You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law. Freenet is a decentralized censorship resistant p2p distributed network which aims to provide freedom of speech through strong anonymity. By pooling bandwidth and hard drive space (similar to Seti@home), users are able to anonymously publish and retrieve any kind of file.
posted by localhuman on Dec 22, 2006 - 158 comments

3d17.org - Ian Clarke of Freenet fame has created a distributed, collaborative document editing web application. Much like a wiki, but geared more purely towards polishing and editing documents. Rather than the "build fast" model of the wiki, 3D17 doc modifications are subject a voting process before being applied. [more inside]
posted by y6y6y6 on Oct 31, 2003 - 4 comments

Ian Clarke responds to criticisms about Freenet (gracias: Slashdot)
posted by ookamaka on Dec 31, 2000 - 8 comments

interesting freenet newsbite at wirednews -- but could something so (potentially) powerful really get folded into IE and netscape? i assume this would be something like setting up your browser to launch the app from a freenet:// link ala hotline. or would microsoft and aol actually work to integrate a file sharing app? i tend to doubt it.
posted by subpixel on Sep 25, 2000 - 1 comment

This new "FreeNet" sounds like a perfect utopia, where all information is free like beer, and not just free like speech. Some of the provisions for the network, like not being able to remove a file, remaining anonymous, and not even being able to track down where the files are really coming from make it sound like a anarchist's paradise. I'm wondering though, will it be a place to exchange banned books, or will it be clogged with porn, warez, and mp3s? Will it be populated with idealists against censorship, or AOLers wanting free stuff? Do things always go to the lowest common denominator right away, or does it take time?
posted by mathowie on Apr 26, 2000 - 5 comments