Freenet is a world-wide net from computers, a whose goal consists of defeating censorship and facilitating anonymous exchange from information to.

This goal is to be achieved by decentralization, redundancy, coding and dynamic Routing.

Freenet is developed as free software under the GPL. It is after classification of the developers a test version and this also still for a long time after 2006 will remain.

History

1999 described the Irish student Ian Clarke in a paper "„a distributed decentralized information memory and - call system "“. Ian Clarke: A Distributed Anonymous information STORAGE and retrieval system, 1999 short after the publication began Clarke and a small number of Freiwilliger to convert this idea as free software.

In March 2000 the first version was ready for the publication. In the following time much on freenet reported, mainly employed the press thereby however the effects on copyrights and less the goal of free communication. Also the academic world busy itself with freenet: Clarkes paper was according to CiteSeer the usually-quoted scientific document in the year 2000.

Freenet is distributed developed with the help of the Internets. The project created the non-profit "„The freenet Project Inc. "“and 2002 Matthew Toseland employ as a full time programmer for September, who is paid by donation funds and proceeds of folder products. Beyond that others cooperate freely.

In January 2005, the next version, freenet 0,7 was planned, to write completely again. The developers of freenet brought in the middle of to April 2005 for the first time on the open mailing list in the discussion to arrange freenet as Darknet so mentioned i.e. that the entrance can take place only on "„invitation "“existing participant. (For details see section Darknet.) this element is the most important innovation in 0.7.

The idea behind the planned freenet 0,7 thereupon of Ian Clarke and the mathematician Oskar Sandberg on two hacker meetings presents, on 29 July 2005 with the 13. DefCon and on 30 December 2005 on that 22. Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) short informations to the DefCon VortragKurzinformationen to the 22C3-Vortrag

At the beginning of of April 2006 was published the first alpha version by freenet 0,7.

Other

To at the end of of 2003 a group translated the program named freenet China into the Chinese and it into China on CDs and disks spread. freenet China the Chinese computer and Internet filter to close the word "„freenet "“. Xiao Qiang: The words you never lake in Chinese CyberSpace, China digitally Time, 30 August 2004 (conditions: 30. August 2004) Freenet is blocked in the versions before 0.7.

One in May 2004 published analysis means that most freenet users came at this time from the USA (35%), Germany (15%), France (11%), Great Britain (7%) and Japan (7%). Antipiracy analysis of 25. May 2004 (http://www.itic.ca/DIC/News/archive.html">version of the Internet http://www.itic.ca/DIC/News/archive.html">archived archives) this analysis is probably based on the IP address list of the participants, which was made available for the versions before 0.7 by the project, and considered thus no separate freenet networks such as freenet China.

Controversy

While freenet makes on the one hand suppressed humans possible to exchange itself with others freely it makes possible on the other hand also the spreading and the entrance to controversies for information and contents, which are illegal in some states.

The argumentation of the proponents Freenets turns out as follows:

Knowledge makes it possible to make better decisions. Democracy proceeds from a well informed population. So that the democracy remains effective, thus the information flow may not be controlled.

Despite possible positive aspects of censorship this may not be made possible, since those, which can exercise "„good "“censorship, can necessarily also exercise "„bad "“censorship. Furthermore even "„good "“censorship can be counter productive, because conviction is less effective without the refutation of counterarguments.

Anonymity is important, since liberty of opinion without the possibility of anonymity cannot exist. Opinion carriers could be punished otherwise afterwards. By electronic signatures can be trusted to also anonymous information.

The critics Freenets are not ready to make so a radical decision in favor of perfect liberty. In particular the confrontation also high controversies contents such as Kinderpornografie in the freenet unfolds a deterring effect on some users.

Individual censorship

While freenet is not censorable in its whole, the possibility exists that individual knot operators do not process inquiries after certain contents and thus in the spreading "„"“are not involved.

This possibility of a black list is contained not in the official program, can be to it-programmed however, since the source code is public. This already happened for the current version 0.5.

Freenet will react in its next larger version 0.7 (see future) to it and with individual inquiries censoring knots "„will umschiffen "“. It will be further possible however not to take part the own knot in the spreading of selected contents and to use nevertheless the net without restrictions.

Use

Each user puts a part of his non removable disk to freenet as memory at the disposal. One releases here certain files or files for the others, how with the usual file sharing the case is, but reserves a certain portion of fixed disks (in the order of magnitude of gigabyte), which freenet occupies independently with data from the net.

The use of freenet is comparable with that of the World Wide Web (WWW). By means of any Browsers can be gesurft, as from the WWW used, in the freenet. The program module FProxy works as local server program and is generally attainable under http://localhost:8888/. From this entrance side one can request or high-load individual freenet addresses, in addition left to a small number of Freesites are made available, which serve as the first approach place in the freenet.

A Freesite represents for freenet into for instance the same, which Websites for the WWW represent. There is documents, which become accessible by freenet gateway. They can contain left to other Freesites or to other data, which are attainable by a freenet key.

Assistance of so-called Activelinks can be promoted the spreading of selected Freesites. If one merges on the own Freesite a small picture of another Freesite, then this is promoted automatically, if the own Freesite (and thus the picture) is loaded.

The loading of contents lasts relatively for a long time, since freenet sets the priorities with security. Particularly at the beginning it can take several minutes, since the participant is not yet well into the freenet net integrated. Only by the integration the program learns, to which other participant in best inquiring to be dispatched to be able.

Area of application

Apart from the simple publication of information freenet is suitable for deferred communication, i.e., both a kind E-Mail system and panels can meaningfully on freenet construct.

There are not search machines, how they function in the WWW, in freenet. Instead some authors index sides lead - lists, which exist out left to other Freesites. These index sides are mostly provided by their respective authors with the help of so-called Spider, which function similarly as Webcrawler. They are a kind of search machines, which scan Freesites to the left, these left visit, and if there again Freesites are, then likewise scan these and so on. The results store it then and produce from it the lists specified above.

A very common type of Freesites are Blogs (Weblogs), which are called of the freenet users similarly "„Flogs "“(Freelogs). A special incentive for the mechanism is the anonymity, with which one can publish its reports in the freenet.

Software for freenet

For high shop of data there is special software, which facilitates in particular the exchange of larger files. These are divided internally into small pieces (Splitfiles) and if necessary with redundant data blocks provide (error correction).

Technical details

Articles in category "Freenet"

We found here 4 articles.

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