Light

Concise and clear.

In patent law, copyright and property there are two pillars: protection and control.

Protection

• Property: No person shall take that from me.
• Copyright: No person shall have the same without my permission. A monopoly.
• Patent Law: No person shall create something similar without my permission. An even stronger monopoly.

Control

• Property: I decide what happens with this.
• Copyright: I decide what happens to everything which is the same. Takes another ones property. → a monopoly¹.

“Some years ago, I had a look at freenet and wasn't really convinced, now I'm back - a lot has changed, it grew bigger and insanely fast (in freenet terms), like it a lot, maybe this time I'll keep it. Especially regarding B.S. like SOPA, PIPA and other internet-crippling movements, freenet seems like a good idea after all!”
— sparky in Sone

So, if you know freenet and it did not work out for you in the past, it might be time to give it another try: freenetproject.org

def censor_the_net():
  try: SOPA() # see Stop Online Piracy Act 
  except Protest: # see sopastrike.com 
    try: PIPA() # see PROTECT IP Act 
    except Protest: # see weak links 
      try: OPEN() # see red herring 
      except Protest: 
        try: ACTA() # see Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement 
        except Protest: 
          do_it_anyway() # destroy free speech and computers (english video).

while wealth_breeds_wealth and wealth_gives_power: # (german text and english video)
  censor_the_net() # see wealth vs. democracy (german)

As the i2p people say, anynomity is no boolean. Freenet allows you to take it a good deal further than i2p or tor, though. If you do it right.

• Worst case: If all of Apple would want to find you, because you declared that you would post the videos of the new iDing - and already sent them your videos as teaser before starting to upload them from an Apple computer (and that just after they lost their beloved dictator), you might be in problems if you use Opennet. You are about as safe as with tor or i2p.

• Best case: If a local politician would want to find you, after you uploaded proof that he takes bribes, and you compressed these files along with some garbage data and used Freenet in Darknet-mode with connections only to friends who would rather die than let someone take over their computer, there’s no way in hell, you’d get found due to freenet (the file data could betray you, or they could find you by other means, but Freenet won’t be your weak spot).

This is a mail I sent as listener comment to Free as in Freedom.

Hi Bradley, Hi Karen,

I am currently listening to your Jobs show (yes, late, but time is scarce these days).

And I side with Karen (though I don’t use Gnome, but KDE): Steve Jobs managed to make a user interface which feels very natural. And that is no problem in itself. Apple solved a problem: User interfaces are hard to use for people who don’t have computer experience and who don’t have time to learn using computers right.

→ a comment to 10 Hackers Who Made History by Gizmodo.

As DDevine says, Richard Stallman is no proponent of Open Source, but of Free Software. Open Source was forked from the Free Software movement to the great displeasure of Stallman.

He really does not like the term Open Source, because that implies that it is only about being able to read the sources.

Different from that, Free Software is about the freedom to be in control of the programs one uses, and to change them.

More exactly it defines 4 Freedoms:

As I pledged¹, I just donated to freenet 50€ of the money I got back because I cannot go to FilkCONtinental. Thanks go to Nemesis, a proud member of the “FiB: Filkers in Black” who will take my place at the Freusburg and fill these old walls with songs of stars and dreams - and happy laughter.

It’s a hard battle against censorship, and as I now had some money at hand, I decided to do my part (freenetproject.org/donate.html).

My wheel type command interface pyRad just got included in the official Gentoo portage-tree!

So now you can install it in Gentoo with a simple emerge kde-misc/pyrad.

Sone¹ allows fast, identi.ca-style microblogging in Freenet. This is my wrapup on a discussion on the steps to take until Sone can become an integral part of Freenet.

Current state

• Is close to realtime.

• Downloads all IDs and all their posts and replies → polling which won’t scale; short term local breakage.

• Uploads all posts on every update → Can displace lots of content. Effective Size: X*M, X = revisions which did not drop out, M = total number of your messages. Long term self-DDoS of freenet.

“Daddy, where were you, when they took the freedom of the press away from the internet?” — Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reposted from Freetalk, the distributed pseudonymous forum in Freenet.

For all those among you, who use twitter¹ and/or identi.ca², this is a call to action.

Go to your identi.ca or twitter accounts and post about freenet. Tell us in 140 letters why freenet is your tool of choice, and remember to use the !freenet group (identi.ca) or #freenet hashtag (twitter), so we can resend your posts!

I use !freenet because we might soon need it as safe harbour to coordinate the fight against censorship → freenetproject.org !zensur — ArneBab

The broader story is the emerging concept of a right to freely exchange arbitrary data — Toad (the main freenet developer)