Freenet News

A peer-to-peer network launched by the Irish programmer Ian Clarke, Freenet exists "to provide a way to publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship." It may be better known, though, for facilitating the exchange of copyrighted material. At any rate, a new version of the Freenet software is being released today.

For more background, go here.

Comments

[ron]

Freenet is a great concept and an important project. It still has a way to go in terms of useability, but if they continue to improve, freenet could become extremely important in the future.

[martin]

At this point Freenet is sooo incredibly slooow that it's useless as an efficient transport for gigs of files. What's interesting is that as soon as the threat of privacy looms, the usual people sound the usual alarm bell of copyright violation. Even at Reason they fall for that. Next we will undoubtedly hear that Freenet is a haven to terrorists and of course to that ubiquitous justification for the strictest of controls: child pornography. Anything to disinform the public and gain support for state intervention.

[Jesse Walker]

Who's falling for anything, Martin? I'm for the Freenet idea, copyright violations and all. I'm merely reporting, accurately, that that's what it's best known for in this country. (It's also the one context in which I've written about it before.)