7 ms·

Is there any way to make a website that has no central location, that lives on hard drives and internet connections of citizens and self replicates and adapts w

by maeon3 15y ago

Is there any way to make a website that has no central location, that lives on hard drives and internet connections of citizens and self replicates and adapts when the government wants it to just disappear? A free internet is going to need a "deploy website to the hive" tool. Something that would force the FBI to have to raid computers in 50 different nations. I'd like to see a message: "this site has been DNS blocked in your region, please download this program to seed this website for others over an encrypted subnet".

udp 15y ago
Isn't that pretty much what Tor is?
- wladimir 15y ago
  Tor does not distribute sites. You can have hidden services, but they're still hosted at one server (or, at most the sites that have the private key), which are hard to trace but can be taken down when found. I think gp is talking about something more like a content-addressable distributed filesystem. TAHOE/LAFS (https://tahoe-lafs.org/ https://tahoe-lafs.org/) comes to mind.
  - aw3c2 15y ago
    I2P has Tahoe-LAFS support.
cdash 15y ago
There is the freenet project (https://freenetproject.org/ https://freenetproject.org/) which is a distributed data store.
- mrleinad 15y ago
  You mean, there's a freenet project, until it gains massive traction, and the US government starts blocking its ways of getting donations from people.
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    It's free open source code. Donations help, but the FBI tell^H^H^H^H politely asking the payment companies to stop processing for them isn't going to stop anything. People will work on it for the love of the project.
    - batista 15y ago
      Yeah, but they can still make it illegal to work on such projects (like they had crypto algorithms illegal to distribute outside the us), imprison the programmers if they insist, close down the project site, etc.
      - Karunamon 15y ago
        Of all the things it's possible to clamp down on from a legal standpoint, writing code is probably impossible. Such is the way of the internet, routing around the censorship damage :)
slowpoke 15y ago
As far as I understand it, Freenet is exactly that. Participants offer a part of their harddrive as storage for the network, and content is distributed in an encrypted manner. Websites and other services can be (and are) build on top of this network.
- superasn 15y ago
  Right now there is not a lot of incentive for the "average" user to install Tor, Freenet or any other de-centralized to make such a network popular commonplace. But if pirated bay or other popular torrent sites started telling people that for direct downloads they can use this ONE particular software and assuming the software is easy to use (as compared to the fake Usenet software scams) a ton of people would download and install such software in a jiffy and when enough people do it (for whatever their reason be - free internet, file sharing, etc) we get a free internet developing side-by-side which the govt. can't seize. The software is free and anonymous (unlike Napster, Limewire which can be shutdown) and is easy to use for the avg. user. So while sharing files like uTorrent could be the main feature, it will also give options to add a local DNS resolver (that does not depend on the root servers), and a custom web server (to host mirrors of sites). I'm sure millions of people are running uTorrent but just imagine if those same people were running this software instead of it!
  - pyre 15y ago
    The other question is how well some of those tools would scale if everyone were using them.
    - superasn 15y ago
      If it is a peer to peer network I believe it would get more robust as more people join in. Plus, if a ton of people are using it then it would reduce the bandwidth and load of each node if I understand correctly.
      - gravitronic 15y ago
spodek 15y ago
I believe the Freedombox project would help in situations like this, though wouldn't solve it entirely, and that situations like this would help gain support for such projects. From http://freedomboxfoundation.org http://freedomboxfoundation.org and http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn What is FreedomBox? Email and telecommunications that protects privacy and resists eavesdropping A publishing platform that resists oppression and censorship. An organizing tool for democratic activists in hostile regimes. An emergency communication network in times of crisis. If you live near New York City, there will be a hack-fest February 18, 19, 20.
- maeon3 15y ago
  Wow. Freedombox is exactly what im looking for. You could put a secondary dns system on it which can't be fiddled with by ISP's and oppressive governments. My freedom box could reach out to nearby freedom boxes to find the quickest route in, around and through oppressive firewalls through encrypted tunnels and what not. Where do I buy?
  - mlok 15y ago
    From the FAQ 5th question, it's not sold yet. But hopefully coming soon. http://freedomboxfoundation.org/faq/index.en.html http://freedomboxfoundation.org/faq/index.en.html
  - drcube 15y ago
    My understanding is that they are non-existent, and people are still arguing over the design and implementation details. But if you've got the skills, you can help. You know what it's supposed to do. Chances are, whoever stops bickering and builds one first wins. I'm going to see if I can get my local hackerspace to help me experiment and build at least some sort of prototype.
hobin 15y ago
In fact, this shouldn't be too difficult to build. I don't know much about Freenet, but I do know that if we can use bittorrent to share files using P2P, the same can presumably be done with websites. The most immediate problem that comes to mind is that, while the files being shared over P2P stay fairly constant, a website is more dynamic and gets updated a lot. I presume this could be solved by a PGP-like web of trust. I'm sure there are plenty of other difficulties to deal with I and other can think of if I spend some more time thinking about it, but I think this would actually be a pretty neat thing to build. The great thing about this would be that the more likely something is to be censored right now, the less likely it is to be censored on something like this - more people would visit/download such things, thus creating extra nodes for other people to visit/download from. EDIT: I just thought there would be an issue of privacy here that needs to be solved first. For example, if you can track the IP addresses of the people you're downloading your 'website updates' from, and you're visiting explicit sites, it becomes easy to tell whom of your friends are viewing those. ;) The easiest solution is to let people decide for themselves which sites to share, of course, but I wonder if this would mean many sites would be excluded, or whether the effects of this would be minimal.
iwwr 15y ago
You can use the bitcoin block chain as a reliable way to store information (append-only). Was wondering why this isn't being advertised as the killer app of the service.
- wcoenen 15y ago
  Not information in general, just transactions. Currently only small text messages are being embedded in the block chain. It wouldn't scale to larger files.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Would it be enough for a magnet url and a short description? The Pirate Bay is moving away from hosting torrent files anyway.
    - wcoenen 15y ago
      Yes, that would fit easily. Here's an example of the text data that you can find in the block chain by running the "strings" command: http://pastebin.com/ZqqFEqkc http://pastebin.com/ZqqFEqkc
VMG 15y ago
I think the search functionality could even be integrated back into Bittorrent clients, back to a system close to what eDonkey2k was in the good old days.
rmc 15y ago
Yes, we need a technical solution to these attacks on the internet freedoms. It's about time we ignored the laws and made the stupid laws irrelevant.
zotz 15y ago
http://www.oneswarm.org http://www.oneswarm.org
Peaker 15y ago
Van Jacobson's take on this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking
- Locke1689 15y ago
  That's really not how CCN works. CCN is basically a content-based IP that affords easy caching for routing providers. Servers would still exist in their same general form.
  - Peaker 15y ago
    Well, VJ brings specifically the example of data that is routed to another continent on board of a leaving aircraft. He stresses that the storage of every node in the network becomes a part of the network. It would really make censorship difficult -- any node can serve up any piece of data that happens to be stored on it.
    - Locke1689 15y ago
      It's not technically every node. Edge nodes wouldn't have much weight aside from their own content. ISP routing nodes would indeed have breadcrumbs, but there's no requirement that ISPs implement storage caching -- it's only in their financial best interest to implement it instead of network scaling. To a certain extent, yes, CCN has a distributed content nature, but that's not really what it's about. Mostly it's about routing.
pwg 15y ago
> Is there any way to make a website that has no central location, that lives on hard drives and internet connections of citizens and self replicates and adapts when the government wants it to just disappear? Maybe not completely as "decentralized" as your request, but take a look at I2P: http://www.i2p2.de/ http://www.i2p2.de/
noselasd 15y ago
You might be able to have something like that if Van Jacobsens vision here, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 , gets realized.
eslaught 15y ago
Phantom might be a good place to look: http://code.google.com/p/phantom/ http://code.google.com/p/phantom/
dpres 15y ago
List of Anonymity Networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anonymity_networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anonymity_networks My Top 3: 1. .i2p Eepsites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P 2. .onion sites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_... 3. Freesites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

by maeon3 15y ago

udp 15y ago

Isn't that pretty much what Tor is?

wladimir 15y ago
Tor does not distribute sites. You can have hidden services, but they're still hosted at one server (or, at most the sites that have the private key), which are hard to trace but can be taken down when found. I think gp is talking about something more like a content-addressable distributed filesystem. TAHOE/LAFS (https://tahoe-lafs.org/ https://tahoe-lafs.org/) comes to mind.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  I2P has Tahoe-LAFS support.

cdash 15y ago

There is the freenet project (https://freenetproject.org/ https://freenetproject.org/) which is a distributed data store.

mrleinad 15y ago
You mean, there's a freenet project, until it gains massive traction, and the US government starts blocking its ways of getting donations from people.
- Karunamon 15y ago
  It's free open source code. Donations help, but the FBI tell^H^H^H^H politely asking the payment companies to stop processing for them isn't going to stop anything. People will work on it for the love of the project.
  - batista 15y ago
    Yeah, but they can still make it illegal to work on such projects (like they had crypto algorithms illegal to distribute outside the us), imprison the programmers if they insist, close down the project site, etc.
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      Of all the things it's possible to clamp down on from a legal standpoint, writing code is probably impossible. Such is the way of the internet, routing around the censorship damage :)

slowpoke 15y ago

As far as I understand it, Freenet is exactly that. Participants offer a part of their harddrive as storage for the network, and content is distributed in an encrypted manner. Websites and other services can be (and are) build on top of this network.

superasn 15y ago
Right now there is not a lot of incentive for the "average" user to install Tor, Freenet or any other de-centralized to make such a network popular commonplace. But if pirated bay or other popular torrent sites started telling people that for direct downloads they can use this ONE particular software and assuming the software is easy to use (as compared to the fake Usenet software scams) a ton of people would download and install such software in a jiffy and when enough people do it (for whatever their reason be - free internet, file sharing, etc) we get a free internet developing side-by-side which the govt. can't seize. The software is free and anonymous (unlike Napster, Limewire which can be shutdown) and is easy to use for the avg. user. So while sharing files like uTorrent could be the main feature, it will also give options to add a local DNS resolver (that does not depend on the root servers), and a custom web server (to host mirrors of sites). I'm sure millions of people are running uTorrent but just imagine if those same people were running this software instead of it!
- pyre 15y ago
  The other question is how well some of those tools would scale if everyone were using them.
  - superasn 15y ago
    If it is a peer to peer network I believe it would get more robust as more people join in. Plus, if a ton of people are using it then it would reduce the bandwidth and load of each node if I understand correctly.
    - gravitronic 15y ago

spodek 15y ago

I believe the Freedombox project would help in situations like this, though wouldn't solve it entirely, and that situations like this would help gain support for such projects. From http://freedomboxfoundation.org http://freedomboxfoundation.org and http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn http://freedomboxfoundation.org/learn What is FreedomBox? Email and telecommunications that protects privacy and resists eavesdropping A publishing platform that resists oppression and censorship. An organizing tool for democratic activists in hostile regimes. An emergency communication network in times of crisis. If you live near New York City, there will be a hack-fest February 18, 19, 20.

maeon3 15y ago
Wow. Freedombox is exactly what im looking for. You could put a secondary dns system on it which can't be fiddled with by ISP's and oppressive governments. My freedom box could reach out to nearby freedom boxes to find the quickest route in, around and through oppressive firewalls through encrypted tunnels and what not. Where do I buy?
- mlok 15y ago
  From the FAQ 5th question, it's not sold yet. But hopefully coming soon. http://freedomboxfoundation.org/faq/index.en.html http://freedomboxfoundation.org/faq/index.en.html
- drcube 15y ago
  My understanding is that they are non-existent, and people are still arguing over the design and implementation details. But if you've got the skills, you can help. You know what it's supposed to do. Chances are, whoever stops bickering and builds one first wins. I'm going to see if I can get my local hackerspace to help me experiment and build at least some sort of prototype.

hobin 15y ago

In fact, this shouldn't be too difficult to build. I don't know much about Freenet, but I do know that if we can use bittorrent to share files using P2P, the same can presumably be done with websites. The most immediate problem that comes to mind is that, while the files being shared over P2P stay fairly constant, a website is more dynamic and gets updated a lot. I presume this could be solved by a PGP-like web of trust. I'm sure there are plenty of other difficulties to deal with I and other can think of if I spend some more time thinking about it, but I think this would actually be a pretty neat thing to build. The great thing about this would be that the more likely something is to be censored right now, the less likely it is to be censored on something like this - more people would visit/download such things, thus creating extra nodes for other people to visit/download from. EDIT: I just thought there would be an issue of privacy here that needs to be solved first. For example, if you can track the IP addresses of the people you're downloading your 'website updates' from, and you're visiting explicit sites, it becomes easy to tell whom of your friends are viewing those. ;) The easiest solution is to let people decide for themselves which sites to share, of course, but I wonder if this would mean many sites would be excluded, or whether the effects of this would be minimal.

iwwr 15y ago

You can use the bitcoin block chain as a reliable way to store information (append-only). Was wondering why this isn't being advertised as the killer app of the service.

wcoenen 15y ago
Not information in general, just transactions. Currently only small text messages are being embedded in the block chain. It wouldn't scale to larger files.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Would it be enough for a magnet url and a short description? The Pirate Bay is moving away from hosting torrent files anyway.
  - wcoenen 15y ago
    Yes, that would fit easily. Here's an example of the text data that you can find in the block chain by running the "strings" command: http://pastebin.com/ZqqFEqkc http://pastebin.com/ZqqFEqkc

VMG 15y ago

I think the search functionality could even be integrated back into Bittorrent clients, back to a system close to what eDonkey2k was in the good old days.

rmc 15y ago

Yes, we need a technical solution to these attacks on the internet freedoms. It's about time we ignored the laws and made the stupid laws irrelevant.

zotz 15y ago

http://www.oneswarm.org http://www.oneswarm.org

Peaker 15y ago

Van Jacobson's take on this: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking

Locke1689 15y ago
That's really not how CCN works. CCN is basically a content-based IP that affords easy caching for routing providers. Servers would still exist in their same general form.
- Peaker 15y ago
  Well, VJ brings specifically the example of data that is routed to another continent on board of a leaving aircraft. He stresses that the storage of every node in the network becomes a part of the network. It would really make censorship difficult -- any node can serve up any piece of data that happens to be stored on it.
  - Locke1689 15y ago
    It's not technically every node. Edge nodes wouldn't have much weight aside from their own content. ISP routing nodes would indeed have breadcrumbs, but there's no requirement that ISPs implement storage caching -- it's only in their financial best interest to implement it instead of network scaling. To a certain extent, yes, CCN has a distributed content nature, but that's not really what it's about. Mostly it's about routing.

pwg 15y ago

> Is there any way to make a website that has no central location, that lives on hard drives and internet connections of citizens and self replicates and adapts when the government wants it to just disappear? Maybe not completely as "decentralized" as your request, but take a look at I2P: http://www.i2p2.de/ http://www.i2p2.de/

noselasd 15y ago

You might be able to have something like that if Van Jacobsens vision here, http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840 , gets realized.

eslaught 15y ago

Phantom might be a good place to look: http://code.google.com/p/phantom/ http://code.google.com/p/phantom/

dpres 15y ago

List of Anonymity Networks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anonymity_networks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Anonymity_networks My Top 3: 1. .i2p Eepsites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P 2. .onion sites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network)#Hidden_... 3. Freesites - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet