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We're probably all aware now of what "peer-to-peer" (P2P) networks are - those file-sharing services like the original Napster, BitTorrent, WinMX, eDonkey, and the like which allow people to place files on the Internet where others can download them free of charge. You may also be aware that courts have (improperly, in my opinion) ruled that the creators of P2P networks are responsible for any illegal actions that occur on their systems. (This is like saying that AT&T is at fault if you hire a hit man over the phone, or McDonald's being at fault if you eat 50 of their apple pies a day and get fat.) You're probably also aware of the many lawsuits being filed by the Recording Industry Artists' Association (RIAA) against those who are sharing copyrighted music content online, and similar lawsuits by the Motion Picture Artists' Association (MPAA) for those sharing copyrighted video content. What makes such lawsuits possible is the fact that it's possible to reverse-engineer how the software works and determine the Internet address (IP Address) of the computers sharing those files. By contacting the Internet Service Provider (ISP) who provides access to the Internet through that address (e.g., SBC, AOL, Time-Warner), the legal eagles can determine whose account was using that address at that time. With that information, the organization can file a lawsuit against the individual Internet user. While I don't condone the illegal copying of copyrighted materials via the Internet or otherwise, it concerns me that the courts (in their urgent desire to shut down illegal copying) are stifling technologies which are essentially methods of free speech and idea-sharing. Moves by Apple and Microsoft to introduce "trusted platform" computing will only further serve to reduce the free flow of (LEGAL) ideas and information by limiting the software users can run on their computers and access to the files containing that data. This is NOT a good thing, just as it would not be a good thing for the government to take over publishing of our newspapers and production of our TV, music, and movies. Thus, the efforts of the Freenet Project are especially important.
What is the FreeNet Project?
The FreeNet Project is an attempt to protect our freedom to share information, ideas, and other electronic creations over the Internet. People using the proposed system would be able to publish and read information in complete anonymity. No one person or organization would control Freenet. Even the creators of the system would be unable to shut it down or manipulate the information within it. Similar to P2P systems, Freenet would replicate information in multiple places to ensure that it can't be eradicated from the network and that requests to view the content are handled efficiently and quickly. Items you create can be digitally signed while remaining anonymous, allowing you to claim authorship of a document without having to reveal your own identity. Users of the system operate "nodes" that provide storage and network resources to the overall system. The nodes pass requests around so that locating the "true" source of a request or document on the system is virtually impossible.
How Does Freenet Differ from P2P?
In a typical P2P system, you connect to a network of machines that communicate directly with one another. The machines on the network usually connect to some central server in order to find the addresses of other machines on the network. As a result, if the central server is shutdown or compromised, everyone on the network is shutdown or compromised. In a P2P system, if I share a file with other users, it is possible to specifically identify me and the file I am sharing. There is no real anonymity. If I delete that file I am sharing, that file may no longer be available on the network. Freenet differs from this in several ways. In fact, the only real similarities are these: In Freenet, as in P2P, users publish content on the system. Other users can seek out and retrieve that content, just as in P2P. However, unlike P2P, where one user is typically getting a file from one or more other users, each of whose Internet addresses he can identify, in Freenet it's the "network" providing you with the data, and you have no idea where it's coming from. In P2P, you could theoretically identify all 10 people sharing a particular file, hunt them down, and shut down their systems. Suddenly, that file is no longer available to anyone on the P2P network. In Freenet, a file is somewhat randomly distributed across the network. You have no way to know if it's on 2 machines, 20 machines, or every machine in the network. You could shut down perhaps 10% of all the machines on the network and the file would still be available... and that's if you could somehow identify them to start with, which is something that would be extremely difficult to do given how the system is designed. Data shared on the network is encrypted, so even those operating nodes on the network will have no idea what's passing through their system. It's also error-corrected, to prevent corruption or tampering of the data in transit.
What will Freenet Do to Stop the Sharing of Copyrighted Materials?
Any system that contains controls to prohibit sharing of specific content is a system that is not, in the truest sense of the world, a free one. Therefore, Freenet won't do anything specific to prevent the sharing of such materials. If it did so, the same methodology might be used to prevent the sharing of political ideas with which someone (or their government) disagrees, or the sharing of artworks that some group finds offensive, etc. (This, by the way, is one thing that frightens me about the "post 9/11" world. It seems that "the masses" get outraged any time something offends an individual or group that they go our of their way to punish the creator of that offensive thing (whether it's a patch to a video game, a radical political viewpoint, or merely a strange form of art). What happened to our American right of free speech and freedom of the press? In any case, Freenet is intended to be a genuinely "free" forum. Publish anything you want. Read anything you want. No one will know what you've published or read. Doesn't get much more free than that.
What will the RIAA/MPAA/etc. do about Freenet?
Right now, not too many people know about Freenet. Right now, it's not very user-friendly, not too robust, and basically is just being tested. But that will change. In fact, I understand that within a year, it will become large and robust enough to begin delivering on its promise of anonymous information sharing. If, theoretically, every American computer user ran Freenet on their Internet-connected computers, there would be very little the RIAA or MPAA could do to shut Freenet down. Even if they somehow discovered a flaw in the way it functions, such that they might be able to identify a specific Freenet node by its Internet address, the data on that node would be encrypted and not readable by anyone (even the creators of Freenet). Thus, they would have a difficult legal time proving that the owner of that computer was sharing any specific copyrighted content. Even if they could somehow decrypt and decipher what content the node was storing, the system breaks larger files up into blocks of data and splits them across multiple computers, so you'd have to identify (for instance) a particular paragraph from a book, a few notes from a song, or a second or two of video. Even if you could identify them, "fair use" laws might well dictate that this is a legal sample for a single person to store and to share. The best that groups like the RIAA/MPAA could hope for would be to lobby for federal legislation that outlaws the use of the Freenet software. Even if they achieved that goal, and even if the American public complied with the law 100%, that would not stop users in England, France, Germany, Iraq, Singapore, China, etc., from running their own Freenet nodes as our laws aren't binding in other countries. Chances are that there would be Freenet nodes operating somewhere in the world. While you might not be able to get a document from Freenet, you may have overseas contacts who could retrieve the document and make it available to you via some other means. Yet again, it would be impossible for the RIAAs of the world to completely shut that system down once it's up and running. The only thing that WOULD shut Freenet down would be if people around the world voluntarily chose not to use it. Only then would it vanish from the Internet. If only a handful of people around the world used it, it might theoretically be possible to identify those few systems and forcibly shut them down. That would take a considerable effort, however.
When will Freenet be a reality?
According to this article (http://www.betanews.com/article/Freenet_Anonymous_P2P_by_Years_End/1123173230), Freenet is expected to be up and running before the end of this year. I anticipate that it will take another year for it to mature, stabilize, and become "easy enough" for the average person to use. Once that happens, the fallout in the entertainment, software, and publishing industries should be very interesting indeed...
To learn more about Freenet or contribute to its development, see the following site:
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
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