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Hostile Environments

Stephen Oliver edited this page Apr 3, 2017 · 1 revision

Places where Freenet may not be welcome. Either Freenet is illegal as such, or is attacked or blocked by the local forces of censorship.

Amongst others:

  • Blocked Freenet 0.5 in 2005
  • Keyword has been blocked for many years
  • Believed to have blocked Tor including most hidden relays
  • Rumours that Iran has successfully blocked Tor
  • Please substantiate with links
  • Blocks our website

France

Thanks to the DADVSI, Freenet may be illegal to run or develop in France.

Any input clarifying this would be appreciated!

Also three strikes law, Hadopi.

UK

Under the Digital Economy Act, three strikes legislation similar to France exists targeting individual downloaders/uploaders.

May pass US-style legislation requiring wiretap support in web apps and p2p, not yet clear.

U.S.A

Attempting (ed: when?) to pass legislation requiring all web services and p2p software to provide wiretap capabilities.

E.U.

Under IPRED2, if it passes, Freenet may be illegal as "aiding and abetting the intentional infringement of copyright (or trademarks) on a commercial scale".

IPRED2 is now officially dead but there are moves to reinstate it and ACTA might require similar measures.

See steganography for discussion on how to get Freenet working in such places.

Many people, including Toad, regard getting Freenet to work usefully in hostile environments as the fundamental goal in building Freenet.

In 2005, he threatened to quit if the node harvesting vulnerability, which makes it possible to block Freenet very cheaply at a national firewall, was not closed.

Fortunately (?) Oskar came up with an algorithm that enabled the creation of the Darknet.

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