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=head1 AnoNet, Take 2!
So, you came across anoNet and thought it sounded great, so you decided
to join in order to check it out.
...and found the (only) client port doesn't work half the time,
...and most of the advertised services no longer exist,
...and most of the people have left,
...and those who are left can hardly be classified as friendly,
...and so you left, and perhaps found another darknet instead.
Well, you're not the only one who's been turned off, and a few of us
have decided to fix AnoNet. Some of us are relatively new, while others
joined AnoNet years ago, and left out of disgust. A number of features
set version 2 apart from the original:
=over
=item No false advertising
If you see something advertised here, it exists. You won't see stuff
that hasn't been up in years here.
=item No centralized network control
You don't have to worry about Kaos waking up one morning and blocking
your access to the whole network by deciding to filter private ASNs.
You also don't have to worry about a couple of powerful guys getting
together and "blacklisting" you from the network for some unspecified
reason with an inquisition against your peers.
=item No centralized IRC control
No centralized IRC control: You don't have to worry about risc
g-lining you from the "official" IRC network for no apparent reason,
and refusing to even admit to having g-lined you. Since the whole
purpose behind AnoNet was to create a censorship-resistant alternative
to the government-censored "public" Internet, arbitrary censorship on
the "official" AnoNet IRC network by anonymous government members is
particularly troubling.
=item No resource mess
We have one mechanism for resource management, a decentralized (not just
distributed, but truly decentralized) resource database. You don't have
to deal with half a zillion incompatible (and in the case of the wiki,
down) services, run by guys who may not even be on the AnoNet tomorrow.
=item No arbitrary rules
If you read the advertising for AnoNet, you probably think it's whatever
you make of it. Sadly, there's a tiny handful of people who have control
over most of the network, and make new (unwritten) rules whenever the
mood strikes them. The sum of those rules is that AnoNet is whatever
I<they> make of it. In version 2, we've undertaken to fix that, by both
technical and administrative means.
=back
=head2 How to Join
Joining is pretty simple: If you know how to connect to a
client port, UFO's CP (L<http://ix.ucis.nl/clientport.php> or
L<http://www.qontrol.nl/anonet-cp.tgz>) will already land you in the
right place. (Once you're online, you can join "the club" at 1.3.3.7:6667
#anonet, or irc.somerandomnick.ano:6667 (1.0.27.103, if you don't have
DNS for some reason) #RendezVous. If you don't have an IRC client handy
(or if you're too lazy to set it up to avoid leaking your real info), you
can just telnet over to irc.somerandomnick.ano port 2323 (or ufo-net.nl
port 2323, from the outside). Alternatively, you can point your Jabber
client over to irc.somerandomnick.ano, or you can even use Jabber s2s
to talk with everybody else by just joining the MUC room RendezVouz
at irc.somerandomnick.ano.) If OpenVPN is all Greek to you, UFO's IRC
server is also reachable from the public Internet (irc.kwaaknet.org port
6667 channel #anonet). If IRC is all Greek to you, you may want to talk
to your favorite search engine about that, or just use KwaakNet's Webchat
(L<http://webchat.kwaaknet.org/?c=AnoNet>). (Note that if your only aim
in joining AnoNet is to search Google anonymously, you can save yourself
the hassle by just heading over to Scroogle (L<http://www.scroogle.org/>).
If you're looking to browse the rest of the public Internet anonymously,
though, we now have an outbound proxy, which you're more than welcome
to use.)
=head2 Why to Join
(Note: There's now a separate page (L<http://www.anonet2.org/links>)
with links to many more reasons to join AnoNet.)
You'd want to join AnoNet2 for the same reasons as you'd want to join
AnoNet1: to exercise your freedom of speech and action, without having
to worry too much about people who don't like you making too many
connections between your online and offline identities. Unlike AnoNet1,
we're not nazis about our rules, so if you don't feel the need to conceal
your real-life identity, we won't get all mad at you. Just please be
considerate of those who would like to stay anonymous ("pseudonomous,"
technically), and everybody is happy.
A secondary reason for joining is to gain an opportunity to experiment
with internet technologies without breaking "the real thing." While
that's not the purpose behind AnoNet, it seems to be a common reason
for joining, and as long as you don't break too much with your fun,
you're more than welcome to have your fun here.
You may want to join for the social scene (we even have our own social
network, although nobody uses it for what should be obvious reasons),
or you may want to create your own social scene. Again, you're not
looking at an "official" reason for joining, but nobody owns AnoNet, so
"official" is an artificial term 'round here.
Finally, you may be getting a bit nervous at the amount of regulation
piling up around the world against the public Internet. Since the "public"
Internet is owned and managed by a number of multinational corporations,
it's fairly easy for governments to regulate it. Part of the main
purpose behind AnoNet has always been to get away from those private
control points, in order to create a truly public internet. In AnoNet1,
anybody who can regulate crzydmnd can regulate AnoNet's "official"
wiki (and by extension, its resource "database"), and anybody who can
regulate Kaos can regulate AnoNet's "official" client port (and by
extension, all new AnoNet users), so the private control point problem
hasn't quite been solved there. AnoNet2 is still largely controlled by
UFO and somerandomnick, but we have both technical and administrative
measures in place to ensure that as the network grows, the two of us
will no longer have enough control to destroy the network, even if our
own governments ever decide to try regulating us.
=head2 Why Not to Join
If you're looking for a ready-made community, where you just show up and
"browse," AnoNet (either 1 or 2) is probably not what you're after.
The whole concept behind AnoNet is that it's whatever you make it.
That's not to say you'll have to build everything from scratch (and
in fact, it's a bit too late for that, unless you want to I<re>build
stuff that others have already built, and if you can do better than the
original, people will probably switch to your version), but if you want
to be happy here, you're best off bringing your creativity along rather
than leaving it behind when you join.
=head2 What You Can Do
Since AnoNet uses the same protocols as the public Internet, anything
that's possible on the public Internet is theoretically possible on
AnoNet. In practice, we don't have anything that nobody bothered to
provide on AnoNet.
Here's a list of things you can currently do on AnoNet2 (i.e., without
having to set anything up yourself):
=over
=item *
DNS (1.0.27.38)
=item *
IRC (L<irc://1.3.3.7/anonet> or L<irc://irc.somerandomnick.ano/RendezVous>)
=item *
Jabber (irc.somerandomnick.ano)
=item *
Web
=item *
PSYC (psyced: IRC, Jabber, social networking, "twittering," newsgroups, etc.) (irc.somerandomnick.ano)
=item *
git (including a decentralized "wiki" replacement) (L<git://git1.somerandomnick.ano/>, L<http://anogit.ucis.ano/.git/>, and possibly other feeds)
=item *
outbound HTTP proxy to the public Internet (http://a.privoxy.somerandomnick.ano:8118/)
=item *
Web-based resource database viewer: http://core.ucis.ano/~ivo/anonet/
=back
Here's a list of things that somebody claims to be working on:
=over
=item *
email
=item *
news (NNTP)
=back
If you want something that's not on either list, you'll either have to
set it up yourself, or con somebody else into setting it up himself. (If
it's something that others are likely to find useful and/or interesting,
you'll probably have an easy time recruiting guys to help you out.)
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