Freenet
In computer science, Freenet is a decentralized, censorship-resistant distributed data store originally designed by Ian Clarke. Freenet aims to provide freedom of speech through a peer-to-peer network with strong protection of anonymity. Freenet works by pooling the contributed bandwidth and storage space of member computers to allow users to anonymously publish or retrieve various kinds of information.
Freenet can be thought of as a large storage device which uses key based routing similar to a distributed hash table to locate peers' data. When a file is stored in Freenet, a key which can be used to retrieve the file is generated. The storage space is distributed among all connected nodes on Freenet.
Freenet is currently under development, and a version 1.0 has not yet been released. Released under the GNU General Public License, Freenet is free software.
Freenet is an enhanced free software / open source software implementation of the system described by Ian Clarke's July 1999 paper "A distributed decentralized information storage and retrieval system", written while Clarke was a student at the University of Edinburgh. Shortly after the publication of this paper, Clarke and a small number of volunteers began work on what became Freenet. By March 2000 version 0.1 of Freenet was ready for release. Since March 2000 Freenet has been extensively reported on in the press, albeit primarily due to its implications for copyright rather than for its wider aim of freedom of communication.
Freenet has been developed via a collaborative, open source, methodology. Clarke, originally from Ireland, worked with individuals from many other countries, in a distributed manner utilizing the Internet. Not only is Freenet itself distributed, decentralized Internet software, but the method used to develop it is also distributed and decentralized.
Freenet's founders argue that only with true anonymity comes true freedom of speech, and that what they view as the beneficial uses of Freenet outweigh its negative uses. Their assumption is that free speech is more important than nearly any other consideration and Freenet attempts to remove the possibility of any group imposing their beliefs or values on any other. Although many states censor communications to different extents, they all share one commonality in that a body must decide what information to censor and what information to allow. What may be acceptable to one group of people may be considered offensive or even dangerous to another. In essence, the purpose of Freenet is that nobody is allowed to decide what is acceptable. Tolerance for each others' values is encouraged and failing that, the user is asked to turn a blind eye to content which opposes his or her views.
One analysis of Freenet files conducted in the year 2000 claimed that the top 3 types of files contained in Freenet were text (37%), audio (21%), and images (14%). 59% of all the text files were drug-related, 71% of all audio files were rock music, and 89% of all images were pornographic.[1] Due to the nature of Freenet, a typical user may unknowingly host this sort of information, which may hypothetically make them subject to severe civil and criminal penalties. Freenet attempts to prevent this through "plausible deniability", preventing the user from knowing what's on his or her own node and making it difficult to determine if a piece of information is in any given node without causing the distribution of that piece of information throughout the network to change in the process. No court cases have tested any of this to date.
Reports of Freenet's use in authoritarian nations is difficult to track due to the very nature of Freenet's goals. One group, Freenet-China, has translated the Freenet software to Chinese and is distributing it within China on CD and floppy disk.
See also:
The Official Freenet Wiki