New "Dark" Freenet Available for Testing

Sanity writes "The Freenet Project has just released the first alpha version of the much anticipated Freenet 0.7 branch. This is a major departure from past approaches to peer-to-peer network design, embracing a 'scalable darknet' architecture, where security is increased by allowing users to limit which other peers their peer will communicate with directly, rather than the typical 'promiscuous' approach of classic P2P networks. This means that not only does Freenet aim to prevent others from finding out what you are doing with Freenet, it makes it extremely difficult for them to even know that you are running a Freenet node at all. This is not the first P2P application to use this approach, other examples include Waste, however those networks are limited to just a few users, while Freenet can scale up almost indefinitely. The new version also includes support for NAT hole-punching, and has an API for third-party tool development. As always, the Freenet team are asking that people support the development of the software by donating."

Hooray!

[Gravis Zero]

Hooray! Now I can browse the net at dialup speeds once more!

Re:Welcome!

[afree87]

The Dark Side of the Freenet is a pathway to many websites some consider to be unnatural.

Re:Java is coming along

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny isn't it. I have the feeling what they need to do is rewrite it in ruby. Same performance, but can you imagine the hype they'd get!

I for one...

[Null Nihils]

welcome the idea that our overlords will have a harder time censoring and surveilling us.

Re:Fantastic

[Guppy06]

"You can be sued,"

The creator of Freenet bringing forward a libel suit. Now that's irony!

Re:Waste

[Professor_UNIX]

Its too bad its written in java.. if it was in C/C++ i would have run a node...

Yeah, cross-platform coding sucks. When are these companies going to learn that we want proprietary binaries that need to be recompiled on each platform?

Yep, it's kiddy porn for sure

[murderlegendre]

Since the rights of the unborn (read: abortion) has become the ultimate litmus-test in meatspace, has kiddy porn become the Internet equivalent?

Of course that is a rhetorical question, and the answer is obvously a resounding "yes". So, from this point forward, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, let us all agree that any discussion of privacy, freedom of speech or anonymity on the Internet shall descend into a polarized debate over the evils of child pornography. Terrorism and illicit file sharing came in second and third, respectively.

You have officially "gotten the memo".

Re:In other news....

[thrillseeker]

...I used to work for the government, I know that they could program something like this, but it would be clunky, crash constantly, no one would use it...

So that's why it's written in Java!