Relakks - Don’t do it
August 23, 2006
Relakks.com is a new service (a Virtual Private Network) for those who want to send information over the Internet with anonymity. The encrypted connection service is fully supported by the Swedish Political ‘Pirate Party‘ - who have been know to support the activity of the Bit Torrent site - Pirate Bay.By producing this darknet for those who don’t want to be tracked, regardless of legal or illegal activity, the impact on culture as a whole is far more disruptive. The users of Relakks will, on the whole be the web savvy youngsters who are actively creating and sharing cool innovation and ideas. Once this is removed from the public domain and shown only through a darknet we are likely to suffer a drought of fresh ideas.
It could be argued that a service like this is driven by the pressure of copyright holders who don’t want their movies and music being shared. By supplying a commercial available darknet
Like Pirate Bay this is an extremely well organised project, they know what they’re doing. Any they will have records on what you do. It’s an incredible amount of trust and freedom for the bargain cost of 5 Euros a month.
Adding any layer of encryption is a kin to Digital Rights Management system, except now, sub cultures can reverse the effect and lock out media owners.
If the darknet is the answer to online freedom, then the main losers will not be those who demand copyright be upheld and respected, but everyone who thrives on a rich and varied culture of sharing.
This article was first published on openbusiness.cc
The “Relakks - Don’t do it” article is part of wider research available here.
March 1, 2007 at 5:41 pm
None of this is really an issue because they have no support and they suck.
I purchased their service, prepaid for 1 year over a week ago. Have been able to use it maybe 3x for 10-15 minutes each time. Sent 3 support requests over a week ago and have gotten nothing back.
I’m not a newbie and I’m using pptp on Linux. The connection borks horribly on WinXP as well. Their VPN service is unusable.
As far as a I can see, Relakks is a scam. Take your money, give 10-15 minutes of service, then bork the connection.
That’s one way to keep bandwidth costs down and offer a low price. Great business plan.
April 24, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Actually, I’ve had very good service from Relakks, and I hardly think the venue matters for creation or technical ideas and content, a safe VPN encourages technical innovation and the ceation and distribution of content, especially content that the powers-that-be disapprove of. Good thing for social change.
August 13, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Relakks is fine, but serious privacy seekers should check out our service:
Perfect Privacy - Free people need no supervision! High anonymity second level ISP protecting the privacy of individuals and businesses on the Internet. Anonymous Internet Access through 256-bits encrypted offshore SSH Tunneling & Secure VPN. Accepts cash, e-gold, Pecunix, PayPal and Epay.vg.
http://www.perfect-privacy.com
forum.perfect-privacy.com
October 23, 2007 at 10:28 am
I would say Relakks - DO it!
Relakks is great. If you dont know what Relakks is, just look at this short movie, where they intervjue Jonas Birgersson about Relakks. Link: http://light.vpod.tv/?s=0.0.201364
October 23, 2007 at 11:17 am
Hi Sophie
Thanks for posting this.
February 21, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’ve used Relakks on Xp, Os X and a Linux box. I had a few problems with using it on the Linux box, but I suspect the problem was with the pptp, vpnc etc programs and not the service. It works without a hitch on my Xp box and my Mac and I download just as fast as normally. A few webpages don’t work, but I suspect that the providers of banners and stuff are to blame for that, it just keeps trying to load from some ad service.
March 6, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Hi,
We started few weeks ago a Relakks-like service.
We don’t have more than 50 persons per server so you can fully use your 20Mbit/s connexion.
If you want try it for free contact us : http://www.linkideo.com
See you soon
Brian