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Ian Clarke of Freenet Intereview

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the peer-to-peer-review? dept.

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."

4 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The Spectre of Ubertechnology by Cardinal+Biggles · · Score: 5

    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.

  2. Re:What the architecture tells us by Angst+Badger · · Score: 5

    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.
  3. Re:Journalistic Ethics? by baka_boy · · Score: 5

    "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.

  4. What the architecture tells us by baka_boy · · Score: 5
    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.