Re: This new Ethereum-based “assassination market” platform could cause Napster-size legal headaches MIT Technology Review Article

Mirimir mirimir at riseup.net
Fri Aug 3 07:07:19 PDT 2018


On 08/02/2018 04:37 PM, Steven Schear wrote:
> Freenet seems to work when you predominantly or solely use private/dark
> peers.

That's what Freenet folks recommend, and I get the argument. However, I
can't imagine how having predominantly darknet peers is safe. Because
all it takes is one malicious peer, logging all traffic and searching
for fingerprints of interest. And yes, I understand the arguments about
indeterminate forwarding.

The problem is, if you don't adequately obscure your IP address, you can
end up in court, charged with pedophilia. Which Freenet is full of. And
you'll have prosecution experts testifying that they know that you were
sharing illegal images and video. Even though they haven't cracked your
FDE. And even though their technical basis is bullshit.

And you will be screwed. Unless you have experts who can pick their shit
apart. And unless the judge and jury understand enough to be persuaded,
which is unlikely. Also, you may end up jailed indeterminately, if you
refuse to provide FDE passphrases.

Maybe total darknet can be safe. But it could also be bloody boring.
Unless some peers can periodically clone content from opennet. Via some
mix of VPNs and Tor, perhaps. But even so, you'll be screwed if you let
a malicious peer join your darknet. So it's iffy.

If anyone's interested, I can probably find notes on a project to hide
Freenet use with Tor/OnionCat. The Freenet node was a VPS, exposing user
URLs as onion services. And connecting with darknet peers via OnionCat.
Another node, on an unassociated VPS, linked with darknet peers via
OnionCat, and with opennet peers via its public IP address.

And sure, VPS security sucks. And the opennet peer was readily findable.
But finding the darknet peers, and my local VM, would have been rather
nontrivial. And in any case, it was all unattributable and throwaway.

> On Thu, Aug 2, 2018, 4:28 PM Mirimir <mirimir at riseup.net> wrote:
> 
>> On 08/02/2018 04:14 PM, Steven Schear wrote:
>>> "Augur’s creators claim they don’t have control over what its users
>> choose
>>> to do with the protocol—or the ability to shut it down. This creates a
>>> problem that is “endemic” to blockchain technology, says Wright, who
>>> recently co-wrote a book on the subject: “If you do not have a very
>>> concrete intermediary—i.e., a company or group of people that are running
>>> the marketplace—how do you apply laws and prevent that activity from
>>> occurring?”
>>>
>>> This is, as they say in marketing, not a problem but a feature.
>>
>> Yep. I mean, that's the fucking point!
>>
>> But I gotta say, they need to work on the anonymity aspect. The argument
>> that participation anonymity doesn't matter, as long as adversaries
>> can't attribute stuff, is weak. Look at Freenet, for example.
>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 2, 2018, 3:55 PM jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611757/this-new-ethereum-based-assassination-market-platform-could-cause-napster-size-legal/
>>
>> <SNIP>
>>
>>
> 



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