Intellectual Property Doomsday Device Inches Toward Completion
by Curtis Lee Fulton (G2 News)
November 4, 2002
Freenet, an open source Java-based P2P project, claims that society "cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law." When copyright owners hear about the future Freenet has in mind, they reflexively jab the speed dial button for their lawyer's office - just to make sure it works. Earlier this week, the Freenet project released version 0.5.0.3 of the project, marking the first Freenet release in months.
Freenet was founded by Ian Clarke. It's basically a distributed, encrypted P2P file system. When a file is added to the system, it gets broken into tiny pieces and is scattered across peers. Similar to how other P2P systems such as Napster work, Freenet's peers consist of individual computer users running the P2P software. What Freenet does differently is encrypt each piece of data and store it redundantly on the network, which means no Freenet participant has a clue of what data his PC is storing. The data is stored redundantly, so if one node goes down, the data is available elsewhere. Furthermore, communication between nodes is encrypted. Anyone who grabs data off the P2P network can't tell where its coming from and node owners can tell who's accessing the data stored on their computer.
In May, Clarke helped found a commercial P2P startup called Uprizer. The company got funding from investment firms Intel Capital, Kline Hawkes & Company and Shugart Venture Fund. Dave Scantling, who formerly worked at HP as general manager of its E-Services division, is the president and CEO of Uprizer. Clarke is the CTO.
Uprizer sells an enterprise P2P system designed to save companies bandwidth costs. If a firm has to share a large amount of files with offices throughout the globe, bandwidth costs can get huge. Uprizer solves the problem by using P2P architecture to share files locally.
Today, Freenet is bewildering to the common user and although the product is years in the making, some core functionality, like the ability to search and index information, only exist in theory. So, while Freenet may have the potential to someday rip the copyright world in half, that time is a way off.
But if that day ever does come, it could mean mutually assured destruction for Hollywood and the PC industry. Imagine a world where every Hollywood movie ever made can be downloaded for free, alongside pilfered medical records, leaked military secrets, swiped source code and stolen CPU blueprints.
If Freenet delivers what it promises, it's only a matter of time before governments rule that the technology is dangerous and illegal. But there's the rub: although other P2P companies such as Napster have been shut down by the court, Freenet isn't a company. There's no organization to sue. Freenet code is developed and maintained by volunteers. Governments would have no choice but to make it a crime for individuals to run a Freenet node.
The problem is, all Freenet traffic is encrypted. There's no clear way to determine if a person is really running a Freenet node or not. The only remaining option for governments would be to force PC makers to include some sort of boot lock system that would prevent unsanctioned software from loading on the PC. The resulting bureaucracy could stifle the PC and software industry. But copy protected schemes never work completely, and Federal software compliance laws could end up whacking the innocent while violators bypass them and keep Freenet alive.