Freenet (File-Sharing Network)

Freenet is an application for sharing computer files of all kinds (music, text, video, and so on) over the Internet while protecting the confidentiality of the data source and its recipient. The goal is to develop the potential of computer networks to render any centralized regulation or censorship of information unfeasible. This goal, explicitly stated by Freenet's creator Ian Clarke, is a controversial one that has triggered an ongoing discussion of ethical and legal issues surrounding copyright protection online.

According to The Economist magazine, Clarke dreamed up Freenet because he feared that the Internet [Page 194]could become an instrument of such authoritarian control as to make dystopian author George Orwell appear unimaginative. Clarke wanted an information system to exist that not only had no centralized administration, but also provided complete anonymity to each user on its network, whether they were creators or users of information. His University of Edinburgh paper, “A Distributed Decentralized Information Storage and Retrieval System,” outlined Clarke's vision in 1999; shortly thereafter, Clarke and a team of volunteers began building the system.

While Clarke helped to force the issue of online censorship and copyright protection, he also aspired to build a community of users who would continue to develop and expand the application. In keeping with this hope, Freenet's source code is open to the public, so users can continue to develop and improve the application. During the project's early months, Clarke estimated that more than 100,000 copies of the application were downloaded, but it is part of the nature of the project that it is impossible to determine the exact number of users.

Freenet makes regulation difficult by relying on a decentralized computer network that allows computer files to be distributed so that users don't know which files are being stored on their computers. Rather than sharing information in a top-down, server-to-client model, wherein files are centrally stored and distributed to individual users, Freenet relies on a peer-to-peer model, in which information is passed from computer to computer on the network until it reaches its destination. When a file, such as a music track, is entered into one computer in the network (called a node), it is encrypted and copied onto several other nodes with which the computer is in contact. Each node keeps track of the files that it is storing, and of the files stored on a few other nodes. Thus, each node of the network can “see” only a fraction of the information available, and there is no centralized record of the location of all the available data.

To retrieve a file from the network, a user needs to determine the name, or key, with which the data was entered by learning it from another user or from an online index. The request to retrieve the file is passed along the network from node to node, until it encounters a node that “knows” where the file is. Once the file is located, it is handed back along the same path, leaving a trail of copies. The duplication process has a dual function: It increases the availability of frequently requested files, and it makes it more difficult to trace the file's source. In addition, this process ensures that any attempt to trace a file in order to eliminate it results only in its further duplication.

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