Free, Anonymous Information On the Anarchists' Net Free, Anonymous Information On the Anarchists' Net Paul Jones
Clarke and a growing group of allied programmers are creating a kind of parallel Internet called "Freenet," where censorship is impossible, surfers are anonymous, and content is moved and hosted automatically to points near the people who want it.
The nascent system is a kind of cross between the Net-speeding tools developed by Akamai Technologies and the Napster MP3-swapping software, which is now shaking the music world. Some developers say the mix has created a system that stores and moves content much more efficiently than the ordinary Web.
"Freenet can't afford to make value judgments about the worth of information," said Ian Clarke, the London programmer who began creating the network as a student thesis. "The network judges information based on popularity. If humanity is very interested in pornography, then pornography will be a big part of the Freenet."
Freenet is the latest entry, and perhaps the most ambitious, in a field of new "distributed" network services that are making themselves felt far beyond the technology community.
