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  • mazsa 07:13 on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , P2P,   

    How litigation only spurred on P2P file sharing: “[...] the US Supreme Court in Grokster created a brand new legal doctrine, called inducement, that did not rely on either knowledge or control. That rule was aimed at capturing “bad actors” – those P2P providers who aimed to profit from their users’ infringement and whose nefarious intent was demonstrated by “smoking guns” in their marketing and other communications. But the inducement law failed to appreciate some of the other differences that make the software world special and thus led directly to the explosion in the number of P2P technologies. In understanding why, three other physical world assumptions come into play.

    One is that it is expensive to create distribution technologies that are capable of vast amounts of infringement. Of course in the physical world, the creation of such technologies, like printing presses, photocopiers, and VCRs required large investment. Research and development, mass-manufacturing, marketing and delivery all require massive amounts of cash. Thus, the law came to assume that the creation of such technologies was expensive.

    That led directly to the next assumption – that distribution technologies are developed for profit. After all, nobody would be investing those massive sums without some prospect of a return.

    Finally comes the fourth assumption: that rational developers of distribution technologies won’t share their secrets with consumers or competitors. Since they needed to recoup those massive investments, they had no interest at all in giving them away.

    All of these assumptions certainly can hold up in the software development context. For example, those behind Kazaa spent a lot on its development, squeezed out the maximum possible profit and kept its source code a closely guarded secret. By creating a law that focused on profits, business models and marketing, the Supreme Court succeeded in shaking out Kazaa and its ilk from the market.

    But the Court failed to appreciate that none of these things are actually necessary to the creation of P2P file sharing software. [...]” http://www.itnews.com.au/News/279763,how-litigation-only-spurred-on-p2p-file-sharing.aspx

     
  • mazsa 08:48 on May 26, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , P2P   

    Namecoin is a distributed domain registration system based on the bitcoin concept. http://namecoin.bitcoin-contact.org It is part of the Dot-BIT project. http://dot-bit.org

     
  • mazsa 10:01 on May 7, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , P2P,   

    This Could be Big: Decentralized Web Standard Under Development by W3C https://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/his_could_be_big_decentralized_web_standard_under.php

    http://www.w3.org/2011/04/webrtc-charter.html

    Cf. http://newtechpost.com/2011/05/05/starfish-a-user-controlled-network

     
  • mazsa 10:59 on April 3, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , P2P   

    Report on non-commercial mutual credit software: “This report briefly covers the field of non-commercial mutual credit software, discussing the issues and challenges they collectively face in meeting the needs of the movement. The author’s purpose is to draw out some themes of collective concern to a few small, under-resourced, and disparate projects which are working along very similar lines, and to encourage discussion. The intention is not to make direct comparisons but to take a higher view, with concrete examples. [...]” http://matslats.net/ijccr-software-review

     
  • mazsa 08:38 on March 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: P2P, ,   

    Bittorrent over Tor isn’t a good idea: “An increasing number of people are asking us about the recent paper http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/47/15/56/PDF/TorBT.pdf coming out of Inria in France around Bittorrent and privacy attacks. This post tries to explain the attacks and what they imply. [...]” https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea

     
  • mazsa 11:30 on January 28, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , P2P, , ,   

    “PirateBox is a self-contained mobile collaboration and P2P file sharing device. Simply turn it on to transform any space into a free and open P2P file sharing network. [...] No logins are required and no user data is logged. Users remain completely anonymous – the system is purposely not connected to the Internet in order to subvert tracking and preserve user privacy.” http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox

     
  • mazsa 10:07 on January 21, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , P2P   

    Project Starfish: Goal “Enable the creation of a world-wide user-controlled network of both wired and wirelessnodes based on a distributed architecture.” http://kemenczy.at/files/Starfish%20Concept.pdf

    http://kemenczy.at/index.php/starfish

     
  • mazsa 22:41 on December 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , P2P,   

    Democracy’s Napster moment: “[...] what really matters is that the disruptive power of the internet has been conclusively demonstrated, and the old order has been provoked to respond.

    This is democracy’s Napster moment, the point at which the forms of governance that have evolved over 200 years of industrial society prove wanting in the face of the network, just as the business models of the recording industry were swept away by the ease with which the internet could transmit perfect digital copies of compressed music files.

    Napster was neutered by court action in the US, but its failure inspired peer-to-peer services that were far harder to control. The sharing of music is now unstoppable, and Wikileaks and the organisations that come after it will ensure that the same is now true of secrets.

    Of course we should never underestimate the power of the state to reinvent itself, just as modern capitalism and constitutional monarchy seem able to do.

    Wikileaks has exposed the inadequacies in the way governments control their internal flow of information, and organisations dedicated to transparency and disclosure will observe the tactics used to shut it down and adapt accordingly. But the state can learn too, and has the resources to implement what it learns.

    I fear that Wikileaks is as likely to usher in an era of more effective control as it is to sweep away the authoritarian regimes that Julian Assange opposes.

    He may look to a day when the conspiratorial power of the state is diminished, but I think we are more likely to see new forms of government emerge that exploit the capabilities of the network age to ensure their power is undiminished.”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12007616

     
  • mazsa 23:33 on December 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , P2P,   

    Learning from mistakes: OpenLeaks “Wikileaks.org kann man ein paar Fehler nachsagen:

    1. Das feste Verbinden mit einer Person, wodurch die Organisation sich angreifbar gemacht hat, und damit auch die Idee und die Ihalte

    2. Überlastung durch Zentralität, die zu redaktioneller Auswahl zwang, womit eine politische Ausrichtung einher ging, Dinge unter den Tisch fielen

    3. Angreifbarkeit durch Zentralität (DDoS-Attacken, DNS-Sperren) [...]” http://www.netzpolitik.org/2010/aus-fehlern-lernen-openleaks/

    Translation here.

     
  • mazsa 22:06 on November 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , P2P   

    Bitcoin P2P Cryptocurrency 

    “Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer network based digital currency. Peer-to-peer (P2P) means that there is no central authority to issue new money or keep track of transactions. Instead, these tasks are managed collectively by the nodes of the network. Advantages:

    • Transfer money easily through the Internet, without having to trust middlemen.
    • Third parties can’t prevent or control your transactions.
    • Bitcoin transactions are practically free, whereas credit cards and online payment systems typically cost 1-5% per transaction plus various other merchant fees up to hundreds of dollars.
    • Be safe from the instability caused by fractional reserve banking and bad policies of central banks. The limited inflation of the Bitcoin system’s money supply is distributed evenly (by CPU power) throughout the network, not monopolized by the banks.

    Bitcoin is an open source project created by Satoshi Nakamoto [...]”

    http://www.bitcoin.org/faq

     
  • mazsa 12:50 on October 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , P2P, , UX   

    Evan Williams on Decentralized Social Networks: “So far that hasn’t taken off, I believe because it hasn’t provided as good a user experience. I think there are advantages to a decentralized system and there are also many disadvantages. The disadvantage is that it’s very hard to innovate and do some of the things you can do with a centralized service with a decentralized service, that’s just part of the trade-off and so far it doesn’t seem like a worthwhile trade-off.”

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/evan_williams_on_decentralized_social_networks.php

     
  • mazsa 18:37 on September 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , P2P, , ,   

    Der Liquid Democracy e.V. ist ein gemeinnütziger Verein, dessen Mitglieder an Ideen und Projekten arbeiten, die unsere heutige Demokratie flüssiger, transparenter und flexibler gestalten sollen. Dazu gehört die theoretische Konzeption aber auch die praktische, direkt anwendbare Umsetzung in Software-Projekten.

    Adhocracy ist die Software, die hinter liqd.net steht. Liquid Democracy ist nicht nur als Staatsform denkbar, sondern auch als eine neue Form des kooperativen Managements. In Adhocracy können Organisationen wie NGOs, Netzinitiativen oder Firmen durch einen demokratischen Prozess ihre Ziele, Strategien, interne Regeln oder Positionen entwickeln. Adhocracy ist die praktische Umsetzung unserer Theorie des Direkten Parlamentarismus. Durch das Betreiben der Plattform liqd.net entwickeln wir beides – Theorie und Praxis – in einem offenen Prozess kontinuierlich weiter.

    Votorola ist eine LD-Software zur Realisierung von Abstimmungen/Wahlen sowie zur Strukturierung des politischen Diskurses – in beliebiger Größenordnung (lokal, national, global). [Cf. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/votorola-is-software-for-building-consen ]

    http://liqd.net/

     
  • mazsa 10:15 on May 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , , P2P, , , , , ,   

    Should Obama Control the Internet? – A new bill would give the President emergency authority to halt web traffic and access private data. http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should-obama-control-internet

    Cf.

    “Netsukuku is the name of an experimental peer-to-peer routing system, developed by the FreakNet MediaLab (Italian), born to build up a distributed network, anonymous and censorship-free, fully independent but not necessarily separated from Internet, without the support of any server, ISP and no central authority. It does not rely on a backbone router, or on any routing equipment other than normal network interface cards.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netsukuku

     
  • mazsa 11:07 on April 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , , P2P, ,   


    :) P2P wireless internet network: “Would it be possible, using p2p and wireless technologies, to gain independence from internet providers and make free and open net connectivity a reality? Andrea Lo Pumo, a young Italian mathematician has developed Netsukuku, a vision for an alternative wireless network that may represent a disruptive change for the Internet as we know it.

    The Netsukuku project [FAQ], which has been recently featured on Wired Italia, is based on the idea of linking multiple computers using only WiFi connectivity and a specifically-built address system that allows direct communications between machines without resorting to the HTTP protocol.

    What Netsukuku aims to do is to empower local communities by creating private peer-to-peer networks where connecting to the “standard” Internet is possible, but non compulsory to exchange information and data.

    You can think of Netsukuku as a scaled, democratized version of the Internet.

    But what are exactly the main advantages of such a solution?

    Internet-independent: The core idea behind Netsekuku is to get rid of Internet providers. Each machine inside the WiFi network serves as a router that redirects the information towards all other nodes in the network.

    * Resource-uninintensive: The Netsukuku protocol is built to handle a massive number of computers while requiring minimal computer CPU usage and memory resources.

    * Private: The Netsukuku address system doesn’t work using the HTTP protocol. All computers inside the network cannot be identified outside the local network or remotely-exploited.

    * Fast: The Netsukuku wireless network allows fast file transfers between machines because there are no central servers or storage systems. All information is exchanged privately, in a p2p fashion without intermediaries.

    * Economical: The Netsukuku network works with standard machines that are WiFi-enabled, thus old machines will work just fine with no need to have last-generation computers, additional hardware or pricey software to install.

    * Open-source: The Netsukuku code is released under a GNU / GPL license, it is open and freely editable and redistributable by anyone who wants to build upon on it or fix bugs.

    Here is the Netsukuku idea explained in greater depth by Sepp Hasslberger:”

    http://www.masternewmedia.org/the-alternative-p2p-wireless-internet-network-the-netsukuku-idea/

     
  • mazsa 11:59 on March 3, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , P2P, Perishability,   

    “Main research goals of the Free Haven Project:

    Anonymity: We try to meet this goal for all parties: the publishers that insert documents, the readers that retrieve documents, and the servers that store documents. We are in the process of designing and developing a free, low-latency, two-way mixnet for forward-anonymous communication.

    Accountability: We consider methods for achieving accountability without sacrificing anonymity. In particular, we’re researching reputation and micropayment schemes, which allow us to limit the damage done by servers which misbehave.

    Persistence: The publisher of a document — not the servers holding the document — determines its lifetime. [...]”

    http://freehaven.net

     
  • mazsa 15:17 on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , P2P, , ,   

    Votorola is software for building consensus and reaching decisions in public. Installed in a local town or region, it functions both as a primary electoral system for nominating candidates, and a primary rule-making system for voting up laws, plans and policies. Voting is peer-to-peer. Distributed drafting, recursive delegation and vote shifting guarantee the freedoms of participation and choice to every voter, at all times. The voting engine is designed to interface with standard drafting media and discussion forums. The voter lists are authenticated by a neighbourhood trust network.

    Peer-to-Peer Voting

    • Voters nominate their own candidates by voting for them. No candidates are pre-declared.
    • Votes cascade. When one candidate votes for another, the votes of the first flow to the second.
    • Voters are free to shift their votes, at any time.
     
  • mazsa 00:10 on January 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , P2P,   

    “How is Herbivore different from other anonymous communication schemes, like Freenet and Gnutella?

    Currently, all other anonymous communication systems that have been implemented on a large scale are based on source-rewriting. Messages are routed through several intermediary nodes who forward the message, masking the identity of the original sender. In practice this method provides a reasonable level of anonymity. However, diligent observers that monitor traffic within and around the anonymizing network can use statistical traffic analysis to compromise identities. Herbivore is resilient to this kind of attack: Eavesdroppers with unlimited wiretapping abilities cannot determine the source or destination of a message sent in Herbivore.” http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/herbivore/faq.html

     
  • mazsa 08:41 on January 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , P2P,   

    “The implementations described here are all in the early stage of development, so none of them provide the strong guarantees promised by the theoretical models. Currently, the advantage is on the side of the attacker. However, once the systems mature, and provided there is sufficient interaction between theory and implementation, real anonymity will be possible in a practical peer-to-peer file-sharing system.” (Chothia-Chatzikokolakis,2005) [pdf] Cf.: http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/~tomc/P2P/index.html

     
  • mazsa 21:05 on January 1, 2010 Permalink | Reply
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    States: let them prey on atoms but not on bits! 

     

     

    Our bits — including our intangible goods and services — should be managed independently from states.

    Possibly states are the appropriate political units for organising and managing our atoms — including our tangible goods and services. But definitely not for organising and managing our bits — an embarrassing effort of a new cartel of all the states of the globe was launched at the very end of the last year.

    While we are inclined to acknowledge the right of the individual states to tax anything they can lay their hands on (that is, tangible atoms), we deny the right of their cartel to tax anything else (that is, intangible bits).

     

    Extending political framework

    The speed of travel and communication diverged more than a century ago.

    Since then, at least in theory, a new space has evolved: “communication space”. Borderless and real-time at global level, communication space is principally different from “travelling space” where we are limited by our physical body and slow motion.

    With the rapid development of the internet at the end of the last century, communication space and travelling space levelled out.

    In the meantime, our political system was becoming based on, and locked in, the partition of “travelling space” (the dry land of the planet) into distinct states.

    We suggest that we should extend the logic of the present political system, the partition one step further, adding distinct space (the communication space) to distinct states as well.

    It is our endeavour to constitute political units, spatially and functionally independent of states, operating in the communication space (internet) as their infrastructure, and make them work.

    The original function of these new political units should be to manage bits — as opposed to atoms that would continue to be managed by states.

     

    Respecting achievements

    States are right in that intellectual achievements should be rewarded, creativity must pay off in the long term. Whether or not a public issue at all, rewarding need not be the task of states: it should be dealt with directly in the jurisdictions operating in the communication space, through a public process. Dealing with the issue of bits should be our task. States may prey on tangibles, we need to achieve better management of intangibles.

    We understand states’ insistence on regarding bits as “intellectual property”: unless bits are intellectual property, trading in bits can not be taxed.

    However, it would be unjust to blame states simply for seeking their own solutions: if there are no other players around, why would they not try to colonize our favourite place, the internet? And if they are unable to do it by themselves, they will do so by establishing a cartel.

     

    Breaking down harmful tax cartels

    We aware that the global cartel of states monopolizes taxation. Every kind of taxation, including the taxation of intangible goods and services. By the end of last year, all disobedient states gave up resistance.

    We do not know whether the organized monopolization of taxation implies the transformation of the international political system into an integrated political unit called “the global state”. But we believe in competition markets as opposed to freely monopolizable markets. And we believe in tax competition (labelled “harmful tax practices” by states) as well.

    We believe that the global tax cartel of states extended to intangible goods and services would be harmful.

    Consequently, we must consider it to be our responsibility to break down this proposed cartel.

     

    Working on common strategy

    The strategic points are:

    1. Helping to constitute our own companies for the management of intangible goods and services, run on the jurisdictions of our new political units on the communication space, in return for tax — somewhere around the cost of PayPal. We should make our infrastructure to be able to manage distinct jurisdictions and taxation: hard wired laws, secure p2p communication, e-cash, etc.. We should foster tax competition: break down both harmful tax cartels and double taxation by any other political unit.

    2. We need to offer average users a kind of user experience as Apple provides, and we need to keep this system open to advanced users, like Linux.

    3. We should begin to feel allegiance towards our new, freely chosen political units run on the communication space. We should attract allegiance like the states do we happen to born into. We should know that we have an ethical basis for taking part in tax competition, proud of what we do, and defend ourselves in case of attacks. States may not be nice to us when we break down their cartel.

     

    Future

    As we, the first internet generations of planet Earth, grow up, we shall take control of this place. That is sure as death and taxes.

    We are how we are together. We are our states. We are our companies. We supply and demand our own products and ideals. Our responsibility is how we organize ourselves.

    I think states and companies operating according to their jurisdiction are not willing, and what is more, not even able to meet all the basic needs which originate from our very personship. States may be sufficient for our atoms, yet neither necessary nor sufficient for our bits, spirits and communities.

    We need a vivid net of political units operating in the communication space, able to help find the right place of states in our lives. Evolution will show which of the new political units will survive.

    We seek to make The United Persons one of them.

    We wish to live in a world where we constitute our own alternative online political units,

    • worthy of our love and loyalty,
    • that help manage our bits if and when required, on Earth or among the planets of the solar system when this time will come, and
    • able and willing to pacify any attacking entity.

    What do you feel is the true political unit of your choice?

    How can you help us all to constitute it?

    Internet, January 1, 2010

     
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