Freenet 0.7

Freenet is a Peer-to-Peer network with main focus on security and anonymity (for both authours and consumers of information). It is based on a paper(pdf) by Ian Clarke. In 2005 Freenet was completely rewritten because of a new design concept that was to be implemented - the Darknet. This new version of Freenet, namely version 0.7, is not compatible to any older versions. This article deals with Freenet 0.7 exclusively.

What is Freenet ?

Philosphy

Freenet has the freedom of informationexchange as it's primary goal. Legal and moral concerns that are connected with free and untraceable exchange of data, like sharing of illegal music- or videofiles, or even contents contemptuous of the human rights, are secondary to that goal. Ian Clarke argues, that they are in fact mutually exclusive :

You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law. It is for this reason that Freenet, a system designed to protect Freedom of Speech, must prevent enforcement of copyright.

- Ian Clarke, Freenet Philosphy

Matthew Toseland, the main developer of Freenet, also states that :

Legality is irrelevant, the whole point of a darknet is that it is hidden and has a reasonable chance of survival despite running a node being illegal.

- Matthew Toseland Discussion on the possibility of censorship in Freenet, Freenet mailing mist archives

Freenet is designed to be used in countries where free exchange of information is illegal. If there was any way of censoring Freenet, it would mean that it has failed to fulfill it's goals.

Goals

The main goal of Freenet (0.7) is to provide a way to safely exchange information in a "hostile environment", such as an oppressive dictatorship. This implies the following subgoals.

References

• I. Clarke, O. Sandberg, B. Wiley and T.W. Hong, "Freenet: A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System", Workshop on Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability, 2000 [1](pdf)