> What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now.
But they weren't asking about whether the network had some users doing "super-illegal" things. They asked if it was roughly all the users. So that analogy isn't even close to fitting.
You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral.
One of the central ideas of Freenet (and some other projects) is that you don't know what exactly you transfer. Moreover, if you could discern “good content” from “bad content” in some general or specific fashion, you would instantly be forced to do so according to numerous laws.
If we followed that path, all bittorrent clients would get outlawed long ago (we all know certain businesses have always wanted that).
> You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral.
Participating in society inevitably helps some cold-blooded killers.
But I wouldn't deliberately help out a group made of cold-blooded killers.
So I think that moral makes sense. Which part would you disagree with?
> If we followed that path, all bittorrent clients would get outlawed long ago (we all know certain businesses have always wanted that).
Well, if I was strongly anti-piracy I sure wouldn't run a bittorrent client that helps relay anonymous chunks between other users. I don't think we need to involve legality in this discussion, that just complicates things.
No, the fate of bittorrent software is set in stone with that reasoning. “It generates how many terabits of piracy transfers per second globally? Across how many pirated works?” BAM! “Authors of torrent clients provide tools almost exclusively used by pirates. Stop or go to jail!” And if you really want that Ubuntu image, wait until your local Linux user group gets the package by international mail. Because your convenience is nothing compared to all that piracy, right?
Maybe you just want to say that all Freenet users are pedophiles. Maybe you want to think that all Freenet users are pedophiles to not think about other things. Maybe you want to state that “normal person” has no reason to use (and won't ever have to consider using) anything like it. It's your choice, thank you very much.
> Maybe you just want to say that all Freenet users are pedophiles. Maybe you want to think that all Freenet users are pedophiles to not think about other things. Maybe you want to state that “normal person” has no reason to use (and won't ever have to consider using) anything like it. It's your choice, thank you very much.
Uh, no.
I just think it sometimes matters what the percent is. And I'm curious what the percent is.
I even ran a pretty stable freenet node at one point, thank you very much.
And you didn't really explain where your moral reasoning differs from mine. I'm not discussing what should be legal...
No, the percentage reasoning is wrong completely. There is a well known novel that ties “acceptable” percentage of suffering “when living in a society”, geometric progression of “good” expected to result from killing someone, and an actual pawn broker whose percent is considered too high to be “fair”. A century and a half later, people still don't get it.
We can make that calculating approach universal. What percent of your neighbors is not good enough in general? What percent of all people on Earth? If we start close inspections, we will find that not a lot of people pass the test… and the rest can inevitably be discarded and excluded. Let's not forget about yourself, what's your percentage? Are you good enough to join other Freenet users? That's the opposite side of original question.
Moral choice can not be calculated, it turns into something else when one does it.
I didn't say you should try to reduce it to a math problem. It's just that you need information before you can make choices.
And I think "there's some kind of fuzzy threshold where you should stop assisting someone" is a much better plan than "never assist anyone" or "always assist anyone, even hitler".
(If you think that's a strawman, you need to explain how the way you do things doesn't fit any of those three options.)
(And I'm not talking about hurting someone, or depriving them of basic human rights. Just not going out of my way to help them do what they want.)
> You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral.
OK, so then you're saying that unless you can prove for sure that NO criminal -- "really bad", actually morally repugnant "criminal" -- activity benefits from Freenet, one shouldn't run it. Great, thanks for the clarification.
But they weren't asking about whether the network had some users doing "super-illegal" things. They asked if it was roughly all the users. So that analogy isn't even close to fitting.