless endless arguments and find it way to success.

granos 11y ago

It's important to note that most of the horror stories involving Tor nodes are related to "exit" nodes. These are the nodes that bridge the open internet with the Tor network. As such, you can see what traffic is traveling through them much more easily. It's not recommended to run exit nodes if you don't know what you are doing and have a fair bit of resources (time/money) to spend on it. Without exit nodes Tor doesn't work, but they are risky to run because you can be held liable for the content traversing the machine.