Posted 5/18/2001 by Beorn
Freenet has improved a lot since the last time I tested it.

It now has a simple web-interface, and a system for updating information, (ie. "web"-sites). The first "web"-logs and search engines have already appeared, in the 1994-sense of the word.

Freenet is of course nothing like the Web. It is a system for efficient, scalable, anonymous, non-censorable mass-distribution of data. Distribution is driven by demand. The more people who want a piece of information, the more copies of it will be made, while information nobody cares about disappears.

Freenet is a free-speech tool designed by libertarian hackers, and along with public key communication tools like PGP, and hard disk encryption tools like Scramdisk, it is the enemy of censors, surveillors and copyright owners everywhere. It gives power to individuals at the expense of groups.

I'm willing to bet quite a lot that the first time Freenet appears on the NRK or TV2 news, it will be in connection with pedophily, terrorism or piracy. You have to be pretty much blinded by ideals not to see that Freenet is especially suitable for criminal activity. But is the alternative better? Modern technology gives power to government and companies Orwell couldn't even dream of 50 years ago, and the problem with power, even in the hands of democratically elected officials, is that it will be abused. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but next week, or next year, or next century, it will be abused.

A few examples: In Sweden last year, a group of NSP's took the law in their own hands, and shut down Flashback, an ISP with houndreds of websites, just to get at one legal neo-nazi homepage. Deep in the growing web of EU, secret plans are made to outlaw anonymity on the net, and archive all communication log files for years - a vision shared by our own �kokrim. CPRM, a potentially very intrusive copy protection technology that would in effect turn control of your hard drive over to copyright owners, was almost added to the ATA specification recently. Over the last century, our supposedly superior norwegian government has repeatedly abused its powers over ethnic minorities (romani and sami), and radical ideologies, (communism and nazism). And all over the world, political censorship, surveillance and oppression far worse than any of this takes place in countries less democratic than ours, many of which are now beeing absorbed into the net.

In all these cases, Freenet would be a tool for individuals, against oppressive institutions, mobs and companies.

I respect those who choose the side of Order over Chaos here, as long as their reasoning goes deeper than their own sex-taboos. In fact, I have a nagging fear that the future will condemn Freenet-supporters as brutally as I recently condemned Gerd-Liv "Stalin" Valla, that unrestrained by censorship and surveillance, the dark side of human nature will overthrow civilization.

Hard evidence of this will convince me that Freenet is wrong, but for now I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and I'm too much in love with the pioneering hacker spirit not to be enthusiastic about such a radical experiment.

So I'm now running a 500mb Freenet node more or less permanently, and I'm watching the birth of a new medium with curiosity and fascination.