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Ian Clarke of Freenet Intereview
abe1x writes "Ian Clarke of Freenet is interviewed at Feed by Christopher Locke of The Cluetrain Manifesto. Pretty interesting, can't wait for Freenet to actually function smoothly on a large scale."
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I've been lurking on the development list since March, and I haven't noticed anything like that. The lead developers are just very adamant about preserving the integrity of the system, and they're not afraid to tell some one "no". I would rather wait a while and see something like this come out right the first time than have it get damaged by coming out ineffiecent and full of security holes.
The freenet developers just can't decide what they want this tool to be. Is this a tool for violating copyright, or is it a tool for the real propagation of free speech?
People have said many unpopular ideas, and written unpopular essays, that over time American citizens grew to accept. No, it didn't happen overnight, and it may have taken several decades for us to accept something as true. "Citizen Kane" was plagued with bad reviews when it first came out, and is now considered one of the best films of last century.
I also find it interesting, that the developers believe in deleting documents that are unpopular, but won't let people who enter keys delete their own documents.
Napster? The development they are most concerned with is of a legal nature.
There are two serious competitors: MojoNation and Blocks. And they both have to deal with the problems FreeNet deals with now.
The problems are far less trivial you think. On the one hand, you want information to be as dislocal as possible, on the other hand, you want to "localize" (search) the information on the network. An individual host has no idea which keys it is storing (at least in theory), it doesn't know their names (only their hashes) nor does it know the actual content (which is encrypted). So you can't simply say "Server X, tell me what you're storing".
Which is why meta-networks may be necessary, distributed search engines similar to AltaVista, but of a distributed nature. Again a new challenge, perhaps not less complex than FreeNet iself.
So don't trivialize. The FreeNet team is working very hard (just look at their development traffic), but they can't do wonders.
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I appreciated the value of unrestricted resource and information sharing about 5 years ago, when arranging a simple trade of a couple sweatshirts across international boundaries.
Some may think nothing of this, but since I have conducted far more commerce around the world via the internet. Upon examination I, and my trading partners, are probably violating any number of trade, tarriff, informational or customs restrictions for either end of the transaction. Multiply this by a few thousand people and governments will sit up and take notice. Iran is already struggling with the internet. No doubt if a student is reading this post the government knows about it, and has evaluated this post for Evil Western Influence(TM)
A Free internet is vital, not just for my selfish purposes, but to bring down barriers, not erect them. I'm actually pretty thrilled, in a Berlin-Wall-Coming-Down way, when I think of how easy it has been to communicate and exchange around the world.
Worry when the only way you can communicate is through commercial enterprises (AOL, YAHOO, MSN, etc.) which may fall under goverment regulation.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Windows client
Linux client
Source code
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Kiro
You are using a subtly different definition of "popular" than Ian Clarke is.
Your definition of popular seems to be "stuff that people like and agree with".
Ian Clarke's is "stuff that people download".
Take an example: "Mein Kampf". That's an "unpopular" work, in the sense that few people agree with it. But it might be "popular" in that many people will download it.
In fact, many of the people who download it probably disagree with it. Me, for instance. I know I disagree with Hitler's view on Jews, but I'm still interested in finding out exactly what he wrote, so I can decide why, exactly, I think he was wrong.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
The big challenge here is to respond to Freenet's antagonism of copyright in a way that lays the groundwork for responding to similar technological threats. To set up the mechanisms which insure democratic governance of Humanity by Humanity instead of Technology.
Highfalutin' words, but these is highfalutin' times. I reckon.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
It's interesting that you say that. I haven't seen any new features added to Napster or Gnutella since the first Freenet release. I'm not knocking Gnutella. It's a very cool project. I just don't understand where this idea of relative advancement is coming from when there aren't any new features being added.
I think the reason that things are progressing so slowly is because what we're doing is REALLY HARD.
Anonymous, efficient, non-abusable searching and updating is a problem no one has solved yet. I lot of people think they have solved in, in which case I invite them to the mailing list for some good intellectual jousting.
Dropping "unpopular information" from the system is not intended to be a form of censorship, merely a way to save disk space by eliminating seldom-requested or never-requested data. As the author indicates, as disk space gets cheaper and as more freenet servers come on line, the need to drop data will diminish.
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www.scorbett.ca
goosh.. you mean what I wrote can be used to break the law.. I didn't think of it like that.. Well, I guess that law sucks and shouldn't be a law then..
Although it's not quite as simple as that, I guess there must be hundreds of cases like this all around the world. Just because something is made into a law, doesn't mean its perfect or even fair.
Let's face it: laws are made by governments, not by the common people. Laws should be made in order to help / protect / take care of the people, but they usually are not.
Take the copyright laws, for instance. They were made in order to protect the creators of works of music, art, etc. but in reality they're used to protect the big corporations who make money out of them.
Just my 2 pesos worth...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
Freenet appears to be quite a bold project. However it already faces competition from the most common distributed file sharing services: Napster Gnutella
Yes, and Freenet development proceeds at a snail's pace compared to either of the above. I know why too: some of the early developers in the project are more interested in preserving their own exalted positions in the project that in letting the design/development process move forward effectively. There is more 'blocking' going on in the project than actual code development. I don't doubt it will eventually get where it's trying to go, but the question is: how many other projects with the same goals are going to get there first? I mean, come on, it's been months, and still no way to update information? Or search it? Give me a break, those problems are not insoluable.
Ian is pretty cool, and especially, his philosphy is right on the money. His original paper is a mighty good read. But it takes more than philosophy to build a killer software app. Please note, this isn't a troll or a flame, it's because I actually care about the project. Get your act together guys, bury the egos, and you'll have a worldbeater.
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When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Does Freenet have similar capabilities for spamming as Gnutella does? I know Gnotella has spam filters for things like FlatPlanet, but there (seems to be nothing) from stopping someone from posting a useful looking file only to really be an advertisement. If Freenet is completely anonymous, then there won't be any real way to block spammers, is there?
Unpopular information is dropped from the system.
The real flaw of Freenet, IMHO, isn't the potential for revisionism, it's the idea that only popular information is valuable. That might make sense in a market context, but it doesn't really have any place in an intellectual context if by "intellectual" you mean to imply a search for truth instead just popularity. Moreover, it is often the most revolutionary, cutting-edge, ahead-of-their-time ideas that are the most unpopular.
At one time, the ideas of democracy and freedom of speech were extremely unpopular ideas. In some places, they still are. Freenet-like systems would not have helped the rise of democracy very much. Mind you, it's great to see that popular ideas will be more resistant to government/corporate suppression, but they already were. It is ideas held by small minorities that are the most vulnerable.
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Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
"Intellectual property" is the term for a creator's rights to a valuable idea, right? Show me a single company that is capable of thought, and therefore entitled to protection of its "intellectual property", and I will show you an employee who actually did the work, and no longer has the right to use their own ideas.
Think of it this way: If you were trying to build a library, would you only stock periodicals? True, they are updated regularly, and are often a dense source of current information, but they are, by design, transient. Also, assuming you have finite space in which to store them, you will have to start throwing out the ones no one has checked out when the shelves are all full. Some of the old editions might cover popular events or figures, and would therefore stay popular and in cirulation, but the obscure or unknown stories of the past issues would be wiped away without a trace.