The older readers will probably remember Napster back in the early days when it was one of those "pirate services." It was a place you could go to share music with other users and get music for free.
But it was shut down in 2001 by a court order during a legal battle with the infamous RIAA. In spite of the legal uses of Napster, such as small bands purposefully sharing their music on Napster to gain notoriety, the court issued an injunction preventing Napster from continuing its service.
The thing which made this "shut down" possible was the fact that Napster was run in a top-down manner. All of the workings involved in the process of sharing were housed, funded, and maintained centrally.
As we all know, users found other ways of sharing files. The first such method of note was several p2p services such as Kazaa. Then came the revolutionary BitTorrent protocol. These have the advantage that the workings are not under centralized management. The way these pieces of software work, everybody distributes, so to shut it down, everybody has to be dragged into court, and that's just not practical.
Today, there is another centralized system in danger of being curtailed which has a much greater impact on Internet users' freedoms.
The Internet began in the United States and the United States continues to exert draconian control over it. Many of you probably know that the United States congress currently threatens to put through SOPA, a bill which would allow unprecedented curtailing of the DNS system for corporate interests.
But, there are efforts underway to make a decentralized systems for communication not so susceptible to censorship. Here are a couple.
The B.A.T.M.A.N. Protocol
The B.A.T.M.A.N. (Better Approach To Mobile Ad-hoc Networking) protocol, aside from having an awesome acronym, is a p2p network protocol not (necessarily) dependent on lower-level network protocols suitable for large, self-organizing networks. It may be used on most devices which support the Wifi protocol and could one day replace the internet.
The general use case for this protocol is to install custom firmware (such as DD-Wrt or OpenWrt) on wireless routers and make these wireless routers act as B.A.T.M.A.N. nodes which may automatically connect to each other, creating a large-scale, self-organizing, wireless network which end-user devices (such as computers) may connect to in order to communicate with each other. The B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol may also be tunneled, allowing for communications over the Internet or over other network protocols for situations where it is not feasible to communicate via the normal low-power radio frequencies used by normal wireless cards.
One day, each city may have its own city-wide B.A.T.M.A.N. network. These networks might be connected to other city B.A.T.M.A.N. networks via ham radio band communications, phone networks, cables, or any number of other methods.
Project Meshnet
Project meshnet is an active grassroots attempt to engineer a way to create a mesh network with the ability to replace the Internet. Much of their planning is done on Reddit. They're still in the early planning stages, but they appear to be very serious about the effort and have a lot of expertise among them.
They may eventually decide to use the B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol or not, depending on what decisions are made about the needs of the user. B.A.T.M.A.N. is definitely a good contender, however.
If you'd like to help out the project, go to projectmeshnet.org and sign up to their forums. Being active on their subreddit is also recommended.
The less we have to depend on service providers, the less governments and corporations may interfere with our rights to free speech.
Happy hacking.
Showing posts with label p2p. Show all posts
Showing posts with label p2p. Show all posts
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Technology to Empower the Users
Technology can assist governments and corporations in their ends, often to detrimental and oppressive ends. Some countries monitor and censor communications using firewalls and deep packet inspection. Some companies produce software laced with DRM and antifeatures for their own benefit.
But there is another side to technology. More individuals are using technology to put power back into their own hands.
These efforts are overwhelmingly grassroots and community driven projects. In fact, it's questionable whether a technology imposed in a top down manner can give power to the users in any meaningful way.
This blog post is meant to give a quick introduction to just a few of the specific projects and technologies out there for giving power to individuals previously retained by those with power.
The RepRap Project
The RepRap Project is an active and so far extremely successful effort to bring the ability to manufacture consumer goods to individuals everywhere. "RepRap" is short for "Replicating Rapid Prototyper." At this point, the project is less than seven years old and has already designed from scratch four official RepRap devices. With the proper software (all of which is free and open source), users can design a 3D model on a computer and "print" the three dimensional object using the RepRap in various types of plastic in only a few hours.
The 3D models that one person designs may be easily shared via the Internet. At this point, the most popular place for sharing these 3D model files seems to be Thingaverse. Not all of the models on that site may be printed using a RepRap, but the majority are, and all are able to be rapid prototyped in some manner.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the RepRap is that it is designed to be able to print many of its own parts. 3D model files of these parts are freely available on the RepRap project's wiki. This has some amazing benefits. The user has the ability to print backup parts for themselves, print the parts for a friend to ease the process of getting into desktop manufacturing, and modify the 3D model files and print the new parts so that s/he may improve and/or customize the device.
An assembled, functional RepRap may be purchased for under $1,400 at Botmill, among many other places.
GNU Radio
GNU Radio is a project to allow users to detect and analyze radio signals in their current area. Almost any radio signal may be analyzed from ham radio bands to Wifi and television bands. The project allows users even to decode digital television signals for audio/visual playback.
Whereas other means of detecting signals require a crystal to be tuned to each frequency individually in order to get a signal, GNU Radio allows for "listening on all channels at once." This does require some specialized hardware which can be a bit expensive, but the payoffs are great.
Tor
Tor (The Onion Router) is a project for protecting users' anonymity online. One of the greatest benefits the Internet has given us is the ability to speak and be heard without experiencing negative repercussions. This anonymity allows Internet citizens to be truly honest about their opinions, which they may not be willing to express in "real life."
Tor is software which establishes peer-to-peer connections between computers, allowing them to use each other as proxies. This allows users to engage in internet communication without a significant risk that somebody (such as and ISP, government, or other third party) will be able to trace the communication back to them. This can be done both for clients and servers, allowing for freer expression than should be conducted without such protections.
Tor can be and has been used by political dissidents attempting to spread their messages as well as those attempting to publish and view unpopular information.
These projects should be the subject of several later posts. They have the ability to change the world in positive ways by giving more power to accomplish useful things to individuals interested in making a difference.
But there is another side to technology. More individuals are using technology to put power back into their own hands.
These efforts are overwhelmingly grassroots and community driven projects. In fact, it's questionable whether a technology imposed in a top down manner can give power to the users in any meaningful way.
This blog post is meant to give a quick introduction to just a few of the specific projects and technologies out there for giving power to individuals previously retained by those with power.
The RepRap Project
The RepRap Project is an active and so far extremely successful effort to bring the ability to manufacture consumer goods to individuals everywhere. "RepRap" is short for "Replicating Rapid Prototyper." At this point, the project is less than seven years old and has already designed from scratch four official RepRap devices. With the proper software (all of which is free and open source), users can design a 3D model on a computer and "print" the three dimensional object using the RepRap in various types of plastic in only a few hours.
The 3D models that one person designs may be easily shared via the Internet. At this point, the most popular place for sharing these 3D model files seems to be Thingaverse. Not all of the models on that site may be printed using a RepRap, but the majority are, and all are able to be rapid prototyped in some manner.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the RepRap is that it is designed to be able to print many of its own parts. 3D model files of these parts are freely available on the RepRap project's wiki. This has some amazing benefits. The user has the ability to print backup parts for themselves, print the parts for a friend to ease the process of getting into desktop manufacturing, and modify the 3D model files and print the new parts so that s/he may improve and/or customize the device.
An assembled, functional RepRap may be purchased for under $1,400 at Botmill, among many other places.
GNU Radio
GNU Radio is a project to allow users to detect and analyze radio signals in their current area. Almost any radio signal may be analyzed from ham radio bands to Wifi and television bands. The project allows users even to decode digital television signals for audio/visual playback.
Whereas other means of detecting signals require a crystal to be tuned to each frequency individually in order to get a signal, GNU Radio allows for "listening on all channels at once." This does require some specialized hardware which can be a bit expensive, but the payoffs are great.
Tor
Tor (The Onion Router) is a project for protecting users' anonymity online. One of the greatest benefits the Internet has given us is the ability to speak and be heard without experiencing negative repercussions. This anonymity allows Internet citizens to be truly honest about their opinions, which they may not be willing to express in "real life."
Tor is software which establishes peer-to-peer connections between computers, allowing them to use each other as proxies. This allows users to engage in internet communication without a significant risk that somebody (such as and ISP, government, or other third party) will be able to trace the communication back to them. This can be done both for clients and servers, allowing for freer expression than should be conducted without such protections.
Tor can be and has been used by political dissidents attempting to spread their messages as well as those attempting to publish and view unpopular information.
These projects should be the subject of several later posts. They have the ability to change the world in positive ways by giving more power to accomplish useful things to individuals interested in making a difference.
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