Freenet is Peer to Peer software designed to promote freedom of information over the internet. It is intended to protect information and its users from censorship, making the information available and providing a certain level of anonymity to those who use it. In a sense, it is restoring the orginal form of the internet to the internet. Not only used to store and access information, Freenet can also be used to host web sites.
Web homepage: http://freenetproject.org/
Email: mailto:ian@locut.us
Spokespersons: Ian Clarke
Virtual
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack. 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.
Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are 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 in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content. Freenet is not just theoretical, it has been downloaded by over 1.2 million users since the project started, and it is 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 inspired hundreds of academic papers in the fields of computer communication, security, and law. (taken from website )
Freenet advocates an end to censorship and copyright laws, in favour of freedom of information. They see access to information as a vital part of democracy.
Censors around the world.
The Internet
Freenet is an actually existing tool for other people to download and use. It is in this sense both a direct action and a construction of alternatives every download undermines the attempts to control the internet, as well as creating an actually existing alternative.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Freenet is an attempt to
‘take back the internet’, spearheaded by developers and users alike. it is not
really designed for the casual user, but for a vast network of computer users
around the world who want access to restricted information. The website is fairly
technical, but is a good example of an online community of developers and users,
as well as artists creating work for distribution.