It is important to note that overthrowing a government with an organized and well armed military is not easy. Especially when the citizens are neither allowed to own weapons nor allowed to openly discuss overthrow of a corrupt regime. In most places like this people can’t even get to the stage of dissent because they will disappear.

For these people Freenet can mean the difference between life and death. How else would you even be able to begin talk of a revolution?

There are other uses for Freenet that have nothing to do with oppressive governments. For example, lets say that a drug dealer lived in your neighborhood but you are too scared to tell anyone. You could send a truly anonymous message to someone for help dealing with that situation.

Or what if you worked for the government or a large company and were aware of something highly illegal that was going on but you didn’t want to come out as a whistle blower. You could post the incriminating evidence on Freenet and let a newspaper pick it up or something.

I would strongly disagree that it doesn’t make a difference to share the information. Just because a single message doesn’t change the world today doesn’t mean that the accumulation of thoughts over time won’t. A classic example of this at work is demonstrated by the Christian faith.

In the early days after the crucification of Jesus all Christians had to go into hiding. They would be killed if they spoke openly of their belief, so they had to use a hidden code to let one another know of their beliefs. It was the symbol of a fish, and they would draw it to let one another know they were on the same side. Well, it took hundreds of years, but now Christianity is a major and dominant religion.

Duke – Very interesting points. I know almost nothing about intellectual property rights, but it will be interesting to see how things turn out as the Internet and privacy applications mature.

Thanks for the stimulating comments guys,

John

Of the potential uses or disadvantages that you mention arising from Freenet I think the issue of intellectual property rights is very interesting. Digital media and the internet are already forcing reappraisal in this area. This is not because rights owners desire current excessively restrictive laws to be changed but because so many ordinary citizens are ignoring the law and getting away with it. Laws which are not widely respected and which can be broken with impunity are inherently bad laws. The market place for intangible products is going to have to come to terms with this and adopt new business models. For instance lower prices because fewer middle men need be involved, fast downloads for buyers, support for buyers, and recognizing that profits must come from an initial surge of interest and that a long tail of unauthorized copying and outright piracy is inevitable. In other words they must become realistic.

I am keen to see current intellectual property rights on our shared heritage of academic (scientific and in the humanities) literature thoroughly trashed. Most academic work was funded via government (taxpayers) or charities (donors). Why should not every citizen have free access to it? Currently it is wrapped up by organizations such as Elsevier. Often it is sold on to those who don’t have access via universities at exorbitant prices. May Freenet help smash this offense against the sharing of knowledge.

I honestly think freenet is pretty much useless in these cases, if a population wants freedom it should demand it, take it by force if necessary, in the egyptian case, the “government” won because they made an example of those bloggers and no one dared to oppose the tyrants, they can write thousands of years on freenet and the world wouldn’t care less of their daily misery…

On the other hand, I find it useful to share books and culture which are banned, but then again, it’s just a temporary solution to bypass the oppression of the government… At the end of the day, a government/kingdom which mistreats its people should be taken down by its people.

just my 2 cents, Johny

Actually, Freenet is the one service which technically comes closest to providing total anonymity.

Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are “routed-through” other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.

Also, remember that we are talking about the whole world and not just the US, so the FBI or CIA is not omnipresent – though other foreign governments often employ similar techniques.

If Ian stops by perhaps he can explain exactly how it is that you could run Freenet in a country where it would otherwise be illegal without actually being detected. I’m a little vague on that particular technical area.

John

But this is not the case in huge regions of the world (middle east + china). I lived in many countries in the middle east and the situation in terms of freedom is not something you can imagine.

I would like to add another story. In an election of an Arabic country (actually it was not election, it was election to say if you disagree to have the current president son the new president!!!). A few bloggers I know, started asking for real election. 7 bloggers were disappeared (I am very serious), and till this moment no one knows where they are.

I do not expect from Freenet to change mentality of those idiots :), but it will help the blogging community.

Adi

Personally, I don’t care what religion or politics people choose to believe, or not believe, as long as no one is forcing beliefs on others. If you can provide a convincing argument to win people over, fine. If not, they should be allowed to continue to think whatever they want and be able to argue their reasons for their belief.

Thanks for sharing your story. I believe it further emphasizes why the Freenet Project is worthy of support.

John

I was born in middle eastern country and I lived their first 22 years before I moved to los angeles. I used to feel scary to write in Forums what I feel about politics, women rights, or anything. We can not speak loudly because of the intelligence and we can not write on the net since the government monitor everything. I am not sure if you will believe me if I tell you that few of my friends were jailed bacause they posted in a forum joke about the president. See this site:
http://www.freekareem.org/

This guy is Egyptian blogger, he has been in Jail for long time because he posted in his blog secular posts!!!!

I personally have special love for Freenet specially after the huge project we did during the Masters degree.

I really feel that freenet has creative idea, it needs to progress.

I would view this decision as similar to many others. For example, do you provide food and aid to an impoverished country when you know the corrupt government is going to siphon off at least a portion of it for themselves? It is certainly easy to argue not to provide material aid to anyone under such circumstances. But one could also come to the conclusion that in order to help the poor there is inefficiency built into the system which results in some “cost”.

In Freenet I believe we can see the nobility represented in the concept of absolutely free speech, and the cost in terms of the fact that this may at times be providing material aid to people we don’t want. In the end we have to find other ways of dealing with the riff raff.

No one ever said that freedom comes cheap. :-)

John