Minority was your word, not mine.
And maybe you shouldnt assume you think like everyone else.
Were all individual minorities.
I am of this opinion too.
Can anyone find me a law against the use of any PROTOCOL used in the internet. Apart from usual exceptions of Nth Korea or similar.
P2P protocols so often kicked for being the pirateās protocol are not even attempted to be legislated against. Some ISPs try to limit the bandwidth of P2P protocols but that is a commercial decision to maximise their profits.
Since SAFE is essentially a group of protocols (software implementing the protocols) there is no legal precedent to banning of SAFE. So I doubt very highly that any government would attempt to go down that rabbitās hole of attempting to legislate against SAFE. Almost immediately there would be 100 clones that operate the exact same protocols (exact copies of SAFE s/w) but called by a different name. So the network would be still only one network, just be referred to by different names.
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It would not surprise me if one of the first uses of the SAFEnet was for Dark Net Market activities. If I was a current drug market administrator, I would have people working on a Dark Net Market APP right now, for the SAFE Network. Whoever does this first could make a ton of money and not be risking their freedom as much as they are currently.
If SAFE works as promised, then there is almost zero risk for the market operator. The Sellers and Buyers would still carry the same risk as now, using TOR. After all they seem to send and receive drugs in the mail.
Maybe I donāt understand this properly, it seems like a no-brainer to me.
Those so called administrators would have to have 95+% confidence in SAFE succeeding to even allocate one cent towards that. Tor and otherwise is working for them now, there would be danger in writing code now till they can see it working as advertised because things are apt to change, APIs could end up having slightly different responses/outcomes and writing code now could mean they have to scrape it in case something they write now that is secure has an opening when the final APIs are released. The opening would be from misuse of the final API.
So they would be smart and wait till SAFE is running in the wild, and is large enough that the NSA, CIA cannot compromise the network and track them down.
It therefore is my opinion that the dark net operators of any significance would not be the first adopters of SAFE but rather the second wave when SAFE is large enough. The first adopters are those who are developing their APPs with the understanding that things change and their code will need revising. These APPs will not land their operators in jail if the network is compromised in the early stages.
I think the point at which these darknet operators decide to use SAFE is when it is large enough to not be able to be compromised. The reason is that their operations could have dire consequences if SAFE is compromised.
The real issue is the perception. Will the media call it the ultimate dark web OR will the initial APPs displaying social good be what is reported?
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Great answer. Thank you.
This was one of my initial concerns years ago when I first read about Maidsafe. The fact seems to be that negative news sells better than positive news. With a bit of luck, the good stuff will out-weigh the bad and the bad will be seen as āa few bad apples.ā
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This would not be the first technology to be demonised, if in fact that happens. But we live in a global world where information is still impossible to suppress once it is public, so there will always be people who recognise legitimate uses and go after them.
For example, automobiles started out having to have a man walk in front of them with a red flag. Not the same issue, but born out of public fears, politicians made this law. I donāt know how long that lasted, but today in the UK traffic kills several thousand people per year while terrorism and insects (we only have wasps and bees) kill about the same number (less than ten on average).
The utility of SAFEnetwork goes way beyond Tor, which nobody AFAIK has yet tried to outlaw. This is partly because it is extremely difficult to enforce laws against any technology, but in the case of SAFEnetwork, like automobiles, its utility will mean any nation trying to ban its use will be shooting itself in the head. Not that some wonāt do that, look at Brexit 
, but not everyone will do that, and eventually even those who did will have to come around or face great disadvantage and hardship.
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Thereās actually a lot of bans throughout the Middle East, which arenāt typically grouped with super-oppressive regimes (yeah SA might be in that group, but theyāre just a small part).
āThe use of Internet telephony is prohibited in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a local telecommunications company executive, who says Etisalat is waiting for government approval to provide Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. Bloggers, meanwhile, report the VoIP ban extends to other countries in the region including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as to other Internet telephony services, including MSN Messenger Video Call. Bahrain reportedly permits the use of VoIP.ā
Iām familiar with several people in the region who have to VPN everything, just to be on the safe side.
Ethiopia is blocking Skype and Tor. Myanmar has URL filtering.
Many countries are blocking certain websites / DNS filtering.
Then again, here in the UK, we have movements to prevent encrypted internet safe spots, Theresa May wants to ban crypto: here's what that would cost, and here's why it won't work anyway | Boing Boing
āTheresa May says that last nightās London terror attacks mean that the internet cannot be allowed to provide a āsafe spaceā for terrorists and therefore working cryptography must be banned in the UK.ā
Seems crazy to think terror will be stopped via non-encrypted internet. Timothy McVeigh didnāt need an open interweb in order to orchestrate the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 and injured 600+. [more than the sum total of all UK terror attacks this century (I believe that math is correct)]
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Interesting, but of course this is more than a protocol, it is a whole service they are banning. So I guess the UAE might ban the āuseā of SAFE. Although SAFE will simply be supplying websites and ācloudā storage as far as the legislation can be formulated if āservicesā are targeted. So it would be interesting if they would attempt to do this.
Yet they donāt ban VPN, like some claim China is about to do.
Thanks for that, didnāt know which countries, if any, banned Tor, except maybe Nth Korea & China
This does not affect SAFE network itself. Good luck state banning of any SAFE site, but they will try Iām sure to filter it out.
Ah yes like Australia, but both claim and know its political suicide to actually ban encryption (https). So they are courting companies to redo their sites so that the data is unencrypted at their servers and available for snooping. So yes they come out with over stated desires so that they can get their real desires implemented and that is what they are already doing (courting companies to remove true end-to-end encryption in secret). And if necessary legislate that the companies have to āgive all assistance to police in decrypting messagesā
Yep, The worse terror in the last 100 years has all been without encrypted communications. Many Iām sure remember hearing about the numerous terror attacks in the UK of years back by the IRA, and other groups. Australia really hasnāt had a real terrorist attack, yet we have some of the worse laws ābecause of terrorismā The police claim some are terror attacks, but they are either mentally disturbed people or violent people committing violence and not legit terrorist attacks. Like a man attacking 2 police officers with a kitchen knife outside a police station was āa terrorist attackā. Yes it was terrible but not a terrorist attack. Or a lone gunman who had a history of violence (due to being mentally disturbed) the police discounted as needed to be watched.
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Bah, let them try. Tunnel it through a VPN, BNC bouncer or other traffic redirector or any of several dozen other approaches to proxifying, redirecting, tunnelling, etcā¦ Where thereās a will, thereās a way.
LOL, you could probably make requests with knock and get them back via push notifications - thereās just so many alt-routing ways to go, provided youāve got a core SAFE network out there to connect up with.
Erm, Hole Punching comes to mind 
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SAFE protocols should be indistinguishable from normal https style of traffic. So the authorities and deep packet inspection should not be able to detect specific SAFE traffic.
And SAFE will be using hole punching too just to get through NAT and thus also other firewalls that are not whitelisted walls and allow outgoing encrypted traffic
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Im actually more worried about authorities coming after the maid team. Should not be hard to find them. Best would be to get it as decentralized as possible before launchā¦ of course we need the public testing and all, but its a fine line. Gov. are cracking down alot of places. It would be important to get some legit apps that can show the network as something useful and important other than doing something to govs dont want.
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Wait countries can block tor? I thought it was impossible to block such things. If countries can block tor whatās to stop them from blocking maidsafe?
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You do have to remember SAFE does not use any centralised service, no NTP/DNS/SMTP etc. etc. So it is harder to block. The best bet is to make it illegal to use and have large fines if you are caught etc.
Networks that use these services all fail when the service is cut. Its subtle but very important. When we say decentralised we mean everything is decentralised, no centralised service or clearnet services are used past IP routing. To kill IP routing means actually killing all IP communications on the net, easier to switch off routers, however satellite then is a bad thing to deal with, so ban satellite dishes etc. (not far fetched Saudi used to).
TL;DR SAFE is hard to kill by a centralised authority technically. Politically it may be different.
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That, I believe, is the greatest fear - that some politician(s) will overreact to some mini-uprising, probably by a special-interest group. Political positions are too often brought about by irrational thinking or no thinking at all, just reaction to something. Good to know David and the MaidSafe team have thought about this.
Fear of punishment (by the populace) can be a greater weapon than technology sometimes.
I say this all the time, but thatās because it is relevant imo.
During prohibition there were more speak-easies per capita than there are bars today in the US.
They made weed illegal and it went from a tiny subculture to a socially acceptable habit found in every corner of the globe.
Making stuff illegal doesnāt stop people doing it, in fact, it usually makes it more profitable, topical and interesting which creates bigger incentives and more drive for users. If people really want something and they feel safe doing it (like digital freedom) laws donāt seem to be very effective at stopping them.
If thereās no way for them to know Iām using SAFE then what do I care if it is illegal? Sure, some people like to drive between the lines, but as long as thereās always a healthy, intelligent minority who believe in freedom SAFE will do just fine imo and it will ride through all the waves until it is eventually accepted. It seems inevitable to me if SAFE works as we expect 
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I care. Not sure if that makes me a weirdo.
Nope, not at all, probably part of the majority. As I said in the next lineā¦
Perhaps I should have instead said āa minority who believe that fighting for freedom and taking risks for it is worthwhileā. I appreciate that for many people the thought of breaking the law makes them uncomfortable. A lot of people care more about right and wrong though, the law bears no relevance to that imho. If there is an immoral law then I have a duty to break it 
I know Iām not alone.
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I would be more comfortable with MaidSafe being able to avoid such crusades.
Being realistic, I expect it will take less than 6 months of live safecoin before we have a dark market on SAFE. We will also see people make use of its USPs for other reasons (that the state wonāt like).
Iād love MaidSafe to avoid any of that, but it seems very unlikely to me. I made peace with that a long time ago though. As long as they canāt shut it down it will win eventually imo.
EDIT: China banned bitcoin again. The price is already recovering. I donāt think theyāll kill the Chinese market, I think they will create a much bigger p2p market. More speak-easies again I suppose time will reveal all.
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With the appropriate public face I think the MaidSafe team could avoid controversy that entangles the company any way. Much the same way that manufacturers of kitchen knives and garden spades stay out of horror stories that include their products, i.e. taking the silent approach.
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