Che futuro per il file sharing e le reti di P2P dopo l’approvazione del pacchetto Telecom da parte del Parlamento Europeo? Lo scambio di file diventerà defintivamente illegale e sarà perseguito, seppur giudiziariamente? La rete smetterà di essere neutrale e il principio del “mere conduit” sarà cancellato in favore di una regolamentazione dei contenuti usufribili? Le reti di P2P diventerannmo delle chiuse e ristrette darknet?

Il Pacchetto Telecom, se da un lato introduce un nuovo catalogo di diritti, quali il diritto alla libera informazione per mezzo della rete, dall’altro non risolve il problema della coesistenza fra diritto d’autore e libertà di scambio. Si limita solo a anteporre alla pretesa di rivalsa delle Major produttrici di contenuti le garanzie del giusto processo. La domanda se è illegale o meno scambiare contenuti coperti da copyright in rete, quindi se è illegale l’atto del mero scambio di opere intellettuali, del tutto lecito nel mondo normale, non trova risposte nel complesso di norme che sono state introdotte. Il file sharing in che modo viola il copyright se è puro scambio privo di rendiconto economico? Il cpoyright non consente la riproduzione dell’opera, ma il suo scambio? Cosa cambia se guardo un film che mi ha prestato un amico dallo scaricarlo da una rete di P2P? Il P2P facilita la diffusione delle opere, e quindi la loro fruibilità. Il copyright antepone la fruizione al pagamento di una somma, limita la diffusione e tende a mantenere l’individuo nella non-conoscenza. La rete rende il cittadino attivo e informato anche attraverso la fruizione di contenuti non acquistati ma semplicemente scambiati; allo stesso modo, l’esclusività dell’informazione veicolata solo sulla base dello scambio economico rende difficoltosa la sua diffusione. E senza informazione, qualsiasi scelta è condizionata e non libera.

• L’anarchia corre nel Web, dal file sharing al copyleft

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  • Quando la compagnia di telecomunicazioni irlandese Eircom bloccò l’accesso a Pirate Bay, in settembre, l’azione parve alquanto inutile agli internauti di mezzo mondo

     

  • «Tempo perso – taglia corto un commentatore sulla community di studenti irlandesi Studentsmart.ie – vai su x.com e clicca su ‘bypass eircom block’ (ignora il controllo eircom, NdT): sei subito dentro. Stanno solo cercando di scoraggiare la gente: in realtà ci sono così tanti modi per condividere i file che per bloccarli tutti dovrebbero chiudere Internet”.

     

  • La profonda valenza anarchica del file sharing in Internet va ben oltre il semplice gusto di sfidare le grosse corporation. La cultura dello scambio di file gratuito e continuo non solo mette in dubbio l’egemonia della proprietà privata, ma ha diffuso una comunità internazionale di risorse personali in cui il denaro semplicemente non esiste più.

     

  • Le società discografiche e le case cinematografiche non riescono più ad essere convincenti sul perché il file sharing dovrebbe essere sbagliato (anche le belle parole sul tema “ok, adesso smettiamo di fregarvi i soldi” lasciano il tempo che trovano). La gente comincia a non pensare più ai propri materiali digitali come a qualcosa che “possiede”, ma piuttosto come a qualcosa che può condividere.

     

  • Un numero sempre maggiore di pubblicazioni digitali adotta la licenza “Copyleft”, che tutela la libertà di copiare e riprodurre il lavoro invece che ostacolarla. A Berlino, Helsinki e Copenhagen, gruppi come Pirate Cinema hanno fuso la pirateria cinematografica con il movimento squatter.

     

  • Organizzazioni online come la Free Software Foundation (FSF) vogliono liberare tutto il software dal concetto stesso di proprietà

     

  • Le aziende che stanno dietro al software proprietario spesso spiano le vostre attività e vi impediscono di condividere il software con altri – si legge sul sito della FSF – e poiché i computer controllano la maggior parte delle nostre informazioni personali e delle nostre attività quotidiane, il software proprietario rappresenta un pericolo inaccettabile per una società libera

     

  • «Non accetto la tesi che Internet dovrebbe essere il regno dell’anarchia, dove chiunque ha la possibilità di avere quello che vuole senza pagare», spiegava il segretario alla cultura inglese il 20 ottobre di fronte al governo britannico

     

  • Successivi provvedimenti anti-pirateria si sono ripetutamente dimostrati inefficaci

     

  • la maggioranza dei candidati svedesi al Parlamento europeo per quest’anno è dell’opinione che l’Europa sia già andata troppo oltre nella questione. «Le leggi dell’Unione europea sono spinte da una campagna di lobbying di Hollywood, basata su una cieca fiducia nel controllo totale di Internet – spiega il verde Carl Schlyter al giornale in lingua inglese The Local – il che non è né possibile né auspicabile»

     

  • Un commento sul sito web di The Local sintetizza forse meglio di altri l’atteggiamento della comunità del file-sharing, che contrappone all’autorità tradizionale un’innovazione inarrestabile: «Questa legge è sbagliata, ma la tecnologia non ha limiti e ci sono molti modi per aggirarla».

     

  • nel 1984 William Gibson, lo scrittore di fantascienza canadese che coniò il termine cyberspazio: «Internet è strana. Non fa guadagnare soldi, è transnazionale e fuori da ogni controllo: un grande evento anarchico»

     

• Creativi per la Neutralità della Rete. | Linux Club Italia

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  • Alcune norme già approvate nel pacchetto Telecom compromettono seriamente la Neutralità della Rete [2] e il Mere Conduit. [3]

     

  • Queste norme permettono di filtrare e/o degradare contenuti e applicazioni, per dare accesso preferenziale ad alcuni servizi bloccandone altri, e negando l’accesso a certi siti ad esclusivo giudizio dei Provider.

     

  • Questo consente, alle lobby che controllano l’informazione ed ai Governi, di decidere cosa e come deve essere la Rete del futuro con il rischio di trasformarsi in un mero mezzo per far denaro e mantenere il monopolio dell’informazione. C’è l’intenzione di svilire o annullare l’emendamento 138 [4] allo scopo di consentire politiche locali come quella Francese dei “3 schiaffi”, a cui purtroppo molti altri Paesi si stanno accodando, che ha come sanzione finale la disconnessione dalla Rete per i sospetti di praticare il file sharing [5] di opere coperte da copyright

     

  • La repressione, richiesta a gran voce dalle corporation che prosperano sullo sfruttamento del diritto d’autore, attraverso sproporzionate azioni giudiziarie, ha provocato l’indignazione generale innescando la nascita di organizzazioni e partiti politici che hanno come obbiettivo primario la riforma internazionale del diritto d’autore e la legalizzazione del P2P senza scopo commerciale

     

  • Sono uscite allo scoperto anche coalizioni di Artisti che contestano la criminalizzazione dei loro fan ed i Rappresentanti dei provider sono contrari a dover fare gli sceriffi della Rete in spregio al Mere Conduit.

     

• PI: UE, il Pacchetto Telecom è chiuso

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  • Il principale elemento di novità contenuto nella versione finale e approvata del Pacchetto Telecom riguarda i diritti del cittadino ad informare e ad informarsi con la mediazione della rete, nel quadro sempre più globale del contrasto alla pirateria online

     

  • Su questo nodo si era arenato il dibattito su nell’estate scorsa, su questo nodo le autorità europee sono giunte ad un accordo nelle scorse settimane, dopo che la Francia ha approvato la cosiddetta dottrina Sarkozy, e dopo che altri paesi europei si stanno muovendo concretamente per brandire le disconnessioni punitive nei confronti di coloro che abusino della rete per scambiare senza autorizzazione contenuti protetti dal diritto d’autore

     

  • spiega di non aver ceduto sui diritti fondamentali del cittadino. Le autorità si sono espresse riguardo alla neutralità della Rete: lo hanno fatto con una raccomandazione che non ha però alcun effetto vincolante. I fornitori di connettività, secondo alcuni osservatori, potranno probabilmente continuare a battere la strada della misure tecniche volte alla discriminazione del traffico

     

  • Monitoraggio delle reti di sharing e disconnessioni non sono inoltre esclusi, non è esclusa la compressione del diritto ad informarsi e informare a mezzo Internet, ma il tutto deve avvenire in maniera proporzionata, nel rispetto della Convenzione europea per la salvaguardia dei Diritti dell’Uomo e delle Libertà fondamentali.

     

  • In sostanza, ai cittadini della rete che venissero colti dai detentori dei diritti a violare il copyright spetterà un giusto processo e non dovranno confrontarsi con autorità indipendenti che nulla abbiano a che vedere con l’autorità giudiziaria, come inizialmente previsto dalla dottrina Sarkozy

     

  • si darebbe carta bianca agli ISP che decidessero di agire di concerto con l’industria dei contenuti operando in un clima di giustizia privata

     

  • si tratta di interpretazioni che lo stesso commissario Reding ha provveduto a smentire: i soggetti privati che intendano muovere in questa direzione non avranno alcuna libertà di azione procedendo sulla strada dell’autoregolamentazione nelle disconnessioni

     

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Ein weiteres Video, das mit einem Zukunftsszenario die schleichende Gefahr, die von der Einrichtung von Sperr- und Überwachungsmechanismen ausgeht, darstellen will. Sicherlich kann man geteilter Meinung darüber sein, ob und inwieweit es dazu kommen könnte. Schließlich gibt es noch rechtsstaatliche Instanzen, die geeignet scheinen, die gewollte Maßnahmen zu revidieren. Ein genauer Blick in die Thematik läßt hingegen bereits heute den Schluß zu, daß fleißig daran gearbeitet wird, diese Korrekturen zu verindern. Steter Tropfen hölt den Stein.

Wenn einmal systematisch die Grundlagen für eine Zensur geschaffen sind, dann kann sie sich allmählich ausbreiten.

Ilya Trojanow

Auf der einen Seite werden sich Politiker im Dialog finden und bereit sein, sich Kompetenzen anzueignen. Genauso wie es auf der anderen Seite welche geben wird, die einer Aufklärung entgegenwirken und mit demagogischen Reden auf Stimmenfang gehen.

via Internetzensur: Ein Zukunftsszenario

(Ein Darknet ist ein privates Peer-to-Peer-Netz, in dem sich die Nutzer nur mit den Menschen verbinden, denen sie vertrauen.)

En HP researchers develop browser-based darknet y en un montón de notas, la verdad se habla de la idea de dos investigadores de HP, Billy Hoffman y Matt Wood sobre la posibilidad de establecer una de estas redes mediante tecnología web (HTML 5 y algunas cosas más) y los navegadores: en principio eso supone un avance a la hora de montar la infraestructura (no hace falta grandes conocimientos) y la dota de mayores niveles de descentralización; las aplicaciones de la darknet corren sobre el navegador.

Se puede descargar la presentación de Veiled en BlackHat (pdf) que da algunos detalles técnicos pero no he encontrado más información sobre el tema.

A mi me ha recordado aquellos experimentos sobre computación distribuida en el navegador que contábamos en ¿Me prestas unos ciclos? Hacia el supercomputador sigiloso y en ¿Me prestas unos ciclos? Hacia el supercomputador sigiloso.

“But as I say, let’s play a game of science fiction and imagine for a moment: what would it be like if it were possible to have an academic equivalent to the peer-to-peer file sharing practices associated with Napster, eMule, and BitTorrent, something dealing with written texts rather than music? What would the consequences be for the way in which scholarly research is conceived, communicated, acquired, exchanged, practiced, and understood?”

Gary Hall – Digitize this book! (2008)

Ubu web was founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith and has developed from ‘a repository for visual, concrete and (later) sound poetry, to a site that ‘embraced all forms of the avant-garde and beyond. Its parameters continue to expand in all directions.’ As Wikipedia states, Ubu is non-commercial and operates on a gift economy. All the same – by forming an amazing resource and repository for the avant-garde movement, and by offering and hosting these works on its platform, Ubu is violating copyright laws. As they state however: ‘should something return to print, we will remove it from our site immediately. Also, should an artist find their material posted on UbuWeb without permission and wants it removed, please let us know. However, most of the time, we find artists are thrilled to find their work cared for and displayed in a sympathetic context. As always, we welcome more work from existing artists on site.’

Where in the more affluent and popular media realms of block buster movies and pop music the Piratebay and other download sites (or p2p networks) like Mininova are being sued and charged with copyright infringement, the major powers to be seem to turn a blind eye when it comes to Ubu and many other resource sites online that offer digital versions of hard-to-get-by materials ranging from books to documentaries.

This is and has not always been the case: in 2002 Sebastian Lütgert from Berlin/New York was sued by the “Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur” for putting online two downloadable texts from Theodor W. Adorno on his website textz.com, an underground archive for Literature. According to this Indymedia interview with Lütgert, textz.com was referred to as ‘the Napster for books’ offering about 700 titles, focusing on, as Lütgert states ‘Theorie, Romane, Science-Fiction, Situationisten, Kino, Franzosen, Douglas Adams, Kritische Theorie, Netzkritik usw’.

The interview becomes even more interesting when Lütgert remarks that one can still easily download both Adorno texts without much ado if one wants to. This leads to the bigger question of the real reasons underlying the charge against textz.com; why was textz.com sued? As Lütgert says in the interview: “Das kann man sowieso [when referring to the still available Adorno texts]. Aber es gibt schon lange einen klaren Unterschied zwischen offener Verfügbarkeit und dem Untergrund. Man kann die freie Verbreitung von Inhalten nicht unterbinden, aber man scheint verhindern zu wollen dass dies allzu offen und selbstverständlich geschieht. Das ist es was sie stört.”

But how can something be truly underground in an online environment whilst still trying to spread or disseminate texts as widely as possible? This seems to be the paradox of many – not quite legal and/or copyright protected – resource sharing and collecting communities and platforms nowadays. However, multiple scenario’s are available to evade this dilemma: by being frankly open about the ‘status’ of the content on offer, as Ubu does, or by using little ‘tricks’ like an easy website registration, classifying oneself as a reading group, or by relieving oneself from responsibility by stating that one is only aggregating sources from elsewhere (linking) and not hosting the content on its own website or blog. One can also state the offered texts or multimedia files form a special issue or collection of resources, emphasizing their educational and not-for-profit value.

Most of the ‘underground’ text and content sharing communities seem to follow the concept of (the inevitability of) ‘information wants to be free’, especially on the Internet. As Lütgert States: “Und vor allem sind die über Walter Benjamin nicht im Bilde, der das gleiche Problem der Reproduzierbarkeit von Werken aller Art schon zu Beginn des letzten Jahrhunderts vor sich hatte und erkannt hat: die Massen haben das Recht, sich das alles wieder anzueignen. Sie haben das Recht zu kopieren, und das Recht, kopiert zu werden. Jedenfalls ist das eine ganz schön ungemütliche Situation, dass dessen Nachlass jetzt von solch einem Bürokraten verwaltet wird. A: Glaubst Du es ist überhaupt legitim intellektuellen Inhalt zu “besitzen”? Oder Eigentümer davon zu sein? S: Es ist *unmöglich*. “Geistiges” Irgendwas verbreitet sich immer weiter. Reemtsmas Vorfahren wären nie von den Bäumen runtergekommen oder aus dem Morast rausgekrochen, wenn sich “geistiges” Irgendwas nicht verbreitet hätte.”

What seems to be increasingly obvious, as the interview also states, is that one can find virtually all Ebooks and texts one needs via p2p networks and other file sharing community’s (the true Darknet in a way) – more and more people are offering (and asking for!) selections of texts and books (including the ones by Adorno) on openly available websites and blogs, or they are scanning them and offering them for (educational) use on their domains. Although the Internet is mostly known for the pirating and dissemination of pirated movies and music, copyright protected textual content has (of course) always been spread too. But with the rise of ‘born digital’ text content, and with the help of massive digitization efforts like Google Books (and accompanying Google Books download tools) accompanied by the appearance of better (and cheaper) scanning equipment, the movement of ‘openly’ spreading (pirated) texts (whether or not focusing on education and ‘fair use’) seems to be growing fast.

The direct harm (to both the producers and their publishers) of the free online availability of (in copyright) texts is also maybe less clear than for instance with music and films. Many feel texts and books will still be preferred to be read in print, making the online and free availability of text nothing more than a marketing tool for the sales of the printed version. Once discovered, those truly interested will find and buy the print book. Also more than with music and film, it is felt essential to share information, as a cultural good and right, to prevent censorship and to improve society.

This is one of the reasons the Open Access movement for scientific research has been initiated. But where the amount of people and institutions supportive of this movement is gradually growing (especially where it concerns articles and journals in the Sciences), the spread concerning Open Access (or even digital availability) of monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences (of which the majority of the resources on offer in the underground text sharing communities consists) has only just started.

This has lead to a situation in which some have decided that change is not coming fast enough. Instead of waiting for this utopian Open Access future to come gradually about, they are actively spreading, copying, scanning and pirating scholarly texts/monographs online. Although many times accompanied by lengthy disclaimers about why they are violating copyright (to make the content more widely accessible for one), many state they will take down the content if asked. Following the copyleft movement, what has in a way thus arisen is a more ‘progressive’ or radical branch of the Open Access movement. The people who spread these texts deem it inevitable they will be online eventually, they are just speeding up the process. As Lütgert states: ‘The desire of an increasingly larger section of the population to 100-percent of information is irreversible. The only way there can be slowed down in the worst case, but not be stopped.

Still we have not yet answered the question of why publishers (and their pirated authors) are not more upset about these kinds of websites and platforms. It is not a simple question of them not being aware that these kind of textual disseminations are occurring. As mentioned before, the harm to producers (scholars) and their publishers (in Humanities and Social Sciences mainly Not-For-Profit University Presses) is less clear. First of all, their main customers are libraries (compare this to the software business model: free for the consumer, companies pay), who are still buying the legal content and mostly follow the policy of buying either print or both print and ebook, so there are no lost sales there for the publishers. Next to that it is not certain that the piracy is harming sales. Unlike in literary publishing, the authors (academics) are already paid and do not loose money (very little maybe in royalties) from the online availability. Perhaps some publishers also see the Open Access movement as something inevitably growing and they thus don’t see the urge to step up or organize a collaborative effort against scholarly text piracy (where most of the presses also lack the scale to initiate this). Whereas there has been some more upsurge and worries about textbook piracy (since this is of course the area where individual consumers – students – do directly buy the material) and websites like Scribd, this mostly has to do with the fact that these kind of platforms also host non-scholarly content and actively promote the uploading of texts (where many of the text ‘sharing’ platforms merely offer downloading facilities). In the case of Scribd the size of the platform (or the amount of content available on the platform) also has caused concerns and much media coverage.

All of this gives a lot of potential power to text sharing communities, and I guess they know this. Only authors might be directly upset (especially famous ones gathering a lot of royalties on their work) or in the case of Lütgert, their beneficiaries, who still do see a lot of money coming directly from individual customers.

Still, it is not only the lack of fear of possible retaliations that is feeding the upsurge of text sharing communities. There is a strong ideological commitment to the inherent good of these developments, and a moral and political strive towards institutional and societal change when it comes to knowledge production and dissemination.

As Adrian Johns states in his article Piracy as a business force, ‘today’s pirate philosophy is a moral philosophy through and through’. As Jonas Anderson states, the idea of piracy has mostly lost its negative connotations in these communities and is seen as a positive development, where these movements ‘have begun to appear less as a reactive force (i.e. ‘breaking the rules’) and more as a proactive one (‘setting the rules’). Rather than complain about the conservatism of established forms of distribution they simply create new, alternative ones.’ Although Anderson states this kind of activism is mostly occasional, it can be seen expressed clearly in the texts accompanying the text sharing sites and blogs. However, copyright is perhaps so much an issue on most of these sites (where it is on some of them), as it is something that seems to be simply ignored for the larger good of aggregating and sharing resources on the web. As is stated clearly for instance in an interview with Sean Dockray, who maintains AAAARG:

“The project wasn’t about criticizing institutions, copyright, authority, and so on. It was simply about sharing knowledge. This wasn’t as general as it sounds; I mean literally the sharing of knowledge between various individuals and groups that I was in correspondence with at the time but who weren’t necessarily in correspondence with each other.”

Back to Lütgert. The files from textz.com have been saved and are still accessible via The Internet Archive Wayback Machine. In the case of textz.com, these files contain ’typed out text’, so no scanned contents or PDF’s. Textz.com (or better said its shadow or mirror) offers an amazing collection of texts, including artists statements/manifestos and screenplays from for instance David Lynch.

The text sharing community has evolved and now knows many players. Two other large members in this kind of ‘pirate theory base network’ (although – and I have to make that clear! – they offer many (and even mostly) legal and out of copyright texts), still active today, are Monoskop/Burundi and AAAARG.ORG. These kinds of platforms all seem to disseminate (often even on a titular level) similar content, focusing mostly on Continental Philosophy and Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and Literary Theory, The Frankfurter Schule, Sociology/Social Theory, Psychology, Anthropology and Ethnography, Media Art and Studies, Music Theory, and critical and avant-garde writers like Kafka, Beckett, Burroughs, Joyce, Baudrillard, etc.etc.

Monoskop is, as they state, a collaborative wiki research on the social history of media art or a ‘living archive of writings on art, culture and media technology’. At the sitemap of their log, or under the categories section, you can browse their resources on genre: book, journal, e-zine, report, pamphlet etc. As I found here, Burundi originated in 2003 as a (Slovakian) media lab working between the arts, science and technologies, which spread out to a European city based cultural network; They even functioned as a press, publishing the Anthology of New Media Literature (in Slovak) in 2006, and they hosted media events and curated festivals. It dissolved in June 2005 although the Monoskop research wiki on media art, has continued to run since the dissolving of Burundi.

As is stated on their website, AAAARG is a conversation platform, or alternatively, a school, reading group or journal, maintained by Los Angeles artist Sean Dockray. In the true spirit of Critical Theory, its aim is to ‘develop critical discourse outside of an institutional framework’. Or even more beautiful said, it operates in the spaces in between: ‘But rather than thinking of it like a new building, imagine scaffolding that attaches onto existing buildings and creates new architectures between them.’ To be able to access the texts and resources that are being ‘discussed’ at AAAARG, you need to register, after which you will be able to browse the library. From this library, you can download resources, but you can also upload content. You can subscribe to their feed (RSS/XML) and like Monoskop, AAAARG.org also maintains a Twitter account on which updates are posted. The most interesting part though is the ‘extra’ functions the platform offers: after you have made an account, you can make your own collections, aggregations or issues out of the texts in the library or the texts you add. This offers an alternative (thematically ordered) way into the texts archived on the site. You also have the possibility to make comments or start a discussion on the texts. See for instance their elaborate discussion lists. The AAAARG community thus serves both as a sharing and feedback community and in this way operates in a true p2p fashion, in a way like p2p seemed originally intended. The difference being that AAAARG is not based on a distributed network of computers, but is based on one platform, to which registered users are able to upload a file (which is not the case on Monoskop for instance – only downloading here).

Via mercurunionhall, I found the image underneath which depicts AAAARG.ORG’s article index organized as a visual map, showing the connections between the different texts. This map was created and posted by AAAARG user john, according to mercurunionhall.

Where AAAArg.org focuses again on the text itself – typed out versions of books – Monoskop works with more modern versions of textual distribution: scanned versions or full ebooks/pdf’s with all the possibilities they offer, taking a lot of content from Google books or (Open Access) publishers’ websites. Monoskop also links back to the publishers’ websites or Google Books, for information about the books or texts (which again proves that the publishers should know about their activities). To download the text however, Monoskop links to Sharebee, keeping the actual text and the real downloading activity away from its platform.

Another part of the text sharing content consists of platforms offering documentaries and lectures (so multi-media content) online. One example of the last is the Discourse Notebook Archive, which describes itself as an effort which has as its main goal ‘to make available lectures in contemporary continental philosophy’ and is maintained by Todd Kesselman, a PhD Student at The New School for Social Research. Here you can find lectures from Badiou, Kristeva and Zizek (both audio and video) and lectures aggregated from the European Graduate School. Kesselman also links to resources on the web dealing with contemporary continental philosophy.

Society of Control is a website maintained by Stephan Dillemuth, an artist living and working in Munich, Germany, offering amongst others an overview of his work and scientific research. According to this interview conducted by Kristian Ø Dahl and Marit Flåtter his work is a response to the increased influence of the neo-liberal world order on education, creating a culture industry that is more than often driven by commercial interests. He asks the question ‘How can dissidence grow in the blind spots of the ‘society of control’ and articulate itself?’ His website, the Society of Control is, as he states, ‘an independent organization whose profits are entirely devoted to research into truth and meaning.’

Society of Control has a library section which contains works from some of the biggest thinkers of the twentieth century: Baudrillard, Adorno, Debord, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Habermas, Sloterdijk und so weiter, and so much more, a lot in German, and all ‘typed out’ texts. The library section offers a direct search function, a category function and a a-z browse function. Dillemuth states that he offers this material under fair use, focusing on not for profit, freedom of information and the maintenance of freedom of speech and information and making information accessible to all:

“The Societyofcontrol website site contains information gathered from many different sources. We see the internet as public domain necessary for the free flow and exchange of information. However, some of these materials contained in this site maybe claimed to be copyrighted by various unknown persons. They will be removed at the copyright holder’s request within a reasonable period of time upon receipt of such a request at the email address below. It is not the intent of the Societyofcontrol to have violated or infringed upon any copyrights.”

Important in this respect is that he put the responsibility of reading/using/downloading the texts on his site with the viewers, and not with himself: “Anyone reading or looking at copyright material from this site does so at his/her own peril, we disclaim any participation or liability in such actions.”

Fark Yaraları = Scars of Différance and Multitude of blogs are maintained by the same author, Renc-u-ana, a philosophy and sociology student from Istanbul. The first is his personal blog (with also many links to downloadable texts), focusing on ‘creating an e-library for a Heideggerian philosophy and Bourdieuan sociology’ on which he writes ‘market-created inequalities must be overthrown in order to close knowledge gap.’ The second site has a clear aggregating function with the aim ‘to give united feedback for e-book publishing sites so that tracing and finding may become easier.’ And a call for similar blogs or websites offering free ebook content. The blog is accompanied by a nice picture of a woman warning to keep quiet, very paradoxically appropriate to the context. Here again, a statement from the host on possible copyright infringement: ‘None of the PDFs are my own productions. I’ve collected them from web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, socialist bros, cross-x, gigapedia..) What I did was thematizing.’ The same goes for pdflibrary (which seems to be from the same author), offering texts from Derrida, Benjamin, Deleuze and the likes: ‘None of the PDFs you find here are productions of this blog. They are collected from different places in the web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, all socialist bros, cross-x, …). The only work done here is thematizing and tagging.’

Our student from Istanbul lists many text sharing sites on Multitude of blogs, including Inishark (amongst others Badiou, Zizek and Derrida), Revelation (a lot of history and bible study), Museum of accidents (many resources relating to again, critical theory, political theory and continental philhosophy) and Makeworlds (initiated from the make world festival 2001). Mariborchan is mainly a Zizek resource site (also Badiou and Lacan) and offers next to ebooks also video and audio (lectures and documentaries) and text files, all via links to file sharing platforms.

What is clear is that the text sharing network described above (I am sure there are many more related to other fields and subjects) is also formed and maintained by the fact that the blogs and resource sites link to each other in their blog rolls, which is what in the end makes up the network of text sharing, only enhanced by RSS feeds and Twitter accounts, holding together direct communication streams with the rest of the community. That there has not been one major platform or aggregation site linking them together and uploading all the texts is logical if we take into account the text sharing history described before and this can thus be seen as a clear tactic: it is fear, fear for what happened to textz.com and fear for the issue of scale and fear of no longer operating at the borders, on the outside or at the fringes. Because a larger scale means they might really get noticed. The idea of secrecy and exclusivity which makes for the idea of the underground is very practically combined with the idea that in this way the texts are available in a multitude of places and can thus not be withdrawn or disappear so easily.

This is the paradox of the underground: staying small means not being noticed (widely), but will mean being able to exist for probably an extended period of time. Becoming (too) big will mean reaching more people and spreading the texts further into society, however it will also probably mean being noticed as a treat, as a ‘network of text-piracy’. The true strategy is to retain this balance of openly dispersed subversivity.

Update 25 November 2005: Another interesting resource site came to my attention recently: Bedeutung, a philosophical and artistic initiative consisting of three projects: Bedeutung Magazine, Bedeutung Collective and Bedeutung Blog, hosts a library section which links to freely downloadable online e-books, articles, audio recordings and videos.

While I was over at Defcon I had a chance to sit down and chat briefly with Jack Daniel (the man, not the hard liquor) about the Warzone Project.

The project originated at the Cowtown Computer Congress in Kansas city as a seperation of their network to allow for a seperate research network. This allowed for members of the hackerspace to sandbox themselves while performing research. The Astaro corporation contacted CCCKC about providing hardware for the network, and the project has grown from their. Currently Astaro are planning to put hardware into several hackerspaces and are arranging the setup of a darknet connecting them all. This will allow for collaboration of work across several hackerspaces, as well as offering a number of other possabilities. Plans are to spread the project nationwide in the future.

For more information you should checkout the warzone project blog post over at the CCCKC website, head over to the Astaro Corporation website, or follow the warzone project twitterfeed for announcements.

Wer das Internet nutzt, hinterlässt Datenspuren. IP-Adressen, Logfile-Einträge, nachvollziehbare Aktivitäten. Vieles davon ist selbst mit Hilfe von Browsern wie Firefox oder Chrome , die einen „Privatmodus“ kennen, nicht zu vermeiden. Und beim Einsatz von anderen Netzprogrammen für Chats, Filesharing oder Usenet-Nutzung erst recht nicht.

Pädophile, Stalker, Abmahnbetrüger, Datensammler für Spammer und andere „Parasiten des Netzes“ suchen gezielt solche Daten. Oft auch mit Hilfe von Firmen wie Logistep, proMedia und anderen, die solchen zwielichtigen Gruppen im Nahmen sog. „Anti-Piracy“-Programmen zur Kriminalisierung von Tauschbörsenbenutzern zuarbeiten.

Doch bereits seit Jahren beschäftigen sich Gruppen von bürgerrechtsaffinen Netzbewohnern damit, solche Umtriebe durch neue Netzstrukturen einzudämmen, in die Anonymität und Datenschutz schon von Beginn an eingebaut sind. Vollverschlüsselung von Daten, Mixe und Proxys, Mehrfachverschlüsselung, Abschirmung realer IP-Adressen, Tunneling, Datenredundanz etc. sind technische Ansätze hierzu. Ausspähung, Cyber-Stalking, Abmahnbetrug etc. sollen technisch nahezu unmöglich gemacht werden. Ebenso aber auch Vorratsdatenspeicherung durch bzw. für staatliche Stellen.

Realisiert werden die Ideen in Form sog. „Darknets“. Der Begriff geht auf einen Fachartikel zurück, in dem Microsoft-Angestellte die These aufstellen,  dass die Existenz solcher Systeme ein wesentliches Hindernis für die Entwicklung funktionierender Techniken zur digitalen Rechteverwaltung seien (womit sie wahrscheinlich recht haben dürften).

The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution (PDF, 360 Kb)

Wirklich anonymer, selbstbestimmter und zensurfreier Informations- und Datenaustausch ist nur in solchen, datenschutztechnisch besonders gehärteten Netzen möglich. Implementierte Referenzbeispiele für Darknet-Architekturen sind Freenet, Tor oder I2P.

Zu den Nachteilen bisheriger Darknets zählte stets die Notwendigkeit, spezielle Software installieren und konfigurieren zu müssen. Sowie sich mit den Grundprinzipien der jeweils zugrunde liegenden Protokolle befassen zu müssen. Sie kamen daher als „von Hackern für Hacker“ entwickelte Programme nie so recht aus dem Experimentier- und Bastelstadium heraus.

Auf der derzeit (25.-30. Juli) stattfindenden Konferenz „Black Hat 2009 – Digital Self-Defence“ plant ein Entwicklerteam von HP ein rein browserbasiertes Darknet namens „Veiled“. Es handelt sich um einen Proof-of-Concept-Prototypen, der weder als kommerzielles Produkt, noch als Open-Source-Software veröffentlicht werden soll. Die HP-Forscher wollen in ihrer demnächst von der Konferenzwebseite herunterladbaren Präsentation jedoch genügend Hinweise zu den jeweiligen von ihnen geschaffenen Problemlösungen geben, sodass Entwickler aus der Community eine eigene Implementation erstellen können.

Uli Ries beschreibt die Wirkungsweise von Veiled auf Heise.de so:

Dabei bilden alle Systeme, die zu einem Zeitpunkt eine bestimmte URL geöffnet haben, ein gemeinsames Netz. In das kann man Daten einspeisen und dann auch wieder abrufen. Auf Client-Seite steckt die gesamte Intelligenz in ein wenig JavaScript-Code, der mit einem PHP-Skript auf dem Server kommuniziert. Dabei können die Clients ihre Nachrichten an einzelne Clients oder an alle per Multicast verschicken. Die Kommunikation zwischen den Clients wird per RSA verschlüsselt.

Um die Ausfallsicherheit zu erhöhen, kann man die PHP-Applikation auf mehrere Webserver verteilen. Beim ersten Aufruf teilt der ursprüngliche Server den Clients die übrigen Adressen mit, sodass sich der Browser im Falle eines Ausfalls an einen der Backup-Supernodes wenden kann.

Wie bei anderen Darknets auch gibt es keinen zentralen Speicherort für die unter den Darknet-Nutzern ausgetauschten Dateien. Vielmehr gibt jeder Anwender eine frei definierbare Menge an Plattenplatz frei, die Darknet-Software verteilt alle vorhandenen Files dann stückchenweise auf die verfügbaren Platten.

Da Veiled auf HTML5 basiert, muss der Browser dieses vollständig unterstützen (was z.B. bei Firefox 3.5 der Fall ist).

Neben dem Datenaustausch umfasst Veiled noch eine AES-verschlüsselte Chatfunktion, eine Web-in-Web-Funktion (HTML-Files, die auf im Darknet gespeicherte Files verweisen) und eine Distributed-Computing-Funktion (Grid-Computing – alle Clients arbeiten gemeinsam eine Aufgabe ab). Alle Funktionen sind vollständig in JavaScript implementiert.

Doch warum eine weiteres Darknet-System anstatt ein bereits bestehendes Open-Source-Projekt mit Entwicklerkapazitäten zu stärken? Die HP-Entwickler Hoffman und Wood dazu: „Weil wir demonstrieren wollten, dass ein Browser nicht nur stupide Webseiten anzeigen kann. Außerdem sind wir davon überzeugt, dass Darknets wesentlich weiter verbreitet wären, wenn die Einstiegshürden wie Download, Installation und Konfiguration der Client-Software nicht existierten“.

Hoffman sieht dank Browser-Darknet zudem auch die Chance, dass legale Anwendungen Verbreitung finden und die Darknet-Technologie somit aus den „Grauzonen des Internets“ zu holen. So kann er sich eine Darknet-basierte Version der Whistleblower-Site Wikileaks vorstellen, die aufgrund des Aufbaus weniger anfällig gegen rechtliche Konsequenzen oder Sabotage durch Geheimdienste wäre als die klassische, auf Webservern aufbauende Version.

Vom Standpunkt der Informationssicherheit sind Darknets jedoch auch kritisch zu bewerten. Denn die Aspekte der Datenintegrität, der Authentizität von Quellen oder der schlichten Verfügbarkeit der Systeme kommen ihn ihnen konzeptbedingt zu kurz.

Doch die zunehmenden Bestrebungen von Rechteverwertern, Medienkonzernen und Regierungen, das Internet in ein nationalisiertes und territorialisiertes Shoppingnetz umzubauen machen solche technologischen Gegenentwürfe notwendig.

Was ist das denn? Naja, Billy Hoffman und Matt Wood haben in den Labors ihres Arbeitgebers HP ein System namens “Veiled” entwickelt, das sie demnächst auf der Black Hat Security Conference in Las Vegas zeigen wollen.

Ursprünglich für Unternehmen entwickelt, damit diese geschützt Daten austauschen können, soll Veiled demnächst OpenSource werden, weil HP kein kommerzielles Interesse an einer solchen Erfindung hat.

Prima.

Die Funktionsweise erklärt Matt Wood so: “Wenn du damit ein Darknet erzeugen willst, schickst du eine verschlüsselte Email mit einer URL. Wenn der Empfänger diese aufsucht, aktiviert der Browser die Darknet-Software”.

Mmm, verschlüsseltes Filesharing. Das geht aber nur mit modernen Browsern (aktuelle Generation), meint Matt. Kein Problem.

( via cnet) (illustration fritz effenberger 11k2 cc by 3.0)

Two researchers for Hewlett-Packard have created a browser-based darknet, an idea that could make it easier for businesses to keep eavesdroppers from uncovering confidential information.

Darknets are encrypted peer-to-peer networks normally used to communicate files between closed groups of people. Most darknets require a certain level of technological literacy to set up and maintain, including taking care of the necessary servers. However, HP researchers Billy Hoffman and Matt Wood plan next week to demonstrate a browser-based darknet called “Veiled,” which they claim requires little proficiency to set up and run.

“This will really lower the barriers to participation,” Wood told ZDNet UK. “If you want to create a darknet, you can send an encrypted e-mail saying, ‘Here’s the URL.’ When (the recipient visits) the Web site, the browser can just get (the darknet application) going.”

Hoffman and Wood are scheduled to demonstrate the technology next week at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Wood said HP does not want to turn the project into a commercial product. While the company does not plan to make the source code available, the researchers do plan to open source their idea, so to speak, so other security researchers can “pick up the baton.”

“HP has no desire to patent or copyright or release any code,” Wood said. “Black Hat is one of the top security conferences, and we want to get this cool idea into the hands of people who are really smart.”

Businesses could use browser-based darknets to set up workgroups to exchange commercially sensitive information, or to have a means of making anonymous suggestions to management, Wood said. “I like the idea of a suggestions box on the Web,” he said. “It provides an anonymous way to make suggestions to your boss.”

HP’s darknet research came about when the researchers realized the potential of new browser technologies, according to Wood.

Browsers with HTML 5 support–such as recent versions of Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer–allow files to be stored “persistently” on the client, for working on them when offline. This feature, coupled with the distributed grid-computing nature of a darknet, means files can be effectively uploaded in perpetuity, even when the initial browser has been shut down. It also makes the darknet resilient, said Wood.

“One of the benefits of a darknet is that they are distributed,” said Wood. “To destroy it, you would have to take down all of the clients, because if one server gets compromised, you just shift to a different server. They can hop around.”

Advances in JavaScript engines, such as Google’s Chrome V8 and Mozilla’s TraceMonkey, have also helped make browser-based darknets possible, according to Wood. These engines allow browser-based communications to be set up quickly and encrypted. The Veiled darknet uses RSA public key cryptography, but any cryptography will work.

“Cool advances in JavaScript technology allow encryption in the browser,” said Wood. “Browsers are getting really powerful.”

DN Claim: “I will also be uploading new music to this web site within two weeks.” (May 6th 2009 blog post at 10:09pm).

Reality: Will Napolis now host The Pirate Bay on her darknet or deep web repository? And, with her interest in chakras and the etheric body, will Napolis’ music selection include Mastodon’s aethyr-themed concept album Crack The Skye (2009)?

När man läser Barlows “The Economy of Ideas” så är det, precis som Niklas Lundblad framhåller i veckan skifte, inte utan att man imponeras hur aktuell essän är 15 år senare. Det finns en annan aspekt med texten, och som kanske är än tydligare i “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” (1996) av samme Barlow. Nämligen tonen.

Back in the days - när cyberpunk var just punk.

Vad sägs om:

Without that connection, and without a fundamental change in consciousness to accommodate its loss, we are building our future on furor, litigation, and institutionalized evasion of payment except in response to raw force. We may return to the Bad Old Days of property.

Kanske lite svårsmält för den “allmänborglige” ? Detta stycke är en ny favorit:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

“Dumma er!” var det ovan, och här följer “bra-iga oss!”:

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

I dagens debatt är den högtravande och lätt mystiska tonen nedskruvad ordentligt
Nu kan man läsa ifrågasättanden av immateriella rättigheter skrivna i alla tonlägen, ilska, frustration, kärlek, hopp och inte minst försök till att hålla sig till en saklig ton.

Henrik Alexandersson skrev härom dagen om att “piratismen” håller på att bli mainstream. HAX halar fram trendmätaren Alexander Bard för att ta reda på hur det egentligen står till. Mycket riktigt så har Bard intagit en motsatt ståndpunkt – och trenden är därmed bekräftad som mainstream.

2007: Punkig? Inte direkt.

Vad innebär födelsen av cyberpoppen? Och vad innebär döden för cyberpunken?
En kanske än mer intressant fråga är: hur en övertygelse inom en smal subkultur kan ta sig till den breda massan?

Visst har det skett ett långt förarbete där åtminstone alla från 70-talister och framåt brutit mot upphovsrätten genom att enkelt och billigt kopiera, plagiera, parodisera, distribuera och så vidare av alla typer av material tack vare ny teknik.
Den riktiga topplistehit:en (för att fortsätta analogin med pop:en) har dock upphovsrättsindustrin själva lanserat genom att i kölvattnet på FRA, IPRED, ACTA och andra otäckheter med opinion emot sig attackera piratskeppet TPB.

Rent PR-mässigt har TPB haft alla korten i handen, de har verkligen slagit underifrån, David mot Goliat. Motivationen har varit amatörens kärlek till idéer och teknik – och inte som hos motståndarna – välbetalda jurister.
De läskiga arméerna av jurister som Barlows dystopiska bild av immaterialrätt förutspår har realiserats, inte minst i och med IPRED, men det finns en motkraft. En blogg-armé av amatör-tyckare – utrustade med lika delar hjärta och hjärna.
Utöver den PR-mässiga fördelen för TPB, så är den teknikdeterministiska tes som de ofta driver svår att värja sig mot. “Information wants to be free” – i all korthet. Tillskillnad från Waldemar Ingdahl som avfärdar tesen, om än inte uttryckligen, med “Anarki har vi sett att cyberspace inte är sedan 1990-talet.”, så är jag dock mer optimistiskt å tesens vägnar. Ty ovanpå varje kommunikationsnät kan man alltid kan bygga anonymiserande och krypterande virtuella nät, om än mycket långsammare, detta i kombination med utvecklingen av överföringshastigheter gör mig till optimist å tesens vägnar.

Vidare, när tumskruven väl dras åt kring den ballong som här får symbolisera det frihetliga Internet, så expanderar den sin volym någonannanstans. Exempel på det duggar tätt i dagarna, Limewire stöder nu att etablera Darknets med ett par klick, EFF upplyser om självförsvarstekniker mot statlig avlyssning (avsett för amerikanska läsare), lökig routing, så som i TOR projektet, och good ol’ GPG/PGP för oss som fortfarande använder email.
Metoderna finns, men det är först nu när cyberpunkens leksakslåda, i och med popifieringen blir allmängods, som vi kan vänta oss efterfrågan på att få operativ system förkonfigurerade med allsköns cyberförsvar – eller åtminstone kontroll – för din integritet.

Lite äkta och underbar cyber-pop, vars ton och känsla väl förmedlar min syn på förpoppandet av cyberpunken:

Eines der grösseren klassischen P2P-Netzwerke, LimeWire, bringt gerade seine Version 5, für Windows und Mac. Und ich will exakt hier kein Gejammer wegen eines fehlenden Linux-Clients hören, Gnutella-Clients in Pinguin-Farben gibt es genug. Den 70 Millionen monatlichen Nutzern wird ab jetzt die Möglichkeit gegeben, zusätzlich zum globalen auch kleinere, private Tauschnetzwerke einzurichten.

Also Social Networking mit Up- und Downloads. Das dürfte freilich jedes “making available” (“Verfügbarmachen”) Argument der Rechteverwerterindustrien vom Tisch wischen. Eine gute Sache, nicht wahr?

(limewire, via slashdot, wired, cnet)

The Darknet

The service offers anonymous use of the internet!!!!

A “darknet” service that allows users to share music files anonymously on the web has been launched in Sweden. Relakks, as the service is known, allows users to send and receive files through a heavily-encrypted connection. It claims to be the first commercial darknet, a virtual network set up to share files between trusted users. The service is endorsed by political group the Pirate Party which is running for election in Sweden under a banner to reform the country’s copyright laws. “There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the internet,” said Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”

Closed groups

A darknet is a cordoned-off, anonymised section of the net where users can meet, chat and swap data. Usually darknets are confined to small tight-knit groups such as hackers who use the secure connections to distribute information and hacking tools.
We don’t have any control over what is being sent over the network but that’s the point
Rickard Falkvinge
They have also been used by paedophiles to distribute images of child abuse.
Many are invitation-only services where potential members have to upload material to prove themselves to the group before they are granted full access. Similar identity-hiding tools such as Tor are used by net dissidents in countries like China to avoid persecution for their activities on the web. Some previous attempts to launch large scale anonymous networks, such as Nullsoft’s Waste program have been unsuccessful. After its release in 2003, Waste was removed from distribution by Nullsoft’s parent company AOL.

Unique service

The new system claims to be the world’s first commercial darknet. It is provided by Swedish company Relakks and is endorsed by the Pirate Party. It works by giving a user’s computer a new IP address, the unique number the machine uses to identify itself and communicate with other machines over the net.
Copyright law and file-sharing are divisive topics in Sweden
IP numbers allocated by your internet service provider (ISP) can be used to trace and identify a specific computer on a network.
Computers using the Relakks system look like they have a Swedish IP address, no matter where they are in the world. Users can then share files, such as music or films, with any other users. In theory anyone monitoring user’s online activities will not be able to trace their geographical location. The Pirate Party acknowledge that the service could be used to distribute copyright material or other content such as images of child abuse.
“We hear the argument a lot,” Mr Falkvinge told the BBC News website. “No, we don’t have any control over what is being sent over the network but that’s the point. “
“People who want to hide their activities online already have the means to do so. We’re just giving those tools to the general public.”

Democratic rights

File sharing and copyright law is a divisive topic in Sweden. Until recently the country was a hotbed of piracy where films, music and software were readily swapped online. Last year, it outlawed the unauthorised downloading of copyrighted movies and music in an attempt to curb piracy, after criticism from Hollywood.
What is the difference between trusting them and trusting my own ISP not to give me away?
Smirnov
The Pirate Party was launched in part to temper what they say are “aggressive” tactics by the entertainment industry to enforce copyright infringement. They say techniques such as tracing IP addresses threaten privacy and democracy. The Relakks service, they say, offers people the ability to use the internet “without fear of being monitored or logged”. It costs five euro (£3) per month with some of the funds going towards supporting the Pirate Party. However, not everyone is convinced that it is what it claims to be. Many dispute whether Relakks really is the first commercial darknet. Other services like Hamachi and Groove already offer similar services.
In a forum on the website of the US Pirate Party, an affiliated but distinct political group, a post by a user called Smirnov also questioned whether the service is really anonymous.
“You can’t connect to Relakks anonymously, because then they’d have no way of verifying you are a paying customer – so Relakks knows who you really are when all your traffic goes through them.
“What is the difference between trusting them and trusting my own ISP not to give me away?”

DARKNET: http://www.process.org/tor.html

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

The darknet and deep web are totally different. Darknets “a collection of networks, groups of computers connected together allowing each other to share digital content.” Traditionally e-mail or files saved on disks physically delivered to another person was the only way to send information from one computer to another.  Darknet allows users to upload items on a server directly received from peer to peer. “The vast, gathering, lawless economy of shared music, movies, television shows, games, software rivals the products and services of the entertainment companies.”  Darknet can be a great way to share information, and develop more effective literacies. The most popular aspect of the darknet is Gnutella, its clients are:

BearShare

Gnucleus

LimeWire

Morpheus

WinMX

XoloX

I’m sure one of these may sound familiar.  When you request a song or video or any other piece of information software installed on your computer seeks other computers and networks to find that one that has what you have requested. “There is no central database” all information is not stored and fenced in.  There is no one spider or bot that digs, no one computer alone “knows all of the files available on the Gnutella network.” Working together using software installed on your computer, “all of the machines on network tell each other about available files using a distributed query approach.” Unlike Napstar, which stored all its information content in a central database with a search engine “this is why technically there is not copyright infringement” no one main source allows it and it evades copyright, “no central database that can be shut down.”  “Instead Gnutella works between peers” a connection between you and the person you are getting information from just like a telephone conversation.  Copyright allows sharing copyrighted stuff between “friends.”[1]

However, there are some concerns with the darkweb; first is “free riding” when someone only takes information and puts nothing up and the next is “lack of anonymity.” Attacks are another threat that have not yet been fully assessed.  Lack of anonymity is one of my all time greatest fears.  Even thought you can firewall I still have irrational fears of sneaks n’ peaks, especially even now with the US PATRIOT Act allowing this to occur at any time and with out a warrant.  With the internet it’s like the street.  Don’t do anything that you normally wouldn’t do in the streets of our fair city.  

Immediately after learning exactly what it was you were doing while you were downloading those pop songs, you wanted to learn how you could start to share what you have.  This is wonderful, the spirit of freedom begin by “uploading.”  If you would like to discuss this more we can set up a time to chat tell me next week.

JD Lasica.  Concepts:  Darknet. . Mar 3, 2008. Darknet: Hollywood’s War Against the Digital Generation.  9 May 2008. <http://www.darknet.com/2005/05/concept_darknet.html>

Brain, Marshall.  “How Gnutella Works.”  23 July 2002.  HowStuffWorks.com. 09 May 2008. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/file-sharing.htm>  

Peter Biddle, Paul England, Marcus Peinado, and Bryan Willman. The Darknet and the Future of Content Distribution.  2002.  Microsoft Corporation. 9 May 2008.  <http://msl1.mit.edu/ESD10/docs/darknet5.pdf>