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."

Comments

Re:What the architecture tells us

[Azog]

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)

The Spectre of Ubertechnology

[Dan Crash]

You know, I think this is a dim shadow of the point Bill Joy was making about the fundamental difference in kind between the Old Technology and the New.

Ian Clarke, one Not Particularly Thoughtful Kid, decides copyright is bad. Or at least that he's bored. He decides to create and unleash a technology that subverts it. And it spreads. Suddenly the whole world begins to resemble what one person, or one small group of people, decided it should resemble.

Take this analogy and apply it to nano, or genetics. This is the future. Or it could be. If so, welcome to the new fascism.

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.

Re:The Spectre of Ubertechnology

[baka_boy]

This has always happened -- a group makes an advance in technology that offers them a chance to escape some of the restrictions that everyone has been tolerating, and decide they'll go for it. Spoken language, literacy, radio, the Internet -- even consciousness itself -- were all means of changing the rules for you, and quite possibly taking everyone else along for the ride. The only thing that's changed is the pace.

So, yes, there is a great potential for constructive of dangerous applications of any significant new technology. If you can climb to the new rung that's just been built on the ol' ladder, I would suggest you do so; those who don't are likely to get stepped on.

Re:The Spectre of Ubertechnology

[Cardinal Biggles]

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.

If you think progress was decided in the past by democratic means instead of by the development of technology you are (at least partially) wrong.

There was never a government body that decided to start printing books. Someone just invented the printing press.

Funnily enough, the closest thing to a technological revolution initiated by a government is the internet. And now that it's here, we start to find, for example, that we don't need copyright anymore.

There are some who would stop the technology because they like the way the rules used to be. Even if they are the majority, they will fail in the end. They always have.

You can call it fascism. I respectfully disagree and call it freedom.

Re:Competition

[blanu]

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.

Re:What the architecture tells us

[scorbett]

From the freenet sourceforge FAQ:

2.5. What prevents important documents from being discarded? Freenet is not intended to be an eternal archive. Because the system is completely democratic, it does not inherently distinguish between the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights and my kindergarten drawings - documents are scored solely by requests. It is anticipated, however, that the current low cost of storage will make enough storage available to Freenet that documents will only rarely have to be discarded.

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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Re:Journalistic Ethics?

[Vuarnet]

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...

Re:Competition

[Tough Love]

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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Freenet and Spam

[1g$man]

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?

Re:What the architecture tells us

[Angst Badger]

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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Re:Journalistic Ethics?

[baka_boy]

"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.

What the architecture tells us

[baka_boy]

The most significant statement in that entire article was, "Unpopular information is dropped from the system." This reflects, in my eyes, dangerous assumption about what kind of data (or free speech) is valuable, and what isn't. The stated goal of Freenet is to allow unbounded free speech, yet it doesn't allow for a record or history of what has already been said. That is where the most dangerous power of censors and opressors lies: the ability to make us forget our own history, so that we can be manipulated in the same ways time and time again.

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.