August 14th, 2006
Relakks: Swedish Pirate Party Launches Massive Darknet
By Alice Hill
RealTechNews
The pirates are getting organized. Here’s a Swedish piracy organization that has launched a massive “darknet” for 5 Euros a month to enable large scale piracy and file sharing.
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Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.
“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,” says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”
File sharing of music, films, and other forms of culture is where the surveillance of Internet addresses has attracted the most attention, largely because the entertainment industry has been so aggressive in suing Internet users for copyright infringement, suing college students and single mothers alike without concern. “But there are much more fundamental values at stake here than copyright,” Rickard Falkvinge says. “The new technology has brought society to a crossroads. The only way to enforce today’s unbalanced copyright laws is to monitor all private communications over the Internet. Today’s copyright regime cannot coexist with an open society that guarantees the right to private communication.”
“Until we have changed the laws to ensure that citizens’ right to privacy is respected, we have a moral obligation to protect the citizens from the effects of the current routine surveillance,” Falkvinge continues. “This is our technical means to do just that.” The service is provided by the Swedish high-tech company Relakks, which offers a neutral IP on top of your existing ISP service through a strongly encrypted VPN connection. Basically, this gives users the advantage of a Swedish IP address from anywhere in the world.
The cost of the service is 5 euros per month, and it is available now at www.relakks.com. A portion of the subscription fees will go towards the Pirate Party’s work in changing the copyright and privacy laws and making the service obsolete.
About the Pirate Party:
The Pirate Party is Sweden’s largest political party outside Parliament. It was founded in January, 2006, and is running for office in this fall’s general elections. The party only has three issues on its agenda: shared culture, free knowledge, and protected privacy.
About Relakks:
Relakks provides services to help individuals to assure the security and integrity of their information. Relakks’ responsibility stems from the strong Swedish tradition of protecting the integrity of private life and all forms of communication between individuals. Relakks - broadband Swedish style. Source: Piratpartiet.se
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We Say: What’s the deal with this pic on the sign-up page? The guy looks a little too relaxed. Guess it’s good to be a pirate?
Nobody says:
Beware. The ISP behind Pirate Bay is owned by a well known nazi. Now he will know exactly what pr0n you are downloading.
August 14th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
ed3 says:
Relakks: Don’t do it!
(sorry, couldn’t resist)
August 14th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
boobies says:
screw darknet, skynet will shoot people from space if they try and hack you.
August 14th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Kang! says:
Shut your bloody hole, “Nobody”. Beware of anonymous cowards idiotically posting baseless stupidity because they have no life and thus nothing better to do than spread lies. Go get some plastic surgery, then maybe the girls might not always mistake you for the ass-faced boy. Not bloody likely though.
Viva the Pirate Party! Wish there was a Pirate Party in my cuntry.
August 14th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Otto Skorzeny says:
Nazi, you say? I’m signing up this very minute.
August 14th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
nobody 2 says:
Nazi???? Do we get cool uniforms?
August 14th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
VooDooRoo says:
Nazi`s?? George Bush as their leader!
no thanks
August 14th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
nobody 3 says:
nobody 2 don’t go there, I went to one of their ‘meetings’ I was promised pie and punch yet sadly this did not occur. As for the uniforms, yes they were cool esp. that deathhead thingy, but NO PIE AND PUNCH.. Come on how hard is it organize that shiat! I feel I was mislead, primarily due to their promises of Pie and Punch.
August 14th, 2006 at 4:07 pm
frmnazi333 says:
As a former Nazi I resent these allegations. We always had pie and punch at our meetings. These guys are just posers.
August 14th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
djskitzy says:
Sounds like a network perfect for terrorists and/or pedos…
But if there’s a cool uniform, I could terroize some granny in the street… Surely THAT’S still legal?
August 14th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Iosif Vissiarionovich Zhugashivi says:
Nazi? Don’t make me go soviet on your goosestepping gyrate grandmothers!
August 14th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
Inglix the Mad says:
“Beware. The ISP behind Pirate Bay is owned by a well known nazi. Now he will know exactly what pr0n you are downloading.”
You mean it’s run by an entertainment industry copyright lawyer? Wow, I knew lawyers were bloodsucking, two-timing, backbiting bastiches, but playing both sides of the fence. Yeesh.
August 14th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Bob says:
Uniforms? Cool… but do they have Tuscan Whole Milk?
August 14th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Göran Axelsson says:
Just to make things clear. The Pirate bay has nothing to do with the Swedish Piratpartiet. It is two separate organisations, one is keeping a well known file sharing tracker (the pirate bay) and the other is a political party (piratpartiet).
And by the way, the article never mentions “The Pirate Bay”, it was brought up by the first commenter… and I think I know who he is.
Göran Axelsson, Piratpartiet
August 15th, 2006 at 2:11 am
Mike says:
So basically this is almost the same as just using proxies?
There is no P2P just for this service, no downloads, etc…you still have to know where to find the stuff. Hmmm…so what does this service really do then? fast proxies maybe?
Title and text are REAL misleading as to what is actually involved!!
Mike
and YES - it would still be illegal in the USA to download copyrighted material through this - I know people want to ask that question. It would just be a TINY bit harder to catch you.
August 15th, 2006 at 2:55 am
Göran Axelsson says:
Not exactly as a proxy. you have an encrypted tunnel so no one could see your traffic. Then the company also states it will not give out any information about the users.
A very important thing to note here is that it is located in Sweden so the jurisdiction is Swedish.
Although the Swedish government buckled under the pressure from US pressure once and took down the pirate bay tracker… for nearly two days.
The fall out from this bust is that some ministers in the Swedish government faces an enquiry this fall and the legality of the bust is widely disputed.
I think the risk of a similar event is very low until this affair is over.
August 15th, 2006 at 4:51 am
El Duderino says:
I just signed up this afternoon, and it’s superb.
Their servers are creaking under the strain because of the massive interest at the moment, but I’m still getting 300Kbyte/s (about half my normal speed). They promise it will be at full speed soon, even guaranteeing (sp?) that they’ll allow you to fill a 100Mbit connection through their servers
This is going to be the end of big pirate-busts, soon only Kazaa-n00bs can be targeted.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Samca says:
“This is going to be the end of big pirate-busts, soon only Kazaa-n00bs can be targeted.”
“Not exactly as a proxy. you have an encrypted tunnel so no one could see your traffic.”
Pfffffft. Not bloody likely. 128-bit what encryption? 128 Bit AES? RSA? 128 bit RSA isn’t that good. Seriously. People believe it’s good because they’ve been told to. Banks use it so it must be good. ROFLMAO. 128 Bit encryption can easily be cracked by several US Government agencies. Hell, I’m part of a group of people (not a terribly large one either) that’s currently working on cracking an RSA 512 bit key through a distributed computing project, and we’re well on our way to that.
Not that the NSA is likely to be trying to crack your encryption for piracy, but still (unless you are of course doing it on a massive scale)…
Not smacking on the service, because it may be a good idea, but a little more robust encryption would be nice. If I truly wanted to keep something secret and not be able to have the encryption hacked, I wouldn’t trust anything less than 1024 bit encryption. 128 bit would be quite easy for any agency or organisation with access to a large distributed computing grid, or a sufficiently powerful supercomputer or cluster.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:53 pm
starcrafter2k says:
So, it’s thru their p2p network? OR is your connection tunneled and yuo can still get on limewire or w/e?
August 16th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Göran Axelsson says:
You tunnel all your traffic whatever it is. That is one big difference from a proxy which often are targeted towards a specific protocol.
But I have to raise a warning! At least XP have printer and file sharing on by default in a VPN connection. Some people have gotten their computer infected by worms that way.
TURN OFF PRINTER AND FILESHARING ON THE RELAKKS CONNECTION BEFORE CONNECTING!
You are not connecting to a known company lan, you are connecting straight out onto internet.
I’m not good enough to discuss the strength of the crypto system, but isn’t the 128 bit crypto keys only used for shorter sessions and a stronger 1024 bit for transfering the new keys.
That way you would need NSA to crack many keys only to listen in on a connection and if many people start using this service it will be impossibly to find out which connection is the interesting one.
Anyhow, if you’re investigating a crime bad enough to get help from NSA then you could probably also go the legal way through the Swedish courts.
August 16th, 2006 at 7:13 am
someone says:
The main thing that Relakks offers is the anonymity of your IP address. When you connect to the Internet through Relakks VPN sever you will get a new (Swedish) IP address. And they promise that they will not hand over your original IP address to someone - for example the music industry when they try to sue you for downloading/sharing that movie the other day.
The music industry cant sue you because they don’t know who to sue - without Relakks providing your true IP they cant find your real life identity.
Of course this in not the whole story. On their web page the Relakks says:
“If Swedish authorities can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they have a case for demanding subscription information from RELAKKS (they have to be of the opinion that if convicted the user will be imprisoned – fined not enough).
RELAKKS then have to hand over the subscription information entered by you (but that’s all). RELAKKS do not store any subscription information about you except what you entered yourself when signing up for the RELAKKS Safe Surf service.
For Swedish authorities to force RELAKKS to hand over “traffic data” including your RELAKKS IP at a specific point in time, they will have to prove a case with the minimum sentence of two years imprisonment.”
So it seems that they can still be forced to hand over your original IP if the Swedish authorities demand, provided that the sentence for the offence is the minimum of two years imprisonment.
Of, course I do not know the Swedish legal system but two year imprisonment sounds a sentence for a lot more serious crime than for downloading/sharing some movies.
They also say they do not have to keep an ordinary customer database (to be able handle transactions etc.). So they do not keep your Credit Card number etc.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Statuquo says:
When u re downloding some files if u havnt a large library and if ur get still with ur download ( not 1000 songs / week ) u don t have to be afraid with some classic P2P so use a darknet will offer u an enormus security because if the system get hack by organisations like NSA (and it will be ) ur just a little customer
who try to get music for himself . The bad thing is THAT UR ARE CUSTOMER so u signed up to be a illegal downloader and that make u bad face of authority just to say that when u re a custmomer u say to all government : i m a hacker !!!
August 18th, 2006 at 10:41 am
wtf?? says:
Theres no fckin nazi party in swedenthats popular ,even the Pirate Party isnt
August 19th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
deathspikable says:
if i was the nsa i would set up a to die for network to attract all those trying to hide or those having something to hide just a sting dont matter to me i dont hav nuttin to hide deathspikable
August 20th, 2006 at 12:17 am
mike says:
i have a question, ive been using bittorent for like 3 months and comcast sent me a notice through email warning me if i make any more illegal downloads they will dissconect my internet service and put me on a black list. if i use relakks, will comcast be able to moniter what im downloading?
August 29th, 2006 at 9:08 am
serialx says:
mike // NO. never. They cant know it.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:18 pm
Statuquo says:
REply to number 25
They cant but if they hack ur computer with the modem program or a link on there website ur bad just CHANGE provider i prefer a provider who say all u do is private and confidential that one who say we will give u …… change ur P2P
September 5th, 2006 at 2:47 am
Johnboy says:
The Relakks serice SUCKS!. I have been trying to get in touch with their so called customer sevice repeatedly but they do not answer emails and this is the ONLY way to contact them. Download speed is shite and with frequent disconnections. People need to know the “reliability” of this company is nonexistent.
Since two weeks back I have been unable to even connect to them. Stay away if you want to keep your sanity.
September 13th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
I M Welsh says:
Their so-called ’service’ actually worked properly for a very few days immediately before my first month’s fee ran out. I paid a month’s renewal. It failed immediately. They won’t respond to emails, even to requests for refund of the rip-off fee. We’ll see what Visa says about that.
October 9th, 2006 at 8:16 am
pcs says:
I’ve already disputed the charge on my renewal. It seemed to stop working about 9 days ago. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted!
October 14th, 2006 at 1:00 am
xtc says:
I have used the service for 60 days+ and only the first 5 days i had minorproblems. Speed is great all considered (im in the us, and they are in europe) i can recommend it 100%
April 5th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Rob says:
It’s a very secure system, and it’s working great. In order for authorities to get the information you entered, you need to be charged for rape and similar (2 year prison), no way the police is gonna fetch your info for filesharing.
Oh, and even if they do, Relakks don’t store anything else than the info you entered - use a trash e-mail, registered while on a TOR network or in a library, and you should be fine. That’s what the cops will get.
When they realize you registered the mail in a library, on TOR, etc, they will probably drop the charges. They wont have anything on you.
March 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 am
Relakks sucks says:
Relakks is horrible.
After paying (using Paypal), I was unable to login with the credentials they provided. I then noticed that when I logged into their webpage, it said that my account was “inactive” and my payment had “expired” even though there was a record that I had just paid $84 to set up the account.
I have emailed Relakks more than 3 times over the period of 2 weeks, each time waiting about 4 days for them to answer. No response.
The Relakks attitude about customer support is very apparent from their website: https://www.relakks.com/faq/qna/#6
They say they will NOT answer any emails that do not follow the exact guide defined on their website. If these people had any technical skills, they could create a support form on their website that could collect the information they want in the exact format they require, but no, they want you to put it into an email.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:59 pm