Talk:Freenet

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Freenet article.

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[edit] Inaccuracies

F2F prevents random people from proving that your IP address can effectively be used to get some controversial files. Freenet does not offer this protection because for efficiency reasons (path shortening) some random nodes are allowed to connect directly to your node, thus exchanging files faster, but thus knowing your IP and thus being able to prove that specific files can be obtained from your computer. However, due to Freenet's "plausible deniability" and the way in which Freenet redistributes files among nodes, one cannot prove that those files were placed there by the node owner or that the node owner knows what they are."

This would not be true for version 0.7 of freenet because v0.7 would support Darknet mode and should be indicated as such? Anybody more knowlegeable than me willing to fix this?

Unless someone can justify the claim that Freenet is a distributed hash table, I'm going to remove that. Although the term DHT is not defined precisely, it is generally agreed that DHTs are guaranteed to find data that exists in the network associated with a given key. The last time I looked at the Freenet protocol, it did not provide such a guarantee. Has anything changed? --Nethgirb 01:14, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

As the article says, Freenet's routing system uses a distributed hash table. Freenet itself is not a DHT, as far as I know, but the article never claims that it is. You're correct, there is no guarantee that a certain piece of data will be found. No P2P system can make this guarantee, by the way. --Rhobite 02:14, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
Right, my point is that Freenet's routing system is not, and does not use, a DHT. There is a second statement in the Tech Design section which I think is accurate: Freenet's routing algorithm is similar to that employed by distributed hash tables (DHTs). The main differences are that Freenet nodes do not have fixed specialisations, and the routing algorithm is heuristic in nature. I agree that no one can provide absolute guarantees, but DHTs do provide strong guarantees under some assumptions: for example, if the network membership and connectivity is stable for a sufficiently long period of time, any data stored in the DHT will be returned successfully by a lookup operation. This is not true of Freenet, wherein the data may not be found at all even under ideal network conditions. (That deficiency is what motivated some DHT research in the first place.) --Nethgirb 06:16, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] POV?

This article is essentially propaganda and needs to be completely rewritten. Anybody? --LMS

I disagree. It overstretches itself and is a bit redundant, but I don't think it's completely worthless. Attempting revisions below. --LDC
I didn't say it was completely worthless, I said it was essentially propaganda, which it is (there's nothing wrong with that--it's just not encyclopedic), and that it needs to be completely rewritten, which it does. I'd prefer that someone who actually knows about freenet do it, since I don't... --LMS
Well, I wrote most of the official Freenet FAQ, which I like to think is pretty neutral, but I certainly am not very neutral about the subject itself, so maybe I'm not the best one to do it. I can certainly answer the technical questions anyone writing this might have. --LDC
Since I put the initial article here, I'll take a stab at rewriting it tonight in a way more oriented toward how it works rather than the goals it was created for. --Bryan Derksen
There's nothing wrong with covering its goals, either; so long as you correctly point out that those are, in fact, goals of the project (the present article simply says "Freenet is...", blindly assuming that the goals have in fact been achieved). --LDC
I've replaced large chunks of the original simplistic "what is freenet" stuff with a more detailed and hopefully more objective description of how the system works lifted from the protocol description by Adam Langley (also covered by the GFDL). Is good? --BD


[edit] Withstanding attacks

Can we have some more info about the robustness of the network? What possible attacks have been proposed against it and how does it fare? (Trying to identify individual users or content inserted/accessed by them, trying to overload the network with many very large random data files, etc.) What happens to files that are never retrieved? --Omegatron 16:33, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

The upshot seems to be that malicious nodes have to be a large proportion of the network before it begins to really fail;, overloading the network requires truly astronomical resources (since the files have to be individually requested before they really use up bandwidth, and their prevalence is a function of popularity- random data would be unpopular would not spread much beyond their originator), files never requested expire out of cache, and traffic analysis to break individual anonymity, assuming they are not leaking their identity through their browser or some other way (this is why it is a good idea to set up a filtering proxy, like privoxy. Also a good idea to set up Tor as well.), requires much the same network saturation as the first attack. That's the gist their published academic papers on the subject gave to me, anyway. --maru 23:31, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Remove technical details?

I propose that the technical design of freenet be completely deleted, since an encyclopedia is not the place to discuss such detail. --Anonymous

I disagree. Plenty of articles on Wikipedia have a great deal of technical detail, I think it fits in well here. --Bryan 08:21, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. It's perfectly relevant. --Omegatron 16:33, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
I also propose that the sentence which identifies Ian Clarke as a man from Ireland is important, since the world will likely assume an American came up with the idea that no information should be censored.
I also want to see the fact that freenet can not remove directions to make weapons of mass destruction be clearly posted, as this is the most dangerous byproduct of the freenet philosophy
That seems somewhat POV to me. Why not just leave it at "information placed onto Freenet is hard to remove" or some other such general formulation? WMD information is included under that. --Bryan 08:21, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)
WHY? Because this the primary controversy over freenet, and wikipedia has a duty to inform the public that freenet, and its fundamental belief, is controversial. You think people really care about stolen music compared to child porn and WMD? The United States Secret Service, FBI, Customs, and probably a few others are keeping a close eye on freenet for this reason. What we have so far in wikipedia is, in my opinion, slanted far to much toward cybergeeks and not enough for the general population.
I reject the long detailed explanation of how freenet works, because >95% of the internet doesnt know what a crypto hash is. Yet you want to ignore the fact that freenet is IDEAL for child porn distribution, or worse, WMD? You automatically assume people will deduce the dangers posed by freenet from "information placed onto Freenet is hard to remove"? I consider people with this type of thinking to be very irresponsible, and living in a liberal-utopian-socialist dreamworld instead of reality. Freenet is based on an idea that the world "should be" a certain way, at too much of an expense of acknowledging the way the world is, and the implications of actions taken in the name of the way the world should be. (As a Republican, I acknowledge the irony of the birth of the Republican party solely to end slavery, yes, they placed the way the world "should be" as a far higher priority and started a war and I agree with them, but such is life.)
As an American, I will fully support an effort to prosecute Mr. Clarke, merely as an example of freedom of speech not being absolute (it never has been in America). The reason for this is that freenet is the IDEAL test case to get this mess sorted out. From a political strategy, NOW is the time to do it. The publicity provided by the case will be counterbalanced by the fact that freenet is, at the moment, too hard to use. We should attempt to kill it now, not later. From a legal and political strategy, now is the time to take this to court. Do not misunderstand me, I don't want him dead, or assaulted, or even serving more than 5 years. I want a court case. Mr. Clarke, and people like him, need to take more responsibility for the results of their actions. He would be an ideal candidate for a pardon after doing a small amount of time. He is not a stupid person, he has the intelligence to understand the ramifications of such technology, and should be held accountable for his actions. He has designed and help to create a tool which violates current law, and a precedent needs to be set. (this is November 2004, for you guys reading this in the future. Get off your ass and file the paperwork). From a strategy perspective, homosexuals/bi/lesbian/gay/etc etc, made a very bad decision pushing their case (which I partly support) at this time. It fueled a turnout of conservatives opposed to them, which helped re-elected Bush. They have nothing to do with freenet, but I cite an example of flawed strategy. You guys are making that same flaw, and it will likely cause you to lose. With a republican president, senate, house, and possible supreme court appointments, the war on terror (child porn is more strategic priority than WMD), NOW is the time to prosecute the freenet supporters for violation of existing law.
I cite the freenetproject.org FAQ the way it is today, at [1], the question "I don't want my node to be used to harbor child porn, offensive content or terrorism. What can I do?", where part of the official response is "If this is not acceptable to you, you should not run a Freenet node." My understanding of this is that if I dont want child porn on my computer, I should not use freenet. I infer from this that freenet knowingly will spread, and allow for distribution, with not attempt for removal of, and expressly designed against removal of, child pornography. I cite section (D) of 18 U.S.C. § 2256: "or distributed in such a manner that conveys the impression that the material is or contains a visual depiction of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct". Please do not reply to this with an explanation of the freenet/libertarian perspective, I am very well versed in it. I provided an explanation, not an invitation for a debate [somebody please but a strikthru on the "not an invitation.."]. --Anonymous
You can't avoid a debate simply by saying you don't want one. :) In this case, you're putting out a huge amount of verbiage about a particular potential future legal attack based over information that's not even known to be on Freenet at this time. Maybe if such an attack does occur it'll be worth focusing on this specific type of content, but for the time being I don't think there's any reason to focus specifically on WMD information. Child porn would be a much better example, it's come up frequently in the past. --Bryan 02:57, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree, child porn should be the #1 justification for a legal clarification, which requires a test case. I'll gladly entertain a debate. I simply do not value freedom of speech as an absolute value, you can not yell fire in a theatre as free speech because people get hurt. Freenet is a form of anarchy which tries to utilize an apparent legal argument, while simultaneously rejecting the rule of law. It was designed specifically to defeat the rule of law. --Anonymous


Maybe the technical design section could be streamlined and wikified, but deleted? No. As Bryan said, technical details are still encyclopedic. Just look at any number of physiology or chemistry articles for example. I don't see how Ian Clarke's nationality has much relevance to an NPOV article about Freenet, but the latest edit is better than your previous effort. As for the WMD thing, it's a valid point and you already included it - I don't think anyone should remove that. Although the question of whether this is a "dangerous product" of their philosophy is of course debatable, and should be presented in NPOV fashion. --Rhobite 17:10, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
I agree with you. I propose we add a section titled "the controversy", and reduce the size of the technical explanation to a smaller, simpler explanation. I also suggest renaming the section which appears to be titled in french. I do think his nationality is important, but I also think the entire wikipedia needs to do a better job with people's nationality, since this is a true global encyclopedia. I have a problem with people assuming that freenet represents america, but I do not want to see nationality identified only for Ian clarke, the entire wikipedia needs to do a better job in my opinion. Since Ian Clarke is his own entry in wikipedia, perhaps it should go there. Also, is freenet a good example of distributed development? If not, perhaps that doesn't even need to be there. (??) --Anon.
I'm troubled by both your suggestions of legal action merely for publishing software, and your attempts to turn this talk page into a debate. Now, I'm aware of some controversy, and certainly there are some trolls on Slashdot who love to point out Freenet's seedier uses. But to my knowledge, it hasn't received too much bad press from reputable sources. Please don't turn this article into a giant warning, and please remember to follow NPOV in your future edits. --Rhobite 00:00, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
I disagree, and feel this is the place to discuss the explanations for the reasons to change the wikipedia entry for freenet, and wikipedia will be an ideal place for a good article about freenet. The wikipedia development method will make for an excellent quality article, such as the level of quality of the Saddam Hussein article. I have expanded my explanation, I ask that it not be deleted, only moved farther down. I would be delighted to see this discussion page as an ideal example of why freenet is controversial. Wikipedia should be a great source of information about freenet and the controversy surrounding it. The lack of press is expected, this is currently in the domain of the cybergeek, and once it is ready for mainstream it will then no longer be in our domain. I want it killed now. Separately, I just now learned what you guys meant by NPOV. It's hard being neutral when you are strongly on one side of an issue, and will do my best to make my edits of the ARTICLE neutral, but not so on this page. --Anonymous
I'm glad that you're making an effort to remain neutral, and I think you have generally done a good job remaining neutral on the article. Incidentally I don't see any new edits by you, maybe you're still working on it. Just remember to attribute any value judgments, such as criticism or praise, and you'll be fine. --Rhobite 02:45, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I just read your expanded rant. Again, PLEASE don't use this talk page to start a debate or a flamewar. I'm resisting the urge to tear your argument to pieces, but this isn't the place. --Rhobite 02:49, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)
Please do, it would be healthy for the article to have a very large discussion. We can always place this "old" discussion lower than the top. New readers need not spend their time reading all of this unless they want to.
Wikipedia is not a soapbox or a discussion forum. Please keep it on the topic of improving this article. In my experience, the kind of opinion-based debate you're trying to start isn't helpful to an article's quality. --Rhobite 07:58, Nov 6, 2004 (UTC)

I believe the article is now of a much higher quality than it was before, therefore I disagree. I'm more interested in clearly stating my case and seeing the article reflect my input, and that has been accomplished. I consider this issue a combination of law, facts, and opinions. It appears you view this primarily as opinion. Regardless, my job is done here. I still think the technical section needs to be simplified. Please note that I do not personally hate Mr. Clarke, rather I want to see the law catch up with the Internet. God bless freedom of speech in China, and other countries. --Anonymous

Over 70% of the Purpose section had become an opinion piece against the philosophy of absolute freedom of communication. It is challenging to find evidence of the so-called controversy online, particularly given that P2P networks as a whole only account for 1.7% of Internet-related child pornography reports to the NCMEC --sanity
I've occasionally tried to convince people to run Freenet nodes, and the child porn thing seemed to come up as a roadblock every time, I think it's certainly worthy of a mention. Perhaps the paragraph could use some tweaking in the details but most of this seems factual and reasonably NPOV, so simply deleting it isn't correct IMO. I've restored it and done a little tweaking of my own. --Bryan 15:07, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I am not saying that this issue doesn't deserve a mention, but I believe that it is inappropriate for it to occupy most of the section which is supposed to describe the purpose of Freenet. I have moved this into a separate section, I hope this will be a satisfactory compromise --sanity
Looks okay to me. --Bryan 08:50, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Okay this section has been dead for a long time, but how the hell do you distribute a WMD through the internet? Nil Einne 16:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
If you look at the first person to mention WMDS, they mentioned specifically "WMD information". Doesn't sound too useful in the case of chemical or nuclear weapons, but I could see biological WMD development being relatively easy if you have the information - send off the info to a commercial synthesizing lab or that sort of thing. --Gwern (contribs) 19:48 22 November 2006 (GMT)

[edit] Wikipedia's Freenet links

Just thought that some people editing this page might be interested in Freenet links project and the current incident on the Admin noticeboard regarding it at Beta_M and his freenet spamming. Beta_M talk, |contrib (Ë-Mail)

Beta, please do not use templates for sigs. --Maru (talk) Contribs 03:11, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the note, I added my opinion there. I think it's a good idea but I question whether the links will be useful to many users. --Rhobite 20:10, August 8, 2005 (UTC)
Seems ironic that the only thing the "no Freenet links" camp agrees to is that Freenet links might have a place in the Freenet article, and yet there are none here. (Links to public proxies would be nice too.)
Oh, and the bit about "Beta_M and his freenet spamming" on the noticeboard has been moved to an archive page. --magetoo 17:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] 0.7 redesign

I updated the Current Development section with more details of the 0.7 rewrite, however at some point much of the article, particularly the Technical Design section, will need to be modified to account for these pretty fundamental changes to Freenet's architecture. Posted 14:26, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The existing technical design stuff should be preserved under some appropriate header, though, for historical purposes. --Bryan 04:57, 7 September 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Wiki links

I added Tor (anonymity network) and GNUnet, due to similarities, I think people would be interested in looking at both of those if they are interested in freenet. --Anon.

[edit] PHP? MySQL? LAMP?, Dynamic content of any sort in Freenet being worked on yet?

Which line would be innappropriate to add to this article?

1 - "Dynamic content can be created and distributed via Freenet." 2 - "Dynamic content cannot be created and distributed via Freenet."

I wonder if there any distributed computing projects under way yet that let databases and functionality live in Freenet?

-:)Ozzyslovechild 03:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


Server-side dynamic content cannot be distributed via Freenet at present. There is some talk about adding searching to v0.7.x, but I don't believe that extends to much other dynamic content. Though stream support might do what you want, come to think of it -- it allows relatively real-time communication between two servers, to allow eg IRC. IIRC, that won't be in 0.7.0, but might appear later. I would say line 2 is more correct than not for 0.7.0, and completely correct for the current version. Evand 03:23, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Evand:). You did what I want. Wanted to know whether there was any dynamic stuff on(in?) Freenet yet.
-:)Ozzyslovechild 04:16, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Violent Child Pornography

Is there any effort being supported by the Freenet community to address concerns that Freenet may facilitate the the dissemination information that an acceptable portion of the community deem unworthy of continued existence? Something perhaps to place seed on those on the other side of the Freenet veil who need our collective attention? Any number of ways to accomplish such without piercing such a veil. Who's working on this, and to where does one go to follow their efforts? If the whole world was to come to peace and love, then what would we be made of? :)Ozzyslovechild 03:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

There are inherent issues with this, and it has been discussed at great length on the mailing lists. Short answer: it is inherently at odds with a Freenet that resists outside censorship by state entities. There are no significant efforts on this at present, though if someone had an idea for how to go about it that answered the complaints raised so far against other ideas, there might be. Evand 03:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Tx again, Evand, for the response. (Playing out the thought): Mighn't there someway to expose those the herd might want exposed indirectly, without actually involving any change to anything about how Freenet is incarnated? E.g., pick the name of something that's real incarnation would lead to something punishable by removal of existance, spoof it a la the way the RIAA fucks dump all those faux copies of tunes on the p2p networks, then exploit the existance and availability of the spoofed bits out in the non-Freenet world to point towards those that need attention? Pretty involved,, I grant you,, but it seems that the perhaps appropriate hard-line stance about how the project itself is manifested kinda calls for at least a convoluted route to something that would take away the oppositions biggest if not only big stick. Anyhoo, just musing. Cheers,
:-)Ozzyslovechild 04:16, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
If you want to allow good free speech, you also need to allow evil free speech. You want your own illegal speech to be protected but want others's illegal speech which you don't like to be censored?
TugOfWar 12:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know, if there was a method to stop Freenet from being used for the distribution of violent child pornography, it would be seen as a design flaw by the developers since that method could also be used to stop Freenet from being used for the distribution of banned books. On the ethics of this, as far as I know, the philosophy is that violence against children, and sexual exploitation of children are the problems that should be fixed - not the free distribution of information. I think I remember reading an interview with Ian Clarke and he was asked a related question and he answered that most child abuse happens in the home, so is that a justification to have police cameras in each room of our homes? (I didn't think it was a perfect answer, but I think it shows the general approach). Gronky 13:27, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


What makes you think child porn is not free speech? Child porn is as much free speech as music, book or movies. Child porn should be spread everywhere on the internet so anyone can enjoy it. Child porn is not child abuse or child molestation. One is physical, the other is digital information. TubOfWar 11:20, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Tx for the thoughts, tubofwar & gronky. To answer tubofwar, no. I didn't say anything about wanting my speech protected, or about wanting others' censored. I just asked if there was any effort underway by the freenet community to address a concern freequently raised regarding freenet. Seems possible to do via social hack without needing to affect the technical implementation of freenet in the slightest, for example by publishing content in freenet that purports to be kiddie porn (to play out this example, though others could surely be found), perhaps even posting something that though legal, is of similar ilk (e.g. barely-legal type stuff), and then doing something like embedding in the media file calls to the outside world (e.g. how you can embed a command to open a web site in some media types). That call could be used to bring attention down upon the person. I'm thinking that's more of a hacker contest kinda thing than an fbi kinda thing. Set the trap, hack the fools that fall for it, see if they're reel baddies based on what gets found on their machines, get them busted. Hundred bux to the script kiddie that gets the gets the most busted. No harm done to freenet; nothing done to freenet. There's gotta be a ton of possibilities in that sort of direction that some in the community could support since they do not in the slighted take away from the ability of someone to "speak" freely via freenet. That there doesn't seem to be anything of the sort might merit mention in the article's controversy section, though perhaps not. Gonna chew on that and look around for a while before adding anything about it at any rate. -:)Ozzyslovechild 22:01, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
No common media formats support embedded executable code like you describe. You could of course insert files like 'kiddieporn.exe' to catch the stupidest users, or exploit the Windows Metafile vulnerability to catch users who never update their Windows systems. But even then, what would you do? You can't conclude they've downloaded anything illegal unless you inserted that material yourself. This is no way to catch the "reel baddies". Also, developing something to do this systematically would lessen the anonymity of Freenet, and you cannot reasonably expect the Freenet project to be part of that. Freenet is designed to its very core to make no discrimination over whom anonymity is afforded. It's a foregone conclusion that if you don't like some sort of material on Freenet, either don't watch it, or forget about Freenet. Haakon 22:37, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Didn't say anything about embedding executable code. WMV and Flash (SWF) files, and I think several others, allow the creator of the media file to either launch browsers to open URLs, or issue HTTP request to load content dynamically. Such HTTP requests could be used, perhaps with some exceptions, to determine the IP address of the requestor. At which point, via means legal or perhaps somewhat less official, action could be initiated. The veil of freenet wouldn't be lessened in the slightest. Nothing changes with respect to ability to identify who posted or hosted the freenet content. Freenet then wouldn't be discriminating in the slightest. Downloaders are free to either permit something they've downloaded to contact another computer on the internet or not. Of course there's plenty of room for false positives, since the 'trojan' file itself wouldn't be illegal, but I'd bet it could be made to work a bit. But we digress. Topic was just whether any such initiatives were currently underway within the freenet community, which's assertainment would then inform my decision as to how to edit, or indeed whether to edit, the controversy section of this Wikipedia article. -:)Ozzyslovechild 04:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
And then what would happen? A pedophile would be locked up for trying to satisfy their urges in a harmless manner for a few years, their life utterly ruined over downloading a fake file, and thousands of others would continue to live free, especially the ones who matter -- those that are doing the original uploading. Yup, world saved rate there. // paroxysm (n) 03:32, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
and who said anything about locking up anyone? your reference to lives ruined for downloading a fake file were already addressed. see above inre: false positives. unjust action done unto false positives would be a separate matter from the matter being discussed, which, though i fear redundance for repeating seems to bear repeating yet again, is whether to mention whether there is any noteworthy flow within the FreeNet community that exerts efforts to mollify a primary strike against the technology's adoption. if it will help you to speak on-topic, we could perhaps shift to another example (IP issues? andor subversive movements? could perhaps be made to fit the discourse). whatever works for you. sorry if i touched a nerve. -:)Ozzyslovechild 02:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
p.s.: "for a few years"? i'd love to read the story of what story you were referencing when you typed that. i'm sure the "harmless" would be a fruitful topic of conversation, but i'm guessing the better handle on something would come from the story of "for a few years."
p.s.:"world saved rate/right there": i'm guessing you were responding to echos you've heard in the larger discourse. no world savers around these heah parts. this is wikipedia, yo. just a bunch of folks talkin shite and making notes..
I think what so many people seem to be missing has been explainined time and time again above and elsewhere. Freenet by definition has been designed to make any attempts to identify people who retrive certain content as difficult as possible. All the advise given also tells you how to protect your anonymity and to avoid such traps. This is the way it's designed. This has nothing to do with the developers wanting people to download child porn as some people suggest. Rather it has to do with the fact that by definition, anything of the sort defeats the purpose of Freent. Sure the vast majority of us might agree with the censor of child porn but the idea is no one should be able to decide for anyone else what they may or may not retrieve. If the above ideas work then what happens when someone decides downloading movies showing e.g. brutality of Chinese police or American soldiers are equally bad? Or the video of the Dalai Lama or someone else communicating to his or hew followers? They will just use the same tricks and suddenly people will be caught for downloading these videos. You don't have to agree with the goals and ideas behind Freenet. But you do have to understand them. And if you do understand them, then you have to understand why questions such as the above are silly. Nil Einne 10:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
HA ha ha, Child Porn is part of Freenet, it was built into it. Child porn is what Freenet was designed for. You will never get rid of it without also destroy Freenet. So Forget about it. Robust Physique 06:05, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pre-intro?

The graph before article seems a little long, and press-release-y. Seems kinda like it take advantage of its existence's well-deserved right to point out possible outdatedness to follow by turning a bit cheerleederish. But not that much, really, so though I've several thoughts, I've no opinion on the matter at this juncture. -:)Ozzyslovechild 03:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] FireFox plug-in for FreeNet Yet?

is there a firefox plugin for freenet yet? in terms of adoption, it would seem fertile ground.

perhaps one that wouldn't force the quagmire of implication that currently accompanies participation? something more simple, to simply allow folks to browse freenet sites if they agree to install a firefox plugin, regardless how unflinchingly coded that plugin is with respect to the weighty issues that freenet necessarily entails? -:)Ozzyslovechild 03:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Strange edit summary

A link [2] was removed from this article today, justified by:

"A NPOV article written by someone other than the person adding it to Wikipedia, ie. not original research"

Let me point out:

  • If the article was NPOV, that's good, not bad.
  • If it was written by someone other than the person adding it to Wikipedia, that's good, not bad.
  • If it is not original research, that's good, not bad.

That said, I'd remove the link too. It's just not that interesting or notable, or even well written.

Haakon 12:43, 9 January 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Let's resolve this "criticism" thing

Newsbyte (User:195.144.64.17) has on his talk page resolved to persist his reversions. He is of course subject to the 3RR rule.

He wants the Project related criticism section to remain in the article. The problem is that the section is unattributed and uncited. When pressed, he cited [3] in the edit summary for one of his reversions. That page is of course authored by himself, but has some pointers to people criticising the project. One of those pointers is to his own blog, two others are about people involved with I2P lamenting that Freenet developers wouldn't use their tech, and the last is to a google cache of a blog entry claiming that "any non-laudatory comment about Freenet in a public forum, however accurate the comment might be, will be viciously attacked both publicly and privately".

It should be noted that Newsbyte is by many considered a notorious, long-standing troller on the Freenet mailing lists. It is my opinion, as a passive observer of the Freenet project (not a user, and not a fan, rather the opposite, though for technical reasons), that "project related criticism" is not a common thing to see, except from Newsbyte himself.

He should also note that wikiadmins do not at all have any more say in what goes in and what goes out of articles; they have no more editorial authority than any other user. This has been pointed out to him, but it seems to have slipped his attention.

Also, note that the section was rewritten by myself [4] in order to force some NPOV into it. It is still uncited and original research.

Haakon 22:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

You can't cite your own writings as a source in articles. See Wikipedia:No original research. It's fine to include criticism of Freenet in this article. However, this criticism should be significant and verifiable. It doesn't appear that anyone except Newsbyte has made these "project-related" criticisms of the project. I've warned Newsbyte about the 3RR (he's already violated it today), and I will report him if he reverts again. You're correct that admins have no special control over article content. I'm just another editor in this dispute. Rhobite 06:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


If the rule says 'without discussion', one can see it has been discussed on the talkbackpage. Regardless, I'm quite willing to respond here too. First of all, if one sees on the freenetmaillists, one can notice that not everyone is the opinion I'ma troll (including the main coder, toad). Secondly, I have been actively involved in the project (though non-coding wise), as one can read on the blog. (I doubt even Ian would deny I've actively sought and found sponsors, donated money, suggested ideas, tested nodes, created the freenethelp-wikisite, made edits on the freenet-webpage (thus, with have cvs access), etc. This is hardly consistent with the behaviour of a 'troll'. Ofcourse, it is the easiest to depict me as such, by those that feel criticised.

As for the sources: there are sources mentionned on the url I gave. whether one agrees to it or not is besides the point; the fact that there IS criticism is undeniable. Yet, this is exactly what is happening here, and the hypocrisy is obvious, because, for instance, I see no references or sources mentionned on the part which deals with the controversy of childporn on freenet, yet nobody seems to mind that.

The rule about not posting your own sources are nonsensical and just used as excuses: it was already two times put there by somebody else, and still it was to no avail. So, yes, I'm hardly inclined to NOT revert such obvious biased based disicions.

And lastly, if there is a 3 revert rule, surely that applies to everyone? Since the edit of a wikiadmin was reverted by you, it stands to reason that you have breached that rule before me, if I'm now reverting it 3 times. I'm fully prepared to defend myself and the edits whenever and wherever that 'breach-of-rule' is being discussed, just show me where.

as for the 'wikiadmin has no more power', it didn't 'slip my mind'; however the compromise agreed on was that we would abide with what the wikiadmin would edit. I did abide by that agreement, even if I'm far from happy with it. I expect other too hold to the compromise too, especially the wikiadmin himself.

I also see some bias in your way you look at the sources given. If it comes from me, it's not allowed, if someone else posts it, it's still not allowed, if I2P developpers give criticism, they are only 'lamenting' (which is just the same as saying you don't acknowledge their criticism (which is, btw, not merely about 'they are not using our tech'; for instance, random clearly indicates why it is a bad decision to go for a darknet, as wel as for load-balancing issues, as for anonimity-concerns in countries like china - but ofcourse, it's much easier to just shrug it of with claiming they are only lamenting.). And finally, your quote of one of the sites baffles me? What relevance does that have? whether the author in question feels about someone publicly criticising Freenet has *nothing* do do with it. The fact that he agrees with some of criticism given, and that fair-use of texts apply to evrything, superceeds his other comments about not wanting to see any other public criticism.

Newsbyte you are the only person who has reverted more than 3 times in a 24 hour period. You have been reported - expect to be blocked from editing Wikipedia soon. Rhobite 17:21, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand why his opinion about the development problems of freenet should not be included. There are many other links in other wikipedia articles that are opinion pieces. Newsbytes article is good quality. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.142.130.32 (talk • contribs) .

Looks like newsbyte is at it again, he is trying to restate his personal criticism of the project, this time pointing to a number of sources, some of which are indeed critical of Freenet, unfortunately his characterisation of this criticism actually sounds a lot more like his own criticism than that which he cites. Sorry newsbyte, but you can't sneak in your original research by bombarding us with citations that don't actually say what your summary would imply they say.

--38.98.1.19 23:16, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

wait a minute. There has been a LOT of controversy about how freenet was developed among freenet users; unfortunately they are mainly located within freenet, and at that within the freenet 0.5 community; the arguably eponymous freenet site, CoFE has a LOT of criticism of the developers. within the FROST user community; it is common. The Number of freenet 0.5 nodes has not dropped noticeably since freenet 0.7 was made the default version available on the sourceforge site primarily because of the common concensus that the developers have completely lost site of the Freenet Projects goals; I've seen the full time developer, Mr. Toseland, reviled as a fundamentalist christian who is purposefully compromising the anonymity and privacy of freenet users in order to further his own agenda (I think that is a little strong, myself, but it is a commonly held opinion). Paganize 09:38, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] example at start

Give example of how the average Joe could use it right at the start of the article. --Jidanni 2006-04-16

It's a three step process
  • 1. Install
  • 2. Find out about some crap about irc & keys
  • 3a. Uninstall
  • 3b. Watch as uninstaller hangs and does nothing.

[edit] diagrams and pictures

The german wikipedia site has some more pictures and diagrams that could be used on this page too. The diagrams would need translation, of course. --84.178.107.172 10:32, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

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