The Freenet Project

[cheeseburger]

Freenet is free software which lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" (web sites accessible only through Freenet) and chat on forums, without fear of censorship. Freenet is decentralised to make it less vulnerable to attack, and if used in "darknet" mode, where users only connect to their friends, is very difficult to detect.

Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are routed through other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.

Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Files are automatically kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files are encrypted, so generally the user cannot easily discover what is in his datastore, and hopefully can't be held accountable for it. Chat forums, websites, and search functionality, are all built on top of this distributed data store.

Freenet has been downloaded over 2 million times since the project started, and used for the distribution of censored information all over the world including countries such as China and the Middle East. Ideas and concepts pioneered in Freenet have had a significant impact in the academic world. Our 2000 paper "Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System" was the most cited computer science paper of 2000 according to Citeseer, and Freenet has also inspired papers in the worlds of law and philosophy. Ian Clarke, Freenet's creator and project coordinator, was selected as one of the top 100 innovators of 2003 by MIT's Technology Review magazine.

An important recent development, which very few other networks have, is the "darknet": By only connecting to people they trust, users can greatly reduce their vulnerability, and yet still connect to a global network through their friends' friends' friends and so on. This enables people to use Freenet even in places where Freenet may be illegal, makes it very difficult for governments to block it, and does not rely on tunneling to the "free world".

does anyone here use it?

http://freenetproject.org/

[Thomas]

I haven't even heard of it until I read your post. It seems like an interesting concept for people who could be afraid of what their government thinks about their ideas. Living in the USA, my rights on the Internet are pretty much secure unless I make threats about the government or bully someone, but I can see where this would help out someone in another country with less rights than I. I also like the concept that the users can contribute to the site with a portion of their hard drive. I will be trying this out to read the thoughts of those having their rights repressed and to offer my opinions on their posts, I feel its a whole new community that's being held down and that this software could help to share their thoughts with the world.

[cheeseburger]

I haven't even heard of it until I read your post. It seems like an interesting concept for people who could be afraid of what their government thinks about their ideas. Living in the USA, my rights on the Internet are pretty much secure unless I make threats about the government or bully someone, but I can see where this would help out someone in another country with less rights than I. I also like the concept that the users can contribute to the site with a portion of their hard drive. I will be trying this out to read the thoughts of those having their rights repressed and to offer my opinions on their posts, I feel its a whole new community that's being held down and that this software could help to share their thoughts with the world.

this bit kinda concerns me..

Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Files are automatically kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files are encrypted, so generally the user cannot easily discover what is in his datastore, and hopefully can't be held accountable for it. Chat forums, websites, and search functionality, are all built on top of this distributed data store.

[Thomas]

this bit kinda concerns me..

Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Files are automatically kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files are encrypted, so generally the user cannot easily discover what is in his datastore, and hopefully can't be held accountable for it. Chat forums, websites, and search functionality, are all built on top of this distributed data store.

:0 I guess that's why it's always important to read the fine print. There has to be an option you can select to not have files stored on your hard drive.

[Brandon]

That .... IS very odd. I wouldn't want them loading up some illegal porn to be caught and sent in jail for a legal technicality. Screw that!

Other than that it sounds like a good idea though. WHen did this project start?

[cheeseburger]

That .... IS very odd. I wouldn't want them loading up some illegal porn to be caught and sent in jail for a legal technicality. Screw that!

Other than that it sounds like a good idea though. WHen did this project start?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

Spoiler (Click to View)

March 2000

[Eve]

It sounds very familiar to the hidden i2p and Tor projects, which I have browsed in the past.

Until Adrian Lamo betrayed his informer, I believed that Wikileaks protected the identity of whistleblowers. I now believe that whistleblowers have to protect their own identity - timezone, location, alliances - even from those they entrust information to.