Pirate Party Launches Commercial Darknet 661
CrystalFalcon writes "The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth. This service lets anybody send and receive files anonymously without being tracked or traced. 'There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,' says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. 'If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check.'"
Rock On Dude (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rock On Dude (Score:5, Interesting)
One question we get is if this works in the US. Yes, it does.
It looks like just a PPTP connection to a Swedish ISP, doling out some Swedish IP addresses. I'm curious as to the speed the service offers. What's the pipe feeding into Relakks?
Re:Rock On Dude (Score:5, Informative)
Net Neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:3, Insightful)
Some definitions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Authoritarian: Government based on manipulation of power where access to government information is limited and access to citizen information by government is unfettered.
Ask yourself which direction the US government is heading.
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Inside the US, though, the customers of large US telecom companies may be firewalled off from the service by the very people they are paying for Net access. If not that, they may be slowdd to a trickle of traffic.
If I was paying for access to "The Internet", and my service provider wasn't giving me access to everything I could legally access, then I'd be getting ripped off, wouldn't I?
So for the rest of the world US net neutrality laws don't matter so much. For those of us in the US, they matter a great deal, even when the traffic starts overseas.
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:4, Insightful)
*Yes yes I know or packets traversing across a US network segment.
**Neutral until the Telco's lobby the US administration to reign in them darn foreigners. After all its their divine right to extort money from those who have made a successful internet business.
Re:Net Neutrality (Score:5, Insightful)
Snuff films are not real [snopes.com]. And the problem with pedophilia isn't the transmission of images of the sexual abuse of children, it's when actual sexual abuse of children goes on.
Freedom has risks. If you have free elections, the "wrong" guys might win. If you have secure communications, "terrorists" might use them to make plans. If you have the right to keep and bear arms, "bad guys" may have guns.
But if you believe in freedom, you're very very wary of the state getting to define who the "wrong" guys, the "terrorists", the "bad guys", are. Consider that Martin Luther King Jr. was a target of COINTELPRO; consider Nixon's "enemies list"; consider the Fugitive Slave Act, the Dredd Scott decision, the Alien and Sedition acts, the Red Scares, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans...
And? "Anarchy" means no ruling hierarchy. Some people think that's a good idea [blackened.net], especially when it comes to communication. As Robert Anton Wilson put it [rawilson.com], "A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of `monopoly in the means of production.' Since man extends his nervous system though channels of communication like the written word, the telephone, radio, etc., he who controls these media controls part of the nervous system of every member of society. The contents of these media become part of the contents of every individual's brain."
Dark Side of Humanity. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, better kill the children now. Afterall, some of them will grow up to be axe murderers and that's just horrible. Baby, bathwater, freedom what's the difference?
Important note... (Score:3, Informative)
It looks like it is at least a quasi-commercial darknet.
Ryan Fenton
Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
Moderators Aren't Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
The average Slashdotter is still under the influence of either their parents, or else draconian work laws over what can be said and not said. You don't fluff up the opposition; the modern social dialogue, on either side of the political spectrum is about advantage, not truth.
The irony is that Slashdot's leaning is generally some blend of anarchist and libertarian; a position that I am very comfortable with. This general PC movement has the feel of "protecting our freedoms by restricting our rights".
Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that I think
Re:Slashdot: yesterday's news for nerds (Score:3, Interesting)
The mod system is pretty sad there too. If you post in a topic about Apple, XBox, or any other popular "community", and your post is even neutral (not fanboyish), it will be modded down instantly. That's probably why
Re:Important note... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Important note... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Important note... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's very little in the actual document which isn't in the published article when it comes to cost.
Have you been living on Gilligan's Island?
5eu/month is, as pointed out in the FA, at the current exchange rate: $6.359.
Before Scotty Richter was castrated, he was bringing $2M into his office, yes, two million U$ monthly. And he wasn't the king of the mountain.
Can you explain how $6.359/month going to make a spammer think twice about using the service? Particularly when you consider the anonymity. No more looking for open proxies & relays.
They pay far, far, far more than that to set up shop in China, then send all of that crap back to the US. Most spam originates from the US as the 2003 U-CAN-SPAM law[1] basically gave them free reign, but the big boys still rely upon China.
Here are the top 200 spammers responsible for 80% of the crap which is dropped in your inbox. [spamhaus.org]
Some of these guys (e.g. Ralsky) have substantial setups in their basements or an office (when they-he aren't|isn't getting caught running around in nothing but a black thong -- yes, there's a picture of it in an anti-spam archive.
But seriously. How do you think ~$6/month is going to stop a spammer. I'm not trying to present a loaded question here. I really do want to know your perspective on this because you may have insights no one else has considered.
The only way I can see this not becoming a spam haven is if there's a volume limit for that price and you have to pay $x/volume for each increment after that.
I'm all ears.
_______________________________
[1] Very effective, wouldn't you say? Has your volume of spam decreased (without human intervention to separate the wheat from the chaffe?)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
swedish ip's (Score:5, Funny)
Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.
That's what I call massaging the numbers!
(Unfortunately,) I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waiter.Re:swedish ip's (Score:5, Funny)
Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Read The FAQ (Score:5, Informative)
Legal
RELAKKS is a company incorporated in Sweden. The service is basically a Swedish broadband subscription offered over the Internet. This means that the legal framework mainly consists of the The Electronic Communications Act 2003 389. What will this mean if:
Swedish authorities or,
Other organization or individuals demands access to information protected by RELAKKS?
RELAKKS Safe Surf enjoys the strongest legal protection possible under Swedish Law because of the service type (pre-paid flat-rate service). This means that RELAKKS do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). This is of importance if forced to hand over information.
If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned - fined not enough). .
RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but that's all). RELAKKS do not store any subscribtion information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.
For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over "traffic data" including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.
Regarding inquires from other parties than Swedish authorities RELAKKS will never turn over any kind of information.
The combination Swedish high-tech encryption and the strongest legal protection give you true access to Internet, safer and speedier then ever before.
For more information about Swedish Telecom Law: The Electronic Communications Act 2003:389
Re:Question? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Question? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are records, Relakks implies so themselves. It's just that Relakks claims to not hand them over readily.
Considering how effective the *AA's have been at getting access to private information based solely on completely meaningless evidence (a screen printout with filenames that look like copyrighted material), I have to wonder how easy it would be for the Swedish *AA-a-like to make up a bogus claim which could potentially get somebody imprisoned for 2 years.
You're paranoid and here's why (Score:4, Informative)
Then why log at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
If a darknet wants to provide indemnity for it's users, then why don't they just disable all logging of information on the darknet? If there ar eno records, then none can be supenaed.
It would be pretty trivial to design a system whereby it is proveable that any given packet *did not* originate from within Relakks, but stil not know from where it did originate. Such a system would provide them protection from lawsuits and also protect their customers identities.
Re:Question? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not knowledgable of Swedish law, but this is pretty much how it works in most of the western world.
Re:Question? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities?
Records? What records?
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
by dcapel (913969) on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908566)
(http://wot.narg.googlepages.com/)
Records? What Records?!
Re:Question?
(Score:2)
by mincognito (839071) Alter Relationship on Tuesday August 15, @02:01AM (#15908567)
(http://thegreennotebook.blogspot.com/)
If it is commercial, couldn't the company' records be subpoenaed (in a worst case scenario) by state/local/etc authorities?
Records? What records?
Ok, you are either copying me (your post id is one larger) or that is plain SCARY.
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question? (Score:5, Funny)
Now, in the 21st century, we have 'dcapel' and 'mincognito' with identical, +1 Insightful Slashdot posts simultaneously.
I call that progress.
It's now time for you two to sue the pants off of each other for copyright infringement.
Ready, set, call your lawyers...now!
Re:Question? (Score:3, Informative)
Actaully, this is not true. Newton developed Calculus WAY before Leibniz did, he was basically done in 1671 and it took Leibniz more than a decade longer (even though it is his notation and words we use today). The point is that Newton didn't publish until much, much later, so this remarkable mathematical technique that would change how people do mathematics forever was known only to him. The remarkable thing about that story isn't that they came up with it simultaneously (they didn't), but that they did it independently of each other. It shows that during the second half of th 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, two giants walked the earth, two of the perhaps five most intelligent men in history. It is, truly, an extraordinary thing.
And, oh yeah, they couldn't stand eachother.
Re:Question? (Score:4, Insightful)
Been reading the Baroque Cycle, have we? ;)
You are drastically underestimating the genius of Newton and the influence he would have on science. Saying "Newton did a handful of big things - laws of motion and universal gravitation (although these were building on the work of others more than is generally seen)" is like saying "Yeah, Einstein fooled around with physics, but really anyone who studied Planck and Maxwell could figure out that stuff".
He didn't just develop "laws of motion" and figure out "universal gravitation". As you said, this had been worked on by many people before. What Newton did that was so extraordinary was that he was able to, with four simple laws, explain EVERYTHING. He explained why Galileos balls fell like they did, he was able to explain Keplers four laws (which took Kepler 17 years to figure out), he was able to explain how the earth was kept in orbit around the sun, he was able to explain why the moon circled the earth. You have to realise the enourmous scientific breakthrough of being able not only to explain planets and apples movements, but to actually realise and prove that they were the same force!
After Newton, most people were of the opinion that physics was basically done! The rest was small stuff, maybe clarify exactly how the laws worked in fluids, or figure out that magnetism stuff. In the 19th century, students were actually advised not to study physics, because since Newton had finished it, it wasn't really a subject for the future.
Newtonian mechanics reigned as completely unchallenge for 180 years! 180 years! Only in 1864 with James Clerk Maxwells equations did a seed of doubt become planted, but there would be no other theory for another forty years. Between 1687 and 1905, Newton had not ever been even slightly modified. I mean, imagine that. In the modern world there is general relativity and quantum physics, but they change all the time, with string theory and m-theory, and the accelarating universe and whatnot. Not so with Newton, his theories remained, completely intact. They were that good.
A wonderful quote from Lagrange (who inarguably knew more about this stuff than us two) is "Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish". Turns out he weren't entirely correct, but you can hear in that quote that impact that Newton had had. He had explained how the world worked. All of it. Simple as that.
This is not even mentioning all the other amazing stuff that he did, the optics, the telescopes (which were indeed the greatest telescopes of it's day, and is still in wide use today), etc. Yeah, I agree, Hooke was a genius, but what did he do that was comparable to Newton? Discovered and coined the word "cell"? Hooke's law of elasticity? Assorted discoveries in Biology? His architetural feats? That doesn't even come close to Newton.
And so what if he was an asshole? Sure he treated both Hooke and Leibniz (and pretty much the rest of the western world) like shit, but does that mean his scientific discoveries are somehow worth less?
Bottom line, Newton completely changed how we view the world. Him and Einstein, those are the only two that can make a claim on explain the System of the World.
Re:Question? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words...
DUPE! DUPE! DUPE!
Okay, everyone can mod him down (-1 Redundant) now, for being a fraction of a second slower than you to submit.
You should be happy that this is nothing major. I heard an American sniper tell a story of when he was assigned to kill a Vietnamese sniper. The American's bullet went straight down the scope of the Vietnamese sniper's riffle, and killed him. If the American had pulled the trigger just a bit slower, it would have been the other guy telling the exact same story.
Re:Question? (Score:3, Funny)
Why? So they can spend 3 weeks methologically "proving" that guns can't possibly work?
Re:Question? (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly what I hate about "Based on a True Story". Disney is the worst of them all (See: )
Anything "Based on a True Story" is 99% fiction, and 1% facts, and that 1% is usually just details like names of individuals and places, even though they probably don't match the appearance of the people/places whos names they have used.
Speilberg openly admits the sniper scene in Saving Private Ryan is based on the (anachronistic) Vietnam-era story of Carlos Hathcock, which I relayed (who knew it would get modded up?).
Re:Question? (Score:5, Informative)
I understand it that it's business and laws as usual here too, of course, but if they're enforced of leaving out user details, I wonder what exact differences their unconventional subscriber register has compared to a regular one. They don't seem to go into detail of that, and I'd guess that is the most interesting part here.
Re:Question? Answer. (Score:3, Informative)
So the minimum of records they would have to keep is who's subscribed and paid, and even with only a handful of people on the service, there's no way anyone could prove beyond reasonable doubt that a specific person did it, and I don't think swedish law would enable prosecution of the ISP.
I got excited too but then read the fine print (Score:3, Informative)
Har har har--I'm laughing too, but:
Granted--I can type in any old crap I want when registering but my actual actual IP address sounds like it's logged:
So they are keeping logs.
The American in me is hearing: "The Swedish [authority] has to be really reaaaally sure you're gonna go to jail for this" to get all the information they wanted anyway. Forgive my skepticism. What I'm saying is: I was about to sign up for this and this is why I didn't.
So it is an encrypted proxy service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service (Score:3, Interesting)
Feels nice though to grab a DVD from Usenet in about 15-20 minutes.
Re:So it is an encrypted proxy service (Score:3, Funny)
Piracy really isn't all that bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not all piracy is a bad thing. I mean, software these days is seriously overpriced. You could teach yourself some very basic programming skills (Visual Basic, for instance), and create a program that'll do exactly what the $100+ equivilant does.
So of course people will pirate it. Why? Because it's rediculous to pay for something like that.
Then there's music. Just to let you know, piracy HARDLY hurts the musician. Considering that 90% of the sales go to the record company before the artist ever sees a penny, they're really not "losing" much at all.
Then again, sometimes piracy is a bad thing. Especially for the movie industry. Millions (if not billions) of dollars go into the making of a movie. While, yes, theater sales bring in tons of cash, DVD releases are also a huge factor in a movie's income. Downloading a movie hurts people a lot more than downloading music.
Piracy has become such an overrated "controversy" lately that it's unbarable. Look at the price of blank CDs. Did you know that you have to pay a "piracy tax" for these? Yep. All because some higher-ups think that an extra buck or two will help save a movie studio or a record company. It's batty. What if I just want to burn copies of pictures from my family vacation? Now I've gotta pay the MPAA and RIAA some extra cash for something that they don't deserve? Get real.
All these corporations think that they're helping people by attempting to foil piracy. Yes, they've got their hearts in the right places, but they're doing it all wrong. "Right track, wrong train" is a good saying for this. They really need to clean up their acts when suing people. I mean, they've gone so far as to sue old ladies who can barely turn their computer on, yet let huge pirates go unnoticed.
Why's this?
Because if they let big pirates continue doing their thing, then they get to keep on making more and more money with the "piracy taxes" and suing people left and right for WAY more than the material they've pirated is worth. They're letting people go to keep themselves in the game, which is horrible.
Also, just a little side note, to anybody who thinks the RIAA or MPAA might be knocking on your door. Go ahead and go to court, but bring up the fact that an IP address is not a person. Since your IP is the only log they have of the download (even if they have the MAC, that'll only ID a computer, not a single person), you'll win in court. And they'll lose out on a bunch of money for the court date, as well. Two-for-one, if you ask me. =D
Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats not enough for some cheeky bastards, though. After people have gotten their latest crackz, I get a surge of search results from Google for things legitimate customers never search for (e.g. Name of the Program V 1.0 download). I lost $10 last time I got the hacker surge because I bid on my own program name as an AdWords keyword and the "its not stealing, its copyright infringement!!!1" crowd literally picked my pocket for a quarter a click.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the issues I have with smaller shareware apps is the price - rather than $25 for your app, if you cut the price to say $10 more people will be tempted to pay rather than look for a crack/serial. And I am writing from experience.
The math doesn't work, trust me (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The math doesn't work, trust me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The math doesn't work, trust me (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people don't buy like that (Score:3, Informative)
In other words, even if a higher price does suggest quality, it also says "this is not an impulse buy". And some of us like to investigate more expensive things before we buy them, even if it's not a rational use of time (I get paid well; rationally, I should just buy things and try them, but I don't).
Now, I do sympathise as I would also like to make money writing shareware. It's hard for me to imagine how though, as I haven't bought software (aside from the above Firefox plugin) in many years: FOSS being good enough for nearly everything.
Since the only software I've bought in years was a low-cost impulse buy, that tells me that maybe there's a market of people like me, who don't buy "real" software any more if there's a comparable free equivalent.
Since you've made relatively little from your program, you're obviously not dependent on the income. So perhaps it's worth experimenting with different pricing just to see what happens? Or maybe sell two slightly different versions with radically different pricing to see what happens?
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Brilliant idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why didn't I think of this? All I need to do is charge money while making my website harder to access than a pirate FTP server! You should try selling this idea to Starforce! It seems to fit in perfectly with their business plan of causing the most pain for the people most likely to pay you money.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe all people have the right to take anything they need to live regardless of ability to pay. Oddly enough, I do consider myself a bit of an anarchist and am not ashamed to say it; do not make the mistake of taking my sig for my ideology though -- it is just something interesting I read. Since the topic is copyrighted works, none of which are essential for survival, it is odd that you would say that.
Just as nobody is born with an innate right to sell episodes of "24" for whatever they wish. You seem to mistake copyright as being a property right. I assure you, it is not. Society has decided it is better for all of us if we give creators that monopoly on distribution that I spoke of. My society (well, politicians) thinks that the life of the author plus 70 years is the length of monopoly best to get people to distribute their works (with the overall goal being the enrichment of the public domain, mind you). I respectfully disagree.
Reminder: copyright infringment is illegal, but not necessarily immoral.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:4, Insightful)
And until you split your concepts, you are blind.
Eivind.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Aw, c'mon, it's more complicated than that. Certainly there are a bunch of kids just blindly filling up their hard drives with IP booty (you never did that in college???). But there are reasonable people that selectively pirate. For instance, I went into a CompUSA one time a few years ago and was shooting the shit with one of the Mac salespeople in there. He was telling me about how he was pretty into photography, so I asked what program he uses to edit his photos. He laughed at me and said "Photoshop, why what do you use?". I told him that I hadn't found anything suitable for the price range I was willing to pay. He and another associate laughed at me and said, "Dude, just get a pirated copy! Do you really think that they expect a hobbiest to pay $500 for a photo editing program?" Note that this was pre-Elements, so there was some logic in that arguement, and damnit, I got myself a pirated copy the next time I was in Malaysia for $1.50. Am I a dirty, low-down pirate? Perhaps, but I sleep well at night. I pay for reasonably priced software. I just bought RapidWeaver, an excellent demo-ware product.
Another example - P2P music sharing. I believe the geeks of the world have a duty to try to destroy the RIAA's business model. Their organization has many of the elements of organized crime, from intimidation tactics up to and including complicit politicians. They are not as bad as the mafia, since there is not any physical violence, but they are nasty nonetheless. While I do not file share using P2P anymore because I am spineless and afraid of their lawsuits, many of my friends regularly share hundreds of gigs of MP3s via external hard drives. You can argue that Madonna, U2, Britanny Spears... none would be possible if this ideology were to be taken to an extreme. GOOD. That's my goal.
A friend of mine is an IP lawyer, and it drives him nuts that I have this attitude. He says that I'm simply doing what I'm doing because I'm selfish. I pointed out that that's what drives EVERYONE, including his clients, and he had to agree. The high ground here is not the legal ground, in my opinion. Obviously, your opinion differs - and that's okay. I just hope we win this little battle.
Re:Software piracy really is all that bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Extracting fines for people seeing information without the creators permission is more theft than copying their information ever was, and I certainly don't want a system where that is their means of income. In my mind, rather than living in a world like that I'd by far prefer all of these injured content creators to simply stop creating content, if it hurts them so much to do so.
Either people will say 'What, no more music? That sucks! Hey, will anyone make a song for me if I give them this donation?' (or groups will do so), or people will say 'Huh... There's less music, but strangely I don't miss it so much, and I can find people who are still willing to make music for free as their hobby or use alternate methods to extract an income from making music.'
Everyone keeps saying 'if we didn't have copyright, there would be no creativity'. Well, I'm saying put it on the line and try it. Speaking for myself, it won't stop me from doing research or writing software if I can't hold a copyright on those things.
Darknet? (Score:3, Interesting)
This article seems like BS.
Re:Darknet? (Score:5, Informative)
1 and 4 being pretty big for USians who are using it...2 for people whose ISPs filter. 3, dubiously so, as at some point they have your credit card saying that you have an account although I suppose that, if they don't store your tunnel account with your CC number, they have no way of getting to you personally.
It doesn't matter if someone nefarious is on the same link-local segment sniffing all your traffic, if they can't identify through technological means who you are, and can't compel the provider through legal means either because they didn't keep that information or just won't give it over.
Exporting a society's good things (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, i expect that if the Relakks service becomes popular expect laws to be passed soon in other countries to curtail access to it.
Re:Exporting a society's good things (Score:5, Insightful)
Most laws are designed to make it possible for people to live together in the most productive way possible (thus NOT an anarchy and NOT the law of the strongest). These laws thus concern themselfs with avoiding that one person knowingly or purposelly causes harm to another person (such as murder, theft, etc), secure trading (contracts, sales laws, etc) and avoiding "tragedy of the commons" situations with shared resources (environmental laws, zoneing laws, etc)
Any laws dictating what a person cannot do with their own bodies in the privacy of their own house and without causing any harm to others is a moralistic law in that it tries to forcifully deny to others the (lawfull) possibility of acting in certain ways, even though those actions would have no negative impact for third parties.
Soft drugs prohibition is thus a moralistic law since smoking pot in the privacy of one's home causes no harm to others, while for example a law prohibiting driving while under the influence of drugs would NOT be a moralistic law since driving under influence strongly increases the chances of an accident which could harm to others.
Copyright incompatible with privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Copyright incompatible with privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
This is one of the best summaries of the current IP situation I've seen put into words. Copyright works if you shave a few decades off the term, eliminate renewals and place a few boundries on what rights publishers get. Boundries like fair use, a reduction in the penalty for infringement where there is no commercial gain and particularly the right of they buyer to change the format to remain compatible with the technology of the day.
it will just be full of movies and music and games (Score:5, Insightful)
And copying a King Kong DVD rip is not one of them. Its sad when people take the legitmate point about anonymity that you might need for political organisations, journalists and whistle-blowers, and just use it as an excuse to facilitate warez and music copying.
And calling yourselves the 'pirate party' is just plain insane. Whats wrong with "the consumer rights' party? or do they realsie thats way too hypocritical.
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a kid we had these things called "people." I miss them. Nice folk; and a good many of them were producers.
KFG
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:4, Insightful)
According to the rest of your rant, 'honest' should come to your mind instead of 'hypocritical', because you don't perceive them as a "consumer rights party" anyway, or do you? It's an ironic statement on how they are perceived, playing with their underdog image. And people like you, obviously, would never see anything else than the "pirate" part, which is exactly why they are important, to constantly challenge such views.
Furthermore, I think the name is well chosen regardless, because can "The Consumers' Rights Party" get any more boring and non-descriptive? "The Pirate Party" is concise, provoking (to some), and easily remembered.
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:5, Informative)
The consumer rights party would be a stupid name, as it would infer some capitalist values and the party does not take a stance in questions like that.
Everyone please read! http://www2.piratpartiet.se/international/english [piratpartiet.se]
The party is here to counter the police state we are turning into with Bodström giving the lobbying organisations whatever they want, and to put a stop to the silliness of patents and eternal copyright.
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:it will just be full of movies and music and ga (Score:3, Insightful)
adj.
1. Honorable and fair in one's dealings and actions: a just ruler. See Synonyms at fair1.
2. Consistent with what is morally right; righteous: a just cause.
3. Properly due or merited: just deserts.
4. Law. Valid within the law; lawful: just claims.
5. Suitable or proper in nature; fitting: a just touch of solemnity.
6. Based on fact or sound reason; well-founded: a just appraisal.
Which definition of 'just' is analogous to 'whatever the people in general think', exactly?
Governmental power (Score:3, Interesting)
The police, intelligence services, military industrial complex for instance have to be paid. You can do that by raising taxes, or by printing more money. Raising taxes is the obvious way to do it, but how popular are you going to be if you increase income and sales taxation? You'd be out at the next election.
Well, you control the printing presses, so just print more money, pay the services and suppliers with this new money, you can do what you like then without raising taxation and pissing off the electorate. Unfortunately, money like any commodity is subject to the laws of supply and demand so if you increase the amount of money around, each dollar becomes worth less and you have inflation, though you can easily deflect that blame on to others; Oil suppliers, employee wage demands, greedy retailers etc.
If the government was unable to print money (actually to borrow it) on demand, it's power to wage war, to pay for expensive surveillance etc would be very severely curtailed because it would have to raise taxation to pay for these services.
If you really want to limit the power of governments, then you have to remove or reduce their ability to create money on demand. If you're a libertarian for instance and really believe in small government then move your savings out of your local currency and into some other commodity; Property, gold, silver, shares etc.
Latency? (Score:3, Insightful)
This won't be much use for me if it makes the latency of my VPN connection to my employer so slow that typing into VNC becomes useless. At the moment I get ~20ms ping times from home to work (somewhere in the UK to somewhere else in the UK) and typing via VNC over a VPN is just as good as if I were at work. I've had times when the latency went up and it rapidly becomes impossible to type at normal speed because you can't correct your mistakes as you go.
Has anyone got any figures for latency for this ISP?
Re:Latency? (Score:3, Informative)
This is from Dayton, OH using Roadrunner as my ISP.
If you're going to use this for any sort of interactive application, you may want to look elsewhere.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
PPTP tunnel ? (Score:5, Informative)
"PPTP is known to be a faulty protocol. The designers of the protocol, Microsoft, recommend not to use it due to the inherent risks. Lots of people use PPTP anyway due to ease of use, but that doesn't mean it is any less hazardous. The maintainers of PPTP Client and Poptop recommend using OpenVPN (SSL based) or IPSec instead."
Warning! Not Anonymous (Score:5, Interesting)
The claim that this service provides anonymity and immunity to logging is only true in a very limited sense! This is basically a simple one level proxy which keeps access records which the authorities can get their hands on if they "suspect" a crime is being committed. Sweden is signator to various levels of intellegence sharing deals on international crime and terrorism so none of the Swedish laws on privacy have effect if some outside government presents "reasonable suspicion" of a crime being committed. And no, you don't have to be a terrorist or kiddy pron baron to be concerned here - tyrannical governments have been known throughout history to use any means to available to them suppress and oppress their citizens...
Tor [eff.org] on the otherhand can claim to provide a level of true anonymity because of the 'onion routing' concept. A potential adversary would have to infiltrate the network with enough fake nodes to get to both the input end (to get the ip) and the the exit node (to get the traffic) and then do some traffic analysis to match these two together in order to figure out who is doing what. This being very resource intensive, such capability would only be available to the highest levels of intellegence gathering and even then only for a limited set of survaillance targets.
Needs VPNI would take a comment like this as being (Score:3, Insightful)
The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.
So, how long until Ma Bell and Pa Cable make it against their TOS to connect to an "unauthorized" VPN provider (whereby darknet VPNs are conviently never authorized)? Of course they would only do this after a little "helful nudge" by the DOJ.
Serioulsy - the idea is great, but using a service like this is basically like putting a big "HEY, I AM OVER HERE, COME ARREST ME AND THEN DO AN UNLAWFUL SEARCH OF MY HOUSE!" sign on your roof.
The sad sad thing is - a few years ago I would take a comment like this owrth a grain of salt and offer up some tinfoil to the potser. Nowadays I feel like it could actually happen.
Now that is just... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ahem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Insightful)
Although this is better for speed, isn't it bad for anonimity? Traffic that has been over four hosts is harder to trace back than traffic that has hopped over a single host.
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ahem (Score:5, Informative)
So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.
Re:Ahem (Score:4, Informative)
Except that Swedish authorities are known [wikinews.org] to violate the law if they like it.
Re:ah... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm nervous when people are nervous about standing up for themselves and saying, "Go fuck yourself, I'll read whatever I damned well like."
Re:ah... (Score:3, Funny)
X.
Re:ah... (Score:5, Insightful)
What country do you live in? I live in the USA where people voted in a facist administration that thinks the Constitution is a quaint document that is exactly where it belongs in a museum. If we could wrap copper around the founding fathers we wouldn't need foreign oil. Their spinning bodies could power the country for the next thousand years. If you mod this funny you aren't paying attention.
Re:ah... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Fascism isn't a product of the right, it's more leftist [wnd.com]. You aren't even using the term correctly.
2. The Bush administration does not compare in ideology to Hitler nor Mussolini. By regurgitating the internet group think you add nothing to the conversation, but you do get a +5 from the other monkeys that agree with you.
3. Clinton and Bush's attempt to pass the line item veto is a much larger violation of the constitution then anything in the patriot act.
4. Yes, our founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves, but most likely it would be over congress having surrendered most of its power to the executive branch over the past 80 years. The rest of the rolling would be over social programs like welfare. When you run around quoting Ben Franklin about "Trading freedom for security", do you realize he was talking about taxes?
5. There is plenty of things the Bush administration has done that can be argued are ineffective, or just wrong. Framing your arguement with "OMG BUSH IS FACIST" is worthless.
6. Bring the pirate party to the USA!
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem (is it a problem?) with freedom is that people will abuse it. In this case, the right is privacy. If you outlawed crypto for fear of terrorists using it they would just use other methods. It might not be SSL/TLS/etc. but simple keywords. For instance, it could be agreed upon at a meeting that if the heist/bombing/etc. is going to go ahead, I speak to you about my mother. If not, I could speak to you about my father. Simple things that like that is essentally all they'd need to do to circumvent any outlawed crypto. The counter to that is to monitor the communcations of every last person on earth for all time.
Here, I'd hope you'd understand that the solution is worse than the problem. So that terrorists can't use tools that law abiding citizens use, you'd have to totally eliminate privacy and have everyone monitored all the time.
Re:Awesome! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Right... (Score:5, Insightful)
rhY
Re:Right... (Score:5, Informative)
For example;
There's a zillion reasons really. But more importantly, you shouldn't need any reason at all. The simple fact is, there exist people who would prefer, atleast sometimes, being anonymous online.
Re:Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Help us n00bs!! (Score:4, Informative)
The Swedish Pirate Party has launched a commercial, high-capacity darknet, on an unprecedented scale and bandwidth.
Even today, you can route your Bittorrent traffic over Tor or I2P, but its slow as hell. And lets not be coy. The vast majority of people will use this for infringing copyright. That is the difference -- performance.
Sigh. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. "The Watchmen"
2. Star Trek.
3. At least 6 million news stories about the CIA each year.
4. Bruce Schneier
5. About 6 hundred million blogs commenting about the news stories.
Oh, and
6. Decimus lunius luvenalis, better known as Juvenal.
Re:Reminds me of a saying (Score:3, Funny)
I wouldn't admit to having read that particular trainwreck if I were you ;)
Re:Reminds me of a saying (Score:3, Interesting)
How likely would a real-life crypto expert be not to work out the meaning of "without wax" in one go {presumably she would know at least a few words in a few languages}, much less spot obvious anagrams such as NDAKOTA = TANKADO? Not knowing the name of the coin used in a country is hardly forgivable either! You can find out what the currency of Spain is in any travel agent. Clue: it's not the Peseta!
Re:correct translation from swedish (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of good, legitimate reasons to want your internet connection to be safe from wiretaps.
If you lived in China, for instance, and wanted to browse pro-democracy websites, or religious websites, or anything else under the allegedly-censored regime, then the pirate party's tool could be quite helpful until the government cracked it, at which time it could just give the user a false sense of security.