Okay, let's be real here............... just how SAFE is Soulseek in the United States now?

indeed - their stated tactics now are to make examples of the few in order to terrorize the many. i'm sure this is what they intend to do until hatch or berman pass one of their b0x-0wn1ng bills, or the mini-DMCA laws are passed at the state level or they mandate a palladium-type chip. whatever dipshit plan the money they spend on congressmen can buy them.

they do still seem to be tied up with kazaa/morpheus and college nerds who dare to create unfiltered search enginges at the moment; i don't think soulseek has yet made their radar (i hope).

At least this way, you won't be a major target for the RIAA who are mainly seeking out people sharing a significant number of complete mainstream corporate records.

As recently as 2000, the cipherpunks were
developing commercial implementations of
anonymous internet access protocols,
heavy hitters like Matt Blaze and his Zero Knowledge
Solutions (see attached).

3 years later, the products die gracefully
with the internet "economy": no guerilla demand, no
commercial use, no killer app.

today, or rather in the next three years, this
set of protocols is going to see huge underground demand
as internet seekers (UR) start to establish internet identities
and require real privacy.

resurrecting Blaze's early work as an
open source, free implementation is a good first step that would
likely make a much larger impact on the RIAA than any application layer based solution ( Kazaa, SS, ... ) ever will.

Date: 2001-03-18 06:14:04 PST
Web anonymity service cuts staff

Privacy technology developer Zero-Knowledge Systems said Thursday it
has laid off about a quarter of its staff despite recently raising
$22 million in funding.

Montreal-based Zero-Knowledge has developed software, dubbed Freedom,
which lets people conceal their identities online. Freedom allows
consumers and businesses to shop, chat, send e-mail and surf the Web
while covering their tracks so that Web sites, Internet service
providers and law enforcement officials cannot monitor or review
their activities.

no society without privacy, no privacy without technology.

And I'll tell ODB that I'm buying his album anyway--I just needed a taste first.

At least the client for GNU/Linux was free software to begin with. Surely one can dig that up and get some ideas.

> my friends are starting to express concern that the RIAA
> are going to start breaking down their door
> Okay, let's be real here............... just how SAFE is Soulseek in the United States now?

Not without a warrant, they can't. Legal and monetary pain is the kind they
like to inflict; they're good at it, too.

> i'd like to offer them a completely anonymous, free
> solution or at least provide the illusion of complete
> anonymity to anyone who cares enough to look.

freenet already does this. Noone uses it. As there are other ex-syndata
people on this email, there's no need to explain *why* noone uses it, right?

> can any of you remember what Zero Knowledge Systems did? was that a Matt
> Blaze joint?

Yeah, I remember it with some details. It was really interesting.

> today they sell personal firewalls and privacy policy tools. yawn.

The crypto industry crumbled.

> i remember ZKS being absorbed by the internet "economy"
> and pushed into its current commercial direction. but damn if they
> didn't
> do something really interesting back then. some kind of multi-hop
> anonymous transport layer protocol? no demand 5 years ago (slow
> connections,
> no fear) but today we'll see a strong guerilla demand.
> like m16's and bananas for the file sharing massive.

No, you won't see any interest. People don't even bother to encrypt
super-personal email, even when it requires minimal effort. They install
Kazaa even though it riddles their computers with spyware that completely
defeat any attempts at anonymity. You think they're going to hassle with
tricky things like anonymizers? Who do you know who even knows how to use
something as simple as an anonymous remailer?

> what i remember about ZKS solution:
> it required a huge, global and mostly offshore infrastructure
> it used secret-sharing

And noone used it.

> any one feel like getting back into the protocol writing business?
> this time we go under the radar (ip)

Restate your goals; then come up with a more achievable way of accomplishing
them. You want to prevent some black baggers from storming your house with
H&K MP-5s and a no-knock warrant? Given your threat model, that's a far,
far branch of the attack tree.

Seriously, if you rigorously define your goal, we'll flesh out threat models,
populate the attack trees, and come up with a workable solution. I'm totally
game.