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Welcome to Anticompany.

Anticompany is a community of people focused on mitigating the influence of corporations on the internet and in government.

Our first project is to organize a Free, international, anonymous and uncontrolled wireless network, separate from the commercial internet, without the support of any dedicated servers, internet service providers, governmental authority, or centralized controls. The rationale behind this project is to preserve privacy and freedom of expression since corporations and social networks on the commercial internet have clearly demonstrated their ambivalence towards these ideals.

One can easily argue that there is still a place for a commercial internet for commercial transactions and services, but there is a need to segregate our social network from the commercial internet because there is no unequivocal reason for corporations or government to be involved in any social aspect of any network if they cannot or will not respect the users desire for privacy and freedom. There is no way to prevent governments or corporations from joining the second net as participants or even nodes, but the idea is to prevent control and censorship, not to prevent participation.

We will soon be able to provide each other with a parallel communication network for free by using cheap wifi equipment, homebrew or do-it-yourself antennas, and free software called "Netsukuku". There are several free solutions currently available to decentralize and anonymize everything from websites to forums and chat, file sharing, email and instant messaging as well as VPN's but all of the current implementations rely on the commercial internet backbone for a physical and network architecture as well as for multimedia content delivery. This arrangement will not be necessary for much longer.

In order to build the network architecture necessary for a parallel internet we intend to go forward with an internet-node-based mesh built on the commercial backbone with three functions.

1. Free wifi for everyone who cannot afford it, through shared internet access via nodes on the mesh. The initial priority is to provide free internet access to underserved and disadvantaged communities. Note that distributing more repeaters than internet nodes may make the network slow.
2. Freenet installation across the international mesh for freedom from censorship and privacy
3. Netsukuku installations, even though it is currently not ready.

ACTA Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

Due to recent leaks of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and continuing attacks on both net neutrality and online privacy, I am reaching out to a variety of organizations that can work together to put several connected networks into place quickly. This site can function as an organizational hub but it will hopefully be superseded by others.

How To Get Started

There are only 5 requirements to create such a network quickly.
Organization, Software, Routers, Antennas and a sense of urgency.

Organization

This is a (bookmark for a ) contact list for hackerspaces, user groups, community networks, and organizations that might be interested in this concept. To be clear, the idea is to build local wireless mesh networks and then connect them in order to replace the internet before it is over regulated. There needs to be one universal software architecture used by all networks in order to assure compatibility and connectivity between neighboring mesh networks.

Hackerspaces:

See http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces until I have the time to consolidate the list into this websites site directory.

Wireless User Groups:

These are groups already in place that are acting to bring free wireless access to their members.
Twin Cities: http://www.tcwug.org/
Pretoria: http://www.ptawug.co.za/
SoCal FreeNet: http://www.socalfreenet.org/
Bay Area: http://www.bawug.org/about/
Sonoma county: http://nocat.net/
Buenos Aires: http://www.buenosaireslibre.org/ (Yes, it's in Spanish)

Wireless Community Groups:

For the moment you will have to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region . I will keep that link live until I have the time to consolidate the list into this websites site directory.

Influential blogs, Online Activists, References and Possibly Helpful Organizations:

http://www.meshage.com/ - Everything you need to know about wireless mesh networks.
http://freenetworks.org/
http://www.boingboing.net/action/
http://www.zeropaid.com/ - centered on p2p and anything free.
http://torrentfreak.com/ built around file sharing, a great source of current news and up to date information.
http://www.savetheinternet.com/ - a lost cause, IMHO.
http://www.freepress.net/about_us
http://www.idealist.org
http://www.instructables.com/id/WIFI-Antenna-Hack!/
http://www.seattlewireless.net/OmniDirectionalAntenna
http://www.wlan.org.uk/antenna-page.html
http://gigaom.com/2007/03/22/google-earth-meets-mesh/
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/08/7427.ars
http://www.makezine.com/extras/49.html
http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol07/?pg=121
http://unitedmeshnetwork.org/ is the inspiration for this site.
http://www.open80211s.org/ 802.11s is a next-generation wifi standard that is built around Mesh networks.
http://immi.is/ The Iceland Modern Media Initiative might be the last best hope for investigative journalism and freedom of expression. We might host our site there.

Software

This is a list of current software architectures that are being used by others. Our intent is to use Netsukuku by Freaknet http://netsukuku.freaknet.org/ since it does not depend on a connection to the current, commercial internet. Depending on the resources available, it might be possible to piggyback Freenet on top of the network.
A VPN is a virtual private network.

CuWInWare http://www.cuwin.net/research
Roofnet by MIT http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/roofnet/doku.php
The Wing Project http://www.wing-project.org/
Smesh by Johns Hopkins http://smesh.org/
Meraki, a commercial implementation of Roofnet (... is fairly expensive from a consumer standpoint.) http://meraki.com/solutions/
Tinc is a decentralized VPN that runs on the current commercial internet. http://tinc-vpn.org/
D42 http://dn42.net/trac/ is VPN software used by various Hackerspaces.
UIA Unmanaged Internet Architecture is an unstable MIT project. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/uia/
ChaosVPN https://wiki.hamburg.ccc.de/index.php/ChaosVPN is an exceelent example of a darknet

Routers

Warning: Wifi can be jammed, hosting copyrighted/trademarked content is illegal, and local Police may eventually see wifi signals as being reasonable cause for searching private property as well as confiscating equipment.

Having said that, the FCC part 15 rules specifically excludes home built devices that are not built from kits and that are for personal use. http://tinyurl.com/yljyxpz

Sec. 15.23 Home-built devices.
(a) Equipment authorization is not required for devices that are not marketed, are not constructed from a kit, and are built in quantities of five or less for personal use.
(b) It is recognized that the individual builder of home-built equipment may not possess the means to perform the measurements for determining compliance with the regulations. In this case, the builder is expected to employ good engineering practices to meet the specified technical standards to the greatest extent practicable. The provisions of Sec. 15.5 apply to this equipment.

I am researching possible alternatives and will list them all here. _

The Linksys WRT54GL is a popular $60 wireless router that is easily modified by embedding DD-WRT Linux in the router.
Lifehacker has an excellent article on this at http://lifehacker.com/178132/hack-attack-turn-your-60-router-into-a-600-router

Netgear produced the RangeMax Wireless-N Gigabit Router with USB (WRN3500L) specifically for Linux hackers. See http://www.myopenrouter.com/
Linksys also produced the WRT160NL Wireless-N Broadband Router with Storage Link.
Both are capable of running DD-WRT Linux. http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/index

{QUOTE}DD-WRT is a Linux based alternative OpenSource firmware suitable for a great variety of WLAN routers and embedded systems. The main emphasis lies on providing the easiest possible handling while at the same time supporting a great number of functionalities within the framework of the respective hardware platform used.{QUOTE}

Nocat software runs on Linksys WRT54G that has been flashed with OpenWRT http://openwrt.org/ instead of DD-WRT

__WRT stands for Wireless Reveiver/Transmitter._

Repeaters

DD-WRT can even be used to make a stand-alone router into a wireless repeater that can be used to bridge distant nodes.
See http://lifehacker.com/265142/turn-your-wifi-router-into-a-repeater

Asking your non-techy neighbors to help out by just plugging in a repeater (that is headless, not connected to a PC) might go a long way into making this work. All you would have to do is set up a network, take your laptop and router to their house (within range of your network), configure the router, and unplug the laptop. Also see http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Universal_Wireless_Repeater

Antennas

There are tons of cheap omnidirectional wifi antennas available now, but you can also build one from scratch: http://wireless.gumph.org/articles/homemadeomni.html

Most DIY antennas or modifications like the Cantenna, Pringles can approach, or Wokfi are unidirectional or line of site. It's probably okay to have the occasional unidirectional antenna in a mesh, but that setup should be reserved for outliers or nodes that are remote/separate from the rest of the mesh.

Urgency

This website has many features, but we encourage you to act quickly and decisively instead of collaborating endlessly online. Once your local wireless mesh is online you should immediately act to connect your networks to all neighboring towns instead of trying to build the network in your immediate vicinity. There is a danger that organizing grassroots networks like this might become illegal or highly regulated soon after ACTA is legalized.

The old catchphrase is to think globally and act locally. Well, that's a nice catchphrase but words are not enough.
We need to Think locally and act quickly.

Set up a network between you and all of your friends and train them how to do it, and say that the condition is that they each have to set up a net for two more of their friends and train them, too. Then do the same thing in a nearby town. If you have the time, do the same for family and their friends wherever they live. The priority is to force these networks to grow by installing it for free, training others to do it, and doing it everywhere that you can as often as you can, so it might be best to prioritize technically skilled users who can help to grow the network themselves while setting up repeaters in the homes of people who are less technical.

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